“It’s the beeping,” Leah commented. “It’s making all of us crazy. Benjamin, when was the last time you ate anything?”
Benjamin tilted his head at Leah, mildly amused at her mothering. He’d lived with the family for twenty-five years, and she’d never stopped treating him like he was her son, even though they weren’t too far off from each other in age. “The last time I ate was the last time you did.” His hands were tented in front of his lips, his shoes up on the edge of the hospital bed, and his elbows resting on his thighs. “I didn’t think she’d still be here four months after the attack.”
“She’s breathing on her own,” Leah said for the sixth time that morning. “That’s promising.”
“Promising that Remus’ counter-curse held up, sure, but no one’s been able to find Cordray yet. I feel like I should be out there with them, searching.”
Leah shook her head. “It’s best you’re here. You’re her guard, and you’re the only person I trust to watch her for us.”
Benjamin let out a disgruntled “pfft”. “You shouldn’t trust me. She got attacked on my watch. I shouldn’t have taken her to Cord’s cabin. We should’ve gone anywhere else. Stefan’s idea of holing up in the palace would’ve been better.”
“Then King Hubert would also have been in danger.”
“We should’ve left a day earlier.”
Leah placed her hand on Benjamin’s. “Enough. We all knew this was coming. There’s nothing you could’ve done.” Leah stood over her daughter’s bedside and fluffed the pillows, taking care not to ruffle the comatose girl’s hair. “She looks like she’s sleeping.” Leah ran her fingers down Rory’s cheek, tearing up yet again. “My beauty. I remember the day she was born like it was yesterday.”
Benjamin put his feet on the ground and frowned at Leah. “Don’t you start with that again. You’re going to get all emotional, and I’m telling you, I can’t take it today. I’m barely holding it together.”
Leah paid him no mind, lost in her memories. “She was perfect. I know every mother says that, but it was true about Aurora. Not a thing I would’ve changed, not even the sleepless nights.” Tears fell down her cheeks in a steady stream, as they did every day around this time. “I would give anything for her to keep me awake now! Did I tell her I loved her enough?”
Benjamin couldn’t tame his smirk. “Only every day, several times a day. Rory knows, Leah. She’s still in there, remember. The nurse said we should talk to her as if she’s in the room, so she’ll remember to come back to us if her body gives her that option.”
“But she won’t come back until Cordray wakes her, and we can’t find him!”
Benjamin shushed her gently, and rose from his chair to take her hand. He stayed by Leah’s side until she calmed down, assuring her as often as she could hear it that somehow Rory would be alright.
He didn’t leave the hospital when Leah’s guard came to pick her up and take her home. She had political duties to attend to, but Benjamin did not. So he remained by Rory’s side, sleeping there every night, even when the nurses tried to kick him out. Leah’s guard could Pulse Compliance into people, so he did what he needed to get Benjamin permission to stay by Rory’s side.
When Benjamin was alone with her, he uncoiled a fistful of her hair from under her head and checked the door to make sure it was shut. He’d hated braiding her hair when she’d been a child, but she’d loved wearing her long black locks in two braids on either side of her head.
“There you go, talking me into things you know I don’t want to do,” he chided the sleeping woman, as if it had been her idea for him to twist her hair in the hospital room. “If anyone asks, I’m telling them the nurses braided your hair.”
When he finished, he sat back and pulled his book off the nightstand, opening it to read aloud to her. “I know you don’t like my Westerns, but it’s my turn to pick. You made me sit through Goldilocks and the Three Bears so many times, I had the book memorized. This is a drop in the bucket, kiddo.” He flipped to the page he’d left off at the night before. “I’m hoping that you’ll hate it so much that you’ll sit straight up and tell me off for making you sit through the longest story of your life.”
He sniggered at what he inserted in his mind to be her internal groan, but stiffened when the door opened. “Adam? What are you doing here?”
Adam’s beastly face made him less likely to travel in the daylight, but it had been four months since Rory had fallen asleep, and he hadn’t been by. Oh, he’d sent flowers and food for the mourners, but he hadn’t stopped over to see the only woman who’d remained in his life. He scowled at Benjamin. “I wasn’t expecting you to be here. It’s after visiting hours.”
Benjamin stood, but didn’t extend his hand, knowing Adam wouldn’t take it. “That’s the thing about being her guard. I get to bend all sorts of rules.”
“Get out. I need a minute with her.”
Benjamin tilted his head at Adam. “You want to try asking that again, Son? Convince me why I should leave her alone with you.”
“I’m her friend, and I need a minute with her.”
Benjamin looked at Adam appraisingly. “A friend, eh? I’ve seen her friends show up here. I’ve seen her family. I’ve seen every single one of her employees come to pay their respects. But I haven’t seen you come by yet. I have no idea why you’re here now.”
Adam snarled and threw his arms out to the sides after he set his leather satchel on the floor. “You want to watch, so I can give you a show? Do you really think I’ll allow that?”
“A show? What are you talking about?”
“The curse! She asked me to… And Henry said he already tried, but it didn’t take. I know it has to be Cordray, and I know we’re not in love, obviously. But she made me promise I’d try to wake her.”
Benjamin folded his arms over his chest. “So four months later, you finally got around to it? You are without a doubt, the most selfish man I know.”
“I told you to get out. I can’t imagine you being so obtuse as to need to hear instructions twice.”
It wasn’t Adam’s surly nature that gave Benjamin the urge to stretch his legs out in the hallway, but the fact that he was willing to try anything to rouse his charge at this point. “If you’re Rory’s true love, I’ll pucker up and kiss you myself.”
