Chapter 29
I have been very cautious with Zhier lately. As much as possible, I try not to get too close or act too friendly to him these days, which seems to have little to no effect considering that he still sticks close to me. Whenever he tries to invite me without booking a proper schedule, I decline him from time to time.
At some point, I am really tempted to run away and stay in the Unseelie Court for the time being, but the possibility that Klovis might be in the Seelie Court is the only thing that's keeping me here.
Speaking of Klovis, I still haven't had the time to properly investigate the diary that Grignel handed me. Trying to figure out how to open Klovis's diary is like trying to solve a rubik's cube with baby hands. I don't understand it at all. The black leather of the diary seems to be mocking me the longer that I stare at it.
The lock is in the form of a seal. Even though there's no visible lock, the book won't budge open.
Think, Livia. What did Grignel say when he handed me the diary?
I stare at the back of my left hand, remembering how he mentioned my mark at some point. Maybe forcing the diary open with brute force is not the answer at all. Maybe I should try using my left hand to lift the cover.
I begin to place my left hand over the diary. The back of my hand immediately begins to tingle as the mark starts to glow. I feel the cover just starting to rip before dizziness starts to swallow my mind. Not long after that, I started to collapse on my bed.
I probably lost consciousness along the way because Steve—or, should I say, Klovis—is standing before me with a very red face in the middle of a plain field.
"W–What do you think you were doing?!" He demands.
Mind you, I have just gotten back into this lucid dream where Steve and I meet, so I am still feeling a little out of it.
"Sorry. What was I doing?" I feel a little confused about Steve's troubled reaction. "You...You were...nevermind..." Steve quickly averts his gaze and starts to shift his attention to the ground. He looks so uncomfortably adorable that it seems to have woken up my brain enough to remember what I was doing before passing out.
"Is this about the diary?" I ask groggily. It's just an instinctive guess, but it seems like I was right when I saw him flinching. I gasp. "Was I able to unlock your diary?"
"No!" He snaps, looking at me with a bashful and angry eyes that I just can't seem to take him seriously. "You...don't even try to open it!"
So, I did manage to open it.
Hearing him stutter with a tomato red face somehow just pushes me to tease him. I start to grin.
"Why? What's in the diary, Steve?"
"You don't need to know!"
I snort. "I don't believe you. There must be something there that you don't want me to read if you made me faint." With a grin still on my face, I start to eye him. "You used your magic to make me faint just now, didn't you?"
He pretended not to hear me and poutingly looked in the other direction while crossing his arms.
This is amusing.
"Alright. Since you are not in the mood for talking, maybe I should head back and read your diary—page by page, if I may add. Goodnight, Steve." I start to lay on the ground and try to go back to sleep, but Steve immediately runs towards me and grabs my arms to pull me back to my feet.
"Don't you know that it is not nice to touch other people's stuff without their permission?!"
"I know about that. My mother taught me that lesson when I was a kid. Unfortunately for you, I was never the type of child who listened to their parents that often. Besides," I give him a death stare, losing my grin in the process. "Didn't you do the same when you gave me your mark?"
"That's besides the point! A diary is a sacred thing!"
"Ah, nope. Not a good enough reason or even an interesting topic to make me stay." I yawn and begin to slump in his arms with my head hanging back. "Zzzz!"
I'm just kidding, of course. I have no idea how to return to the waking world aside from getting physically woken up or when Steve wants me to leave. But since Steve is panicking at the moment, he must have forgotten that fact.
I start to close my eyes and pretend to snore while I sleep. This drove Steve into such a frenzy that he aggressively shook me like a rag doll to keep me from sleeping.
"Livia? LIVIA, HEY! Come back here, woman!" He starts to scream, and it took every ounce of self control that I have to stop myself from laughing or sneaking a peek at him to see his reaction.
"Zzz..."
Don't laugh. Don't laugh.
"Argh! Why do you always have to be this stubborn!?"
"Always?" I crack one eye open to stare at him. Actually, I was also getting a little dizzy from his frantic shaking, so I figured that I should stop him at some point. "Sounds like you know me too well." I start to take a sitting position while facing Steve, who seems to have calmed down a bit. "Come to think of it, how did we first meet? I can't remember."
Steve starts to reach back and scratch the back of his head. He takes a bit of a silent time, probably trying to recall or have the right words to tell me.
"It's a bit of a long story."
"We have enough time. You made me pass out, didn't you?" I give him a smile. It was a smile to make him feel guilty for causing me to black out in the first place. "Shouldn't you take responsibility for it?"
Steve pouts. "It was a stormy night when I happened to wander in the human forest." He starts to narrate. His gaze seems far ahead as he recalls the events. "I was hurt and not in the best condition at that time, so I began to become ill. When fairies become weak in the human realm, our bodies automatically transform us into creatures to conserve our presence and our magic."
"What type of creature did you transform into?"
"A black fox with horns."
Now, I know that it sounds absurd or maybe sarcastic, which is what I thought at first. But recalling the winged cat form that Zhier once took to sneak into my mother's trailer, I know that Steve is being serious.
Come to think about it, the description seems a little familiar. It's like a thick fog at the back of my brain is starting to clear.
"You, Livia, happened to be the first human to find me. You keep leaving me food and helped nurse me back to help when I was too weak to move. Of course, I never trusted you at first and bit you." Steve seems to laugh at the memory before giving me an apologetic look while eyeing my left hand.
"Is that how I got the mark?"
"No." He shakes his head. "But we were bleeding for a while. Still, you keep feeding me and have helped me recover. It was then that I realized that you're too much of a gentle soul back then to ever be a threat to me."
"Back then? I am still a gentle soul now."
Steve's response to me is a long, hard, and judging stare. "Right. Are you through?"
"Yeah. Continue."
"One night," He continues as if I never interrupted him a while ago. "I decided to head out when I was suddenly caught in a rainstorm. It was so brutal that I thought I would never be able to get out. My body was still weak, so I could not morph back to my original body. I was walking blindly, not knowing that I was headed for a cliff." There's something about this story that seems so familiar to me that images begin to form at the back of my head.
I remember that stormy night. I was rushing out of the house even though my mother yelled at me not to. I remember rushing out in a panic with only my phone flashlight in hand. I was looking for something in the forest and remembering how panicked I was when the thing that I was looking for wasn't in the cave. Lighting begins to strike, and I hear a faint whimper deeper into the forest, making me turn to follow the direction of that noise.
"I made a mistake with where I was stepping and happened to fall. You were there in that split second when I lost my balance, but the ground beneath you shook due to the rain, causing you to fall with me. By some luck, we ended up in the river with you, nearly drowning because you wouldn't let me go. You ended up nearly dying yourself, which is foolish." Steve shakes his head and laughs at the memory. "Still, if it weren't for you, I would have ended up dead." He grabs my hand and gently massages his thumb over the mark. "You are my benefactor, and handing you my mark is a sign of my gratitude and affection. It's there to protect you until such a time that I have repaid my debt. Unfortunately, it seems like the mark has become more of a burden to you than a help."
"I died, didn't I?" I suddenly blurted out, remembering how I drowned in the river and fell off a waterfall. I remember pain, an excruciating pain that even my brain would cut off any more memories from it to save me the trauma. My body turns cold. "I died and the mark was my clutch to life, isn't it?" I turn to Steve, daring him to deny that fact.
Steve's expression turns solemn. "Just at death's door, but now you have recovered. I have placed you in a sleeping spell to help you heal faster because your body...it was a mess to the point that it would have been better if you died." Fear must have etched itself all over my expression because Steve placed his hands on my cheeks. "Don't be afraid. You're all healed up now, so even if you lose the mark, you will still live normally."
I feel weak because of the news, and even though this is a dream, I can somehow imagine all the pain that I went through from my memories. It scared me, and I was shaking. Steve embraces me, which is comforting but not enough to fully stop my fear of death from making me shiver.
"I did not mean to jog up unpleasant memories. Would you like me to take them away?"
"No." I respond. Funny how we were so jolly a while ago. Now, it feels more like it was just my imagination. "I would like to keep the memories of when we first met, even though it's scary."
The scene shifts a bit, making Steve and I part and stare at the sky.
"It seems as though someone is pulling you back to the real world." Steve guesses before turning to me and ruffling my hair. "I guess this is goodbye."
"For now." I say this with determination. "This won't be the last time that we'll see each other. The next time, hopefully, I can see you in the real world."
Steve looks a little stunned, but soon starts to laugh. "You're not going to let me convince you to drop your futile mission and go back to the human realm?"
"No." I gave him a small smile. "Just hang on a little longer. Can you do that for me?"
"I can't make any promises, but I will try. You have to promise me one thing though."
"What?"
"When you feel like you're in eminent danger, just call for my name—my fairy name." He then drops a kiss on his mark on my hand. "I promise I will protect you."
The world begins to shift, and I wasn't able to respond to him when I was suddenly woken up and brought back to the waking world. Efeiza is looking down at me with a seemingly worried expression.
"Oh, good, you're awake. I thought that we would have to cancel our trip to the Unseelie Court today." