Page 138 of In Harmony

Tears slid unbidden down my cheek. “Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so.”

The entire theater held its breath. The air felt crystalline and ready to shatter.

“You should not have believed me,” he said quietly. And tore the letter and its red ribbon to shreds. The pieces fell like snow and blood as he raised his head to look at me.

“I loved you not.”

His words slammed into my chest and sunk deep into my heart. I straightened to my full height, my lips trembling as the cold came back, turning me numb. Uncaring. And this time I reached for it.

Feeling nothing, I thought, would be preferable to the pain that was to come.

“I was the more deceived,” I said with as much nonchalance as I could muster.

Hamlet’s eyes flared at my callous reply. His pent-up anger and pain flooded out on a current of ancient words. He strode to me, loomed over me.

“Get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners?”

He gripped me by my shoulders, forcing a gasp out of me. My eyes were locked on his, unable to look away.

“What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves, all; believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery!”

His grip tightened, as he caught his breath, mastering his anger. Up through his eyes rose a plea. One last chance for us.

“Where's your father?” Hamlet asked, his voice cracking open to show Isaac.

The play vanished. The stage and theater disappeared. The audience shrank to one single seat with my father in it. Watching from the dark as Isaac asked me—begged me one final time—to choose him.

He thought it was simple—disobey my father and love him. Love him no matter what. But he didn’t know what he was asking. He didn’t know what I knew. What my father could do to him. Staring in his eyes, I saw the love for me, but I also saw the ruination of everything he’d worked for. His dreams crushed by accusations my father could make. Endless resources and the influence of a multi-billion-dollar company behind them.

I’d die before I let that happen—before I let Isaac take on a crime he was innocent of while Xavier walked free.

The choice tore me in half. Whatever I decided would be my ruination. Live a life without Isaac. Or stay with him and watch him lose everything.

I had no choice.

My father was in the audience, watching.

I drew in a shaky breath, my eyes pleading for forgiveness as I uttered the simple lie that unraveled us for good.

“At home, my lord.”

Isaac’s eyes flared again. His fingers loosened their hold on my arms but didn’t let go. He turned his face to the audience. The stage lights wouldn’t let him find my father in the crowd, but I knew he spoke only to him.

“Let the doors be shut upon him,” he whispered, “that he may play the fool nowhere but in's own house.”

Isaac let go and I fell to my knees. I had a line but it was lost as I struggled to draw breath between the choking sobs that were strangling my throat. Isaac started to turn away, done with me. Done with us.

Then he whirled back around, shaking, unable to contain the pain any longer. He let it all out, spitting words that hit me like slaps to the face.

“If thou dost marry, I'll give thee this plague for thy dowry. Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny.”

His voice rose, cracking, as tears filled his eyes. “Or, if thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool, for wise men know well enough,”—he jabbed his finger at his own heart—”what monsters you make of them!”

He stood over my sobbing form, breathing heavily. Gathering up his pain, calling it home and pressing it back inside. He spoke his final line in a voice devoid of all emotion. All pain. A tone that promised his silence from that moment forward.

“Farewell.”

There is a willow grows aslant a brook