Page 41 of Cursed Lifeline (Eternal Love)

Forty

Viktor

song: Rescue | lauren daigle

Mount Erymanthos, Greece

Evangeline eyes me cautiously through the haze of candlelight. Her stare flickers with mischief as she sucks in a shaky breath. Biting her bottom lip, she raises a suggestive brow. A playful chuckle leaves my mouth. Licking my lips, I slowly look her up and down and study her closely.

Her eyelashes flutter; she seems to have stopped breathing.

Leaning forward, my eyes fall to her lips.

I study her mouth for the telltale sign she’s nervous. For the adorable twitch of her left cheek that I’ve grown accustomed to staring at the past several decades we’ve spent together. It’s a quiver that inevitably gives away her nerves and just how panicked she really is.

She releases a shuttered sigh.

She could be nervous.

Or she could be bluffing.

And there’s only one way to find out.

Taking a deep breath, I release it slowly and grin when I see the princess flinch as it feathers across her lips.

My eyes roam her face, tracing freckles and curves I’ve memorized decades ago.

“Do you,” I whisper, drawing out time, and smirking when I see the fae wiggle in her seat. “Have any sevens?”

Evangeline glances down at her hand, grins, cocks a condescending brow in my direction, then leans forward, and whispers, “Go. Fish.”

Chuckling, I lean back in my seat and reluctantly pull a card from the pond in the center of the table.

“You thought you had me,” she grins, watching in triumph as I groan in annoyance, having to add another card to the singular one I had in my hand.

“So close,” she taunts. I roll my eyes at her. She continues in a playful tone, “How does it feel to be so close, Vik, and yet so far away from winning?”

Her words sting, even though I know she didn’t mean for them to.

My mind wanders to visions that have been relentlessly haunting me for centuries. Peaceful eyes, a kind, warm smile. Every night, I dream of winning, only to wake up a loser come morning. Evangeline notices my slip in demeanor and mumbles, “Sorry, I shouldn't have…”

I swallow hard and try to let her comment roll off my back. I almost believe I have my temper under control when the absence of a tender touch I’ve spent centuries searching for causes loneliness to seep into my veins, and I bite back, “I don’t know, princess, how does it feel to be so close and yet so far from winning yourself?”

Our budding silence makes the air grow thick with tension as I refuse to look up and meet her eye. After a moment, she whispers, “I deserved that.”

No, she didn’t.

Glancing up quickly, I’m just about to tell her so when she rises from her seat and walks somberly to the entrance of the cave. Looking out across the forest below, fireflies dance from tree to tree as we both let our longing, our yearning, our craving build until it threatens to engulf us in an unforgiving flame.

Loneliness seeps back in and simultaneously steals our next breath.

But regardless of what some may think, we don’t ache for each other.

No, the princess yearns for a watcher who left a long time ago.

While me? I’m still searching for a quiet voice in the night that brings me peace when it whispers…

I’ll be waiting for you.

Time spent with Evangeline in the fae lands where she grew up has proved beneficial. Though we still haven't found a way to break the blood oath, we have found the longer I stay away, the less Ember’s powers call to me.

In a sense, I almost feel free, though I know I can’t spend eternity running from my problems.

Our plan has been to wait in the caves, let the oath between Ember and I lessen, and bide our time until Esme’s return. How we’ll receive word she’s alive again, and what we’ll do with that knowledge once we receive it, is yet to be discussed.

Maybe if Alfred stayed even after Evangeline forced him away, we would’ve been given word by now that she’s alive. As it is, we’re left to wonder when’s the right time to chance a trip back to the real world. As much as it suits me to stay here, hidden away from everything and the battle we’re destined to one day cross, I know doing so wears on Evangeline more than she lets on.

She misses her friends.

Moreover, she misses a watcher she’s spent over a century denying her feelings for.

A watcher who could give her more than I ever could simply because he looks at her like she’s the only woman in the world. While I’m still searching for the mythical goddess that haunts me in the night.

Clearing my throat, I rise from my seat and walk towards her. We stand in silence for a moment and look out across the view of the forest below. After a moment, I bump her with my shoulder in a brotherly way and ask, “Are you ever going to tell me?”

“Tell you what?” she instantly snaps.

“Why do you deny your soul what it really wants.”

She sucks in a sharp breath and refuses to meet my eye.

We’ve danced around her past for close to a hundred years. If we’re going to be faced with traveling back to reality soon, it’s only fair I know about her demons like she so effortlessly uncovered mine the first night she brought me here.

“It doesn’t matter,” she says, whipping away a tear.

“It does matter,” I insist. “Anything that makes you cry absolutely fucking matters, Evangeline.”

She releases a sad chuckle and wipes away another fallen tear.

I wait for her to respond. Eventually, she shrugs. “It doesn’t matter because there is nothing anyone can do about it now.”

“What does that mean?”

Closing her eyes, she takes a deep breath and turns my way.

“I was married once.”

Startled, my eyes widen, and she laughs, “Not what you were expecting me to say, was it?”

I shake my head no and wait for her to elaborate.

Turning back to the forest below the cave, she says, “He was amazing. The man of my dreams. He said all the right things did all the right things. He was perfect. Until one day, he wasn’t.”

Again, she retreats into silence. Taking her shoulders, I force her to turn my way. She averts her gaze and looks down at her feet. Gently, I place my finger under her chin and force her gaze up to meet mine.

