The Blessed - By Tonya Hurley Page 0,42

leave. She’d heard those words, but never listened, until now.

“I don’t do love,” she whispered, looking up at him quickly for a reaction and then returning to the nest she’d laid in his chest.

“Because love has never done you,” he said, reaching out to hold her.

“Please, don’t.”

Sebastian reached inside a glass reliquary box and pulled out a plain platinum wedding band.

“The choice is yours,” he said, placing the ring on her finger and holding her tighter. “Not mine.”

“Love is never a choice. Is it?”

He reached firmly for her face and turned it up toward his for a kiss. Their lips met and joined in a gentle collision of confusion and desire. She felt the sharpness of his stubbled chin and cheeks rubbing against hers; it hurt and she liked it. Cecilia felt a peace she had never known and, all at once, an angst she had never known either. The harp song grew louder. She felt like a string being plucked. Vibrating in tune.

Her heart was beating even faster now, dangerously so, and she felt the blood leaving her head. Her hands went numb and her knees weak. Is this love, she thought, a panic attack, or something else?

“I’m not ready,” she gasped through purpled lips.

“Is there a choice?” he asked.

Cecilia often thought love might kill her, but this was different from anything she could have imagined. As if her heart were too full, not broken.

“I’m dying,” she said, reaching for his hand, which was now squeezing ever tighter around her slender throat. “You are killing me.”

“Don’t be afraid,” he whispered again in her ear, tightening his grip.

“I have no faith,” she gasped, “in love.”

“You look so beautiful,” he repeated again. “So. Very. Beautiful.”

Cecilia continued to struggle but was weakening fast. She felt helpless to stuff back in the life that was leaving her body.

Her eyes were bulged wide and fixed on an illusionistic mural painted brightly on the ceiling. Angels and a blue open sky above, which seemed to come to life as she was dying. Then she fixed her eyes on his. He was looking at her so lovingly. So passionately. Like she’d never been looked at before.

“I love you, but I must not think of you.”

She felt clean again.

Her dress turned to pure white satin. Like her skin. The thorny vine that wove through her hair sprouted delicate, tiny, red spring beauties. Just like she always dreamed it would as a little girl.

As her chest heaved and her last breaths left her, her arms dropped limply to her sides, a stream of garnet blood began to color her powdered lips as black beauty roses formed a bed around her feet. The music stopped. Her consciousness faded to darkness and then suddenly a burst of white.

Never feeling so alive, she uttered her final word.

“Sebastian.”

3 Agnes was sick.

And scared.

She was afraid of the dark and always had been. It was irrational; she knew that. Hadn’t really slept alone until she was fourteen, and even then only with a nightlight and the bedroom door cracked open. That was probably one of the reasons why her mother felt so justified in interfering with her life. At sixteen, she was not just young, but still very much a child in her mother’s eyes. She was stubborn, but not independent.

Lucy and Cecilia were asleep in the pews around her. Sebastian had yet to return. She felt surrounded, but alone. “Swallowed” described the sensation of being enveloped by the darkened nave. The reality of what she was doing began to pour in like the rain through the leaky church roof.

Her mom was going to freak when she came into her room to get her up for school and found the bedroom empty and the bed made, comforter pulled over the top, and sheets tucked tightly. What would she do next? Call all her friends most definitely to drum up support, and attention for herself, but then panic would certainly set in. She was her mother’s life.

The thought of her mother’s angst brought out her own neuroses even further, and she began picking obliviously at the tape holding her bandages on, when the sound of a few footfalls behind her and a hand on her shoulder sent a shockwave through her entire body.

“Are you okay?” Sebastian whispered.

Deep in thought, Agnes was startled, frightened. Instead of pulling away, he leaned in waiting for her response.

“Yes,” she said, but her eyes told another story. “I just can’t sleep.”

Sebastian reached for the bare skin on her arms and