Cursed: Immortal

Chapter 10: The Dark One

That night, as I lie in bed, remembering everything, I regret not taking Scarlet into my arms and telling her what was nagging at me. I wish I'd had the courage to confess to her the way she has to me.

As she walked away from me, I wished I could say what I felt, tell her all I knew and leave no more of myself in the small part of me I feared. My fears were probably unfounded, but they ate at me all the same. I was, by far, not done with telling her yet.

In my mind, I imagined telling her, I imagined that she was standing next to me, in that dress. I imagined her holding my hand as she listened. In my mind, she was still as a statue, her hair over one shoulder and her eyes trusting. So I put myself into that small piece of imagination and pretended that it was so.

"For most of my life, I've questioned everything about myself, including my biological parents, my powers, everything that I had no control over what I blamed myself for. Now that I knew the reason for my mother abandoning me, my doubts began to seem trivial, in a way."

"My mother had tried to protect me from my father because she knew he would try to corrupt me as he had his other son. She tried to keep me from being made into a monster like Tristan, though I wonder if his heritage had anything to do with it."

"My heritage is questionable; no one knows what will happen to me when I come of age, which is probably why the High Council will be here when I come into my powers. With everything you are capable of, I'm almost afraid of what might happen, and what they might do to me." In my mind, she's looking at me, with those giant blue eyes, willing me to keep going.

"When I was younger, I used to wish I wasn't me, that I was anyone else. I used to dream that I had a normal mage family, with two parents and a brother. Not that I hate my adoptive parents, but they told me at a young age I wasn't theirs, and it bothered me."

"The family I've discovered has two parents and a brother, but they don't even live in the same realm and I'm pretty sure that they hate each other. My half-brother tried to kill my girlfriend, my father cursed my girlfriend and if it weren't for my mother, I'd probably have turned out just like them. Talk about putting the 'fun' in 'dysfunctional'."

But my reverie is short-lived, I snap out of it, only to sink further into the pillows, wishing I were anywhere but here. Wishes, on this night, were not coming true.

And now I've hurt the one person who has ever accepted me, and cared for me. I broke up with the only girl I've ever given a damn about, just to protect her from my family, her family, too, I guess. Sighing, I turn over in my bed, trying to block out the memory of her face when I told her that I didn't want to see her anymore.

Well if it rains it pours...I guess it only makes sense that it's my heart's turn to shatter after my reality has.

When I finally fall asleep, I have the vision again, nothing has changed. "And nothing ever will, little brother," a voice calls out, and I turn around.

"Tristan, how surprising," I mutter, shoving my hands into my pockets and glaring at him in a way even Scarlet would envy. He dismisses me with a wave of his freakishly pale hand and walks toward the stone slab I craved to forget.

"You were expecting me, how strange," he says as the scene changes, we're in the garden he died in, right by the tree I found Scarlet kneeling next to on All Hallows Eve. He sits in the bench nearby, acting as if it's a throne, and looks me up and down.

"Isn't it just," I say, leaning against the tree. I return his look, pretending to be unimpressed by what I see. His hair is lank and greasy, his clothes rotted and old-fashioned, but most of all, his face which reminded me of an old-fashioned vampire.