“No one is perfect, princess,” I insist. “Mortal or immortal, stick around one long enough, and they’re bound to fuck up.”

Laughing, she swats away another fallen tear and confesses, “Oberon liked to take his imperfections out on me at night. When the world was asleep, and no one could hear, he’d raise hell and sacrifice me on a brutal altar for his sick, twisted, narcissistic pleasure.”

“He hurt you?” I demand.

Evangeline gives me a sad nod. “Repeatedly.”

I swear I see red.

My heart may not be bound to the princess, but that doesn’t mean I love her any less after she sacrificed her life to help me find a cure.

“I’ll kill him,” I hiss, turning hot on my heels and starting to pace.

“He’s already dead,” says, causing me to stop and stare at her in disbelief, needing more answers.

I open my mouth to demand just that when she beats me to it.

“I killed him,” she grins sadly. After a moment a sorrowful chuckle falls past her lips. “When no one else in my tribe would stand up to him when I was forced to endure his endless torture night after night, I killed him,” she starts to laugh manically.

She raises her hands in front of her and stares at her palms in horror.

“With these two hands,” she chuckles. Eyes wide, her laugh builds until she is slightly shaking with hysteria. Her eyes flash to mine and her face hardens, “And I'd do it again if any man ever turned out to be just like him.”

Alfred, my mind instantly warns.

“Is that why you keep the watcher at arm’s length?”

She drops her palms and wraps her arms across her chest. Looking off in the distance, she refuses to answer my question.

“Not all men are the same, Evangeline,” I say.

After a moment of silence, she softly cries, “I can’t take the chance.”

Stepping toward her, she instantly backs herself up against the cave wall and shakes her head. Swallowing hard, her gaze eventually drifts back my way.

“I can’t take the chance because…” she trails off, and I can fill in the blanks without her having to say a word. “I didn’t love Oberon,” she admits. “I loved how he made me feel, what he did for me. Before he…” she trails off, and the horrors she experienced are written all over her face. The nightmare she lived at the hands of a man she trusted makes her begin to shake. “Alfred, I… I can’t take the chance because…”

Hanging her head, she begins to cry, and I let her break. I don’t offer her solace. I don’t offer her my shoulder to cry on. Because she doesn’t want it. She wants to feel the pain. It reminds her she’s still alive after all she’s been through. It reminds her she’s a survivor. She doesn’t need me to hold her. But one day, she might need him, and I can tell that scares her more than a lifetime spent married to a monster like Oberon.

As she cries, I silently vow to protect her like the older brother she never had when we eventually return to reality.

Sniffling, she finally calms and looks my way. “What about you?” she demands. “Are you ever going to tell me why you hate Felix and Esme so much?”

“I don’t hate them,” I remind her. She cocks a questioning brow. “I entered into the blood oath to save my brother, remember?”

“But you still resent him.”

I shrug.

“Anyone can see that if they hang around you two longer than a minute,” she says. “Why?”

I debate not answering. I debate not telling anyone ever.

But looking into her eyes, an understanding passes between us. What is said in this cave stays in this cave.

And so I concede, “I was in love with a mortal once.”

Evangeline’s eyes widen in disbelief.

“I never got the courage to tell her. I watched her for decades living out a life I could never give her. Unlike my brother, I was able to keep my distance. I knew we could never be together, and was happy and content to watch her from afar. When she grew old, I sat with her in silence when everyone else she knew had died or left her behind to do the same. She never knew I was there, but I wasn’t going to leave her, too. When she took her last breath, no one came. No one cared. Except me, a man who would’ve given up eternity for a chance to be mortal and hold her just once. When Felix came back to my mother's house, and I sensed the way he felt for Esme, the way I once felt for a mortal myself, that’s when I entered into the blood oath with Ember. I didn’t want my brother to walk the same path I had walked in life. As time passed, his feelings for Esme grew, and a loophole to the curse was created, I resented him and her because they had a chance at obtaining what I never could.”

Evangeline sucks in a shaky breath as tears well in her eyes. I let everything I’ve just said sink in before I continue.

“Immortality, mortality they’re both a blessing and a curse. With immortality, I have an eternity to feel pain and love. If I were mortal, the pain would one day end, but so would love. Felix and Esme stand a chance to embrace an eternity of love if they’d just learn to prioritize each other’s happiness and …”

Evangeline cuts me off, and says, “ That , definitely is something Felix and Esme still need to work on.”

I nod my head in agreement. If they had learned how to do that centuries ago we wouldn’t be standing here now. Which means, I could possibly still be bound tightly to Ember, because heaven knows she won’t let me go from my oath without a fight, even after Felix and Esme find a way to break the curse.

Reading my thoughts, Evangeline walks towards me and promises, “We will find a way to release you, Vik. I bet my life on it.”

I shake my head and grin, “We can’t have a pretty little fae princess like you do that.”

“Fine,” Evangeline smiles. “Someone else’s life then. But I swear we’ll find a cure. For you and Felix, and when we do, you’ll both be free to finally embrace the love you speak of.”

Grinning, I say, “I’ll take that bet only if you, in turn, swear that if that day ever comes, you’ll say yes to love, too.”

Evangeline shakes her head, denying she can before the unfortunate words ever leave her lips.

“Swear on whoever’s life you wish,” I tempt her. “Just swear to me, one day you’ll give love a chance.”

She stays silent for a moment, eventually takes a deep breath, and as a raven sounds in the far off distance of the forest, Evangeline promises, “I swear it.”