The Second (The Immortal Prophecies: Book I)

XXXV. Guenevere

What I was certain of being true was that Lincoln's ambiance wasn't one to be in at the moment. Him attempting to slither near only just heightened the animalistic intuitive white flag of my wondering if he was well or not.

Running, on the contrary, wouldn't be of use without the proper idea of the eerie walls enclosing us like a prison. If he wanted a chance to talk, he had best do it now, with full control of my actions and thoughts, or else the pressure of the room would cave it all in. And he had better leave me a leeway to breathe in his company. My eyes fell in the direction of the furniture, unfortunately giving way to the path of a defense against him. "You were apologizing." One had to be careful in saying what they did, due to the fragile case of the room. Even a dead man's breath could cleft the entire surface.

"I'll become crazy if I don't do it now." He was being anything but cautious.

"And what is the deed you apologize for?" Any conclusion could lead to last night, when Mary had wanted him for a new friend, but nothing was stirred when I had awakened in the morning to get them ready. But then... "Can't it wait?" In a more friendly, safe environment, perhaps.

"No, it can't." Very well, then. "Gwen, just hear me out."

"I would, if we could discuss this elsewhere, Lincoln. We don't have the right setting or conditions. And I'd appreciate it if you'd stop advancing towards me like that." Nothing I said did anything to change his will against my discomfort, edging me to the opposite side of the table for a barrier between us. The movement seemed to defer his actions a tad enough for me to ease the bundle of nerves developing in my body, nurtured from the embryo in my head. "Don't come any closer." No warning could change the stoic look on his face, haunting.

The paste of his skin peeled alongside his eyes, who fell from their place, coloring the circumference a vile blue purple. Jagged edges along his face weathered the paste into sprinkled dust, aging him, hollow creaks hiding secrets from his tongue he wanted to cut free. The ebony of his hair mangled all over his face, clawing the frame they created, dulling the stone his eyes were. If I were a littlun again, he would look like a monster from under the bed. When the living spectrum of terror spoke, gravel ground against spikes of shoes. "It's vital that I tell you, please." He acted like a ship in the middle of the storm. "I know things that change everything."

"Good, but it can wait. Don't take another step or so help me I'll run, I can assure you that." He swayed before locking a focused gaze with me, waves of ripples frighteningly pulsating through his eyes. "What are you doing?" He examined me like an experiment in a lab, picking away with his tweezers that pricked around my skin, and forming gooseflesh.

"Your mind--it's...proof enough about what I need to tell you." My next thought was different from what he had discovered or not, shifting to the prophecies and the written verses. Having a theory, I figured that they had to be more than in scripted visions for us, and instead a saying much more powerful.

The invasive nature of my partner was nothing like him, and the confession he would tell me could not have been at all positive. "Stay out of my head and stay right where you are. What in all the dickens is wrong with you?" Becoming a wafting smoke that pressurized my lungs, I snatched up pathetic candlesticks to use as a weak advantage in what could be a confrontation with him. What respect crystallized for him began to dwindle into a growing itch to get away. Far.

"Something happened to you a long time ago, right? It was when you were just a kid." That was an interdiction to uncharted territory, bubbling the unwanted anger into a chafed layer of skin making me feel tight.

"Get out of my damn head," my quivering voice ordered with as much authority as one in my place could muster.

"You had a family, at last." Bloody fool, he was playing with the embers of a fire close to igniting into a blaze I had put so much effort into keeping out. He was not going to degrade my stance from this high down to the underworld from where I emerged. "I'm sorry."