Adam snarled at Benjamin and shoved him out into the hallway, shutting himself in the room with the only woman who loved him enough to stick around.
He ran his hands through his hair four times, silently asking himself again what exactly he was doing here. He closed his eyes, and then opened them to glare at Rory, who still lay motionless in her bed. He’d paid someone to deliver flowers and secretly install a tiny security camera in the room so he could keep an eye on her remotely, but Benjamin had been right. Four months wasn’t exactly punctual for a first in-person visit. He’d been hoping Cordray would show up, but as the weeks ticked by, he began to lose hope that the man who’d electrocuted him was still alive.
Though he’d watched Rory on the camera, she was thinner in person. She’d always been a waif, but four months of intravenous nourishment had left her a hop, skip and a jump away from positively boney. She’d always been a little pale, but there was no hint of color to her cheeks anymore.
“This is stupid,” Adam lectured her with a scowl. “You know this won’t work. But of course, here I am, suckered into following your orders, like I’m some servant you can ring up for whatever favor you like.” He paced the room, nervous that he was in this position, and that no one had been able to wake her.
She’d been good to him, despite everything. Though she didn’t understand all the fractures in his mind, she accepted him – broken though he was. She’d loved him back when he was whole, happy and foolhardy as well. He wanted to fight her on this, but it was the only thing she’d ever asked him for.
“Fine, I’ll do it. But it won’t work, so don’t say I never said ‘I told you so,’ because I did.”
Adam hadn’t kissed anyone in nearly a decade, and worried he’d forgotten how. As he leaned over, he remained frozen, his mouth inches from hers. His eyes closed, and for a solid three seconds, he allowed himself to hope that his kiss could break Rory’s curse. He touched his forehead to hers, wishing with everything in him that life could be simpler. He didn’t want to hear the voices that haunted him in his castle. He wanted his normal face again, which he’d taken for granted back when he’d been a spoiled young man, manipulating those around him with a dashing smile as he saw fit.
If love was a thing he could feel, Adam felt it for Rory and Henry alone. No one else had stuck by him after the years of him pushing everyone away. Though truthfully, he hadn’t had to push all that hard. Most of his friends had been superficial - a tragic flaw that was mostly of his own making. Henry and Rory had come to visit him when it became apparent he needed professional help. They hugged him when he yelled at them. A few times a year, they even made it a point to force him to leave the castle he’d sequestered himself inside.
They loved him, and however capable he was of harboring those same precious feelings, he did only for Rory and Henry. Though he could never see himself writhing in the sheets with the girl who’d tagged along with Henry and himself on many an adventure growing up, he hoped the steady rhythm of their solid friendship would be enough to set her free.
Adam had scar tissue over his top lip that made the skin puff out a little, and it was covered in facial hair that every year started to feel more and more like fur, giving him his ever-popular nickname of “Beast”. His canine teeth were elongated to the point of him having to make a concerted effort not to cut her when the dreaded moment finally came. He hadn’t kissed a single soul since he’d been deformed, and wasn’t even sure he remembered the mechanics of a subject he’d once dominated.
But there she was – the only woman who believed in his redemption enough to love him. The better man she cherished was nowhere in sight, yet still she held firm to her hope. Dainty though her hands were, she’d always kept a tight grip on her belief that fate could be changed, and that he was somehow capable of goodness. The three of them had the kind of loyalty that was the stuff of lifelong friendships, but true love seemed to be a different thing entirely.
Her lips were soft, thanks to the fluids they were pumping into her. He turned his head on an angle to compensate for his puffy upper lip, tucking his fangs beneath, but the kiss was still horribly awkward. Anger flared up in him that she’d forced him to know what it was like to kiss with the deformities that had taken over his face, but he tried to be brave as the last vestiges of hope began to fade. What little optimism had been planted in his heart started to shrivel and choke as he kissed her again, smacking his hand on her bedrail in frustration as he grew more desperate to make this work.
Adam lost count of how many times he kissed his best friend, losing hope as the minutes ticked by with no marked change in her besotted state. When he began to taste a stale rust, he realized with self-loathing that he’d accidentally sliced her lip with his problematic overlong canines.
When he finally pulled away, he was surprised to find condensation misting his eyes. Immediately, he was cross with her for forcing the emotion from him. But he was enraged with himself for hoping – a bad habit he’d cast aside long ago.
There was no point in being angry with her as he pulled a tissue from the box on her nightstand and dabbed at the dot of blood on her lip, but he unleashed a torrent of lectures anyway until he’d exhausted himself. Then, plopping down in Benjamin’s chair, he snarled at the old paperback Western the guard had been reading his charge. “You don’t want to lie here and listen to this insipid book. If you’re going to insist on lounging around all day and night for months on end, your head will at least get filled with something useful.” He glanced at the door to make sure it was shut, and then reached into his leather satchel that he’d left on the floor. “If you don’t like Alexandre Dumas, well, then you’re stupid.” He flipped to the page he’d left off at, about a third of the way in. “And I’m not recapping what you’ve missed. If you wanted to know, you should’ve read the book yourself. It’s centuries old, Rory. Centuries. Don’t tell me you haven’t had the time.” He grumbled a little while longer, as if she had sighed her exasperation over his choice in classic literature.
When Adam began to read, his shoulders relaxed and rolled back. The knot that felt constantly lodged in his sternum loosened, and he breathed easier. It was the rhythm of the old language that soothed all that ailed him. He ached inside – a deep, guttural pit of despair that he’d learned to live with over the years. Yet in the dusty pages, Alexandre Dumas soothed him.
As he read aloud to Rory, he hoped that same comfort would cover her, as well.