'The Shattered Bride', Chapter 9.1 from the Irish Fantasy novel: We Come Back: Vol. 1
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The Shattered Bride
Aubrey stood sternly with his back to me,
looking out the window in silence. 'How could he be so selfish?' I thought to myself.
“I thought you cared enough about me to want me to be happy.”
Aubrey spun around, “Don’t. Don’t try to make me feel guilty about my desire to not lose you. I have loved you far longer than he, and I will do everything in my power to…”
“Loved me? Well if that's true, you're the only one who would have ever guessed! If you loved me, you would not have kept quiet about that night together, this whole time! You wouldn’t have slept with Trix, and you…”
“Me kept quiet?! What about you?! All this time, I thought you might have feelings for me too, and when I learned you wanted Jack instead, I chose to love Trix. I am not the one in the wrong. I love you Astraea. You are my closest friend, and I wanted more from you than you were willing to give.”
He went to leave the room, when I reached out and grabbed his hand, stopping him.
“Aubrey wait.”
He stopped and looked at me, not letting go of my hand.
“I love you too. You are indeed my closest friend, and I did perhaps lead you to believe there would be more, because I wasn’t sure that there wouldn’t be, but then I met Jack. It was like nothing I’ve ever experienced Aubrey. It was undeniable. We’ve spent years dancing around our love, and yet I was incapable of doing that with Jack, as was he with me. I am not giving you up for him, because you both are in different chambers of my one heart.”
“One kiss, for what is now lost. We will remain the closest of friends nonetheless.”
Aubrey sat down on the bed, and took my face in his hands and kissed me.
When father and Jack opened the door, Aubrey and I were hugging, and wiping tears off our faces. Clearly some form of reconciliation had occurred.
“Son, come with me, we are eating dinner downstairs with the rest of Jack’s company. We will reunite with them up here when we are done,” Aubrey eyed us both suspiciously.
“Yes, let me ring for Fareus,”
Jack rang the bell and met Fareus in the hall.
“Fareus, these two gentlemen, Jon and Aubrey, will be joining everyone downstairs for dinner. You will send up two trays for Miss Astraea and me.”
“Very good, sir, if you two would kindly follow me, please?”
When Jack sat down in his chair alone again with me, he could immediately see me studying him. He smiled at me; I was such an angel to even consider choosing such a life, a hundred years as a shell and for what? For a brief lifetime with him? He squeezed my hand.
“Jack, what did you talk about?” I was shaking as if I had just been through a horrendous earthquake.
“Rae, you have to go back.
I can’t let you do this,” he bit his lip slightly to keep from losing control.
“Jack, it is my decision to make, and I have made it. I chose you,” I tried to pull him closer to me, but he wouldn’t let me. He turned and looked away from me, causing us both a tremendous amount of pain.
“I know you did, and I love you so much for it. But I won’t let you. I'll be damned if I let you do this, this is too much of a sacrifice Astraea. How could I possibly claim to love you, whilst I keep you here without your loved ones, for two centuries?”
“I can’t picture my life without you in it Jack, and you can’t deprive me of that choice. Do you know, when I met you, I felt as if I had known you before, loved you before? I can’t let you go. I would rather spend the rest of your lifetime here with you even if that means I suffer later, than none at all. I’m sorry, but that is my decision,” I stopped crying.
He faced me and squeezed my hand.
He leaned over the bed and wiped the tears off my cheeks. He was shaking too, as he sat down next to me on the bed.
“I will always be in your heart Rae, right here,” he laid his hand on my heart.
“There will never come a day or a second in time, where I love you any less than I do in this moment. In this world and in the next, I will keep you in my heart and soul, and I will never, let you go.”
We were both crying subtly now as we kissed and hugged. I tried to rip his hands off my cheeks, to hit him, to spend the energy of emotion I had left on the devastation of what he was saying. He wasn’t accepting my decision. I refused for this to be it, I wouldn’t have it. Eventually, my strength to fight him diminished, and I laid my head on his shoulder and sobbed, breathing him in.
Just then, we heard a knock on the door.
I lied back weakly, as Jack allowed the trays to be set down. When the servants left the room, he set the tray over my lap. I watched him, his movements, the way he looked when he listened, and when he breathed. It was addicting.
“Jack I am not leaving and I look forward to many more dinners here with you,” I said defiantly and took a bite out of my bread.
He stopped in his tracks.
What I said both warmed and broke his heart.
A plan began to formulate in his mind. He smiled back, as genuinely as he could muster. He laid out his dinner on a small table and set it next to his bed. As he went to sit, he felt his ring box in his pocket. This was his moment, and he saw it. He walked back around to the other side of the bed near the door, and knelt down in front of me, with one hand holding mine, he proposed.
“Miss Astraea, will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?” he opened the ring box, revealing his mother’s claddagh ring.
Shock and suspicion seeped into my system in equal measure. I knew that the symbol of his proposal meant he wanted to be together forever, and yet I found that so hard to trust, considering the intensities of our prior conversation. However, I could not deny him, and thinking back on this, I realize part of me knew of what was to come.
“Yes, of course,” I smiled with silent tears running down my cheeks.
Every moment felt like the last for both of us, which we kept to ourselves. He slid it on to my finger, next to my ring from Aubrey. After he kissed me, he sat back down and tried to eat. He only managed a few bites, but I devoured my plate, and felt free to accept some off of his. I couldn’t understand where my appetite had come from, when my insides felt devastated. When I finished, I asked him for a glass of water. He nodded, and stood with his back to me for some time, before bringing it to me. He had tears in his eyes. I drank down the glass, and as I started yawning uncontrollably, I watched his tears pour down his cheeks. I wanted to comfort him, to speak to him, but found I couldn’t. Everything started to spin as I reached out and wiped a tear away, before falling back unconscious. Jack removed my tray and plumped my pillows for me as he cried.
He tucked the blanket around me whispering, “Take a nap, my love, when you awaken everything will be just as it should be.”
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