Eternal: Chapter Ten, Part 3

Two weeks passed, with only two to go. We were mostly prepared, and what we weren’t ready for we never would be, so it didn’t matter. I tried to stay away from everyone, the anxiety palpable almost to the point of unbearable; I noticed Ian wasn’t around much either unless it was just the two of us, sometimes Drei as well, hanging out in our apartment. Even that wasn’t often.

Then again, I was also busy. No one knew with what, but it was my project for Drei, my gift back to him. Whenever I’d had time, I had been searching, slowly working through a long list of burial sites and graveyards, marking off the ones that didn’t have what I was looking for. There were a couple of times I thought I had found them, but upon closer inspection, they were too old or too young, or too recent—the decay not far enough along.

Unexpectedly, not in a cemetery, but just outside of one, was one deep grave. Inside, from what I could tell, were buried two little girls in a single casket. They were barefoot, no suggestion of shoes anywhere in their grave. What was left of their clothes suggested a flimsy dress—flimsy from how little there was left of it. They seemed to be in approximately the right stage of decay, based on my brief research on the subject.

Pulling out of my mapping, I checked where I had been looking. A small graveyard overseas, to the north and near the coast. Before I told Drei, I wanted to check it out for myself, but knew I didn’t have the time or the means. Mapping it again, I was sure it was Avery and Ashlyn.

I could have asked Valetta or Mitchell to check for me, but what if they told me I was crossing a line? I should keep my nose to myself and not even think about opening those old wounds for him, especially if I loved him. It seemed all I could imagine was the worst, no matter how hard I tried to come up with anything that was positive.

Those thoughts didn’t help, though. As I contemplated telling Drei, the words from my scenario kept playing through my head. No one had even said them, but they were there nonetheless. If you love him, you won’t tell him. And as those words stopped, the thought that he deserved to know kept pushing me towards it. I was caught between a rock and a hard place and I wasn’t even sure how. It was all in my head but it all seemed real.

I finally broke down the last night of April, the night before the march. Or, more precisely, it had been bothering me for so long, Drei finally drew it out of me.

“What is the matter?” he asked as we sat together on the couch, running his fingers through my hair as he set down the paper he had been reading—the front page was chock full of information for the public on tomorrow.

“Nothing,” I said, shaking it off and closing my eyes. He didn’t know; he didn’t need to know, I told myself in an attempt to cover up the voice telling me he should know.

Glancing down, I felt him inspect me, looking for some clue as to what I was thinking. “It is unhealthy to keep it to yourself.”

Unhealthy. I was reminded of my thoughts about Jake bottling his emotions; that was the word I had used then to describe it. And now Drei was telling me the same thing because I was bottling it up. But I didn’t want to believe it. This was different; this was me, and Drei, and his sisters. This was my relationship, not anger and sadness at my family. It was different, not at all the same thing.

“You can tell me,” he insisted, pulling me from my thoughts.

Glancing up at his pale, amethyst eyes, I knew he was telling the truth. I could tell him; he wouldn’t let it ruin what we had, and I could finally get it off my chest.

“I think I found your sisters,” I whispered, looking away. Though his eyes promised a calm reaction, my mind still warily remembered some of his past reactions. He had the ability to be cruel, even to me.

“How?”

I hadn’t expected that; my voice had sounded so soft to me I thought his first question would be for me to repeat. But it wasn’t, and that threw me for a moment. “Over the last couple of years I’ve been mapping graveyards and burial grounds, trying to find them for you,” I said timidly, still unable to gaze up at him. If he had looked away from me, I might have been able to, but his gaze was steady. “And I think I found them. I have it marked on a map, if you wanted to see;” I stood to retrieve it.

Drei captured my hand, stopping me. He stood, taking my other hand in his, trying to catch my eyes.

“Abriel,” he said, softly but clearly, and our eyes met. His eyes were watery on the edges but glinting, the slightest curve to his lips. “I appreciate what you have done for me.”

“It wasn’t anything special;” I broke our gaze and glanced around the room. His eyes were so intensely focused on me and I couldn’t read any emotion coming from him; the combination unnerved me. “I just thought I could help, since I had some extra time and, you know, some—”

He chuckled, a deep rippling sound filling the space between us. “There is no need to babble,” he said, lifting my chin. “You have done nothing wrong.”

Looking up at him, he was wearing a full smile now, white teeth and all. “Really? You’re not mad?” I asked, feeling myself shiver. Why was I shivering?

Shaking his head, his shaggy hair jostling a little, he elaborated, “I am not upset with you. You have done me a great service, Abriel,” he persisted, closing the gap between us and folding me into his arms. “Why are you shivering?”

I wrapped my arms around his waist, shaking my head. I didn’t know why I was still shivering. It wasn’t fear, because I wasn’t frightened anymore by how he might react. He had already reacted, and it was the best case scenario I hadn’t been able to imagine.

Then it dawned on me: I didn’t want him to say he was going to find his sisters’ graves instead of being with me tomorrow. I wasn’t sure if I could lead that many people through the capitol to the reflecting pool and then speak to them. Inspire them. Say what hadn’t been said in so long. Not if he wasn’t there. Nick may have helped my first tour, but this was a larger scale and it was much more important I didn’t completely foul it up.

But Drei had waited so long for this, and I wouldn’t stop him if he decided to go. I loved him; I had found them because I knew not knowing where they were had haunted him; he deserved to have closure so that wound could finally heal.

“I’ll get the map,” I said, still holding onto him, “so you can go find them. Tell me if I was right.”

When I went to pull away from him, Drei didn’t let me go. He just held me tighter and I couldn’t fathom why. He wanted this, had waited centuries for this, and now he was stopping me from giving him the information that had so long eluded him?

“Tomorrow is important for you,” he whispered into my ear. “I will be there for you.”

“But you’ve waited hundreds of years,” I argued, not understanding why he was doing this. He should be going to see if I was right, not staying here with me.

“I have waited hundreds of years, as you have said,” he repeated, holding my gaze, not letting me look away this time. “I can wait a few more days.”

“But—”

“Abriel,” he interrupted—having done this more frequently over the past months, especially when it came to arguing about sleep or the like, it didn’t concern me as much as it used to. “I would like to go, but tomorrow I will be here for you.”

Biting my bottom lip, I withheld my argument. I didn’t understand why he would put it off longer than he needed to, but maybe when I was as old as he was now, I’d understand. Tonight, I wouldn’t; I could be sure of that much.

“Besides,” Drei added, his eyes focusing on something else, “I would like you to be with me when I go.”

“Of course,” I promised, tightening my arms around him.

We stood that way for what seemed like a long time, though it couldn’t have been that long. It was still the night before the march when he suggested I sleep, kissing my temple and then leading me to the room.

I didn’t fall asleep right away, though I honestly couldn’t remember falling asleep at all that night. My brain seemed completely preoccupied with trying to figure out why he was putting me before them when they had been important to him longer. And as I asked myself that over and over again, the only answer that came to mind was that he loved me, and love made us do strange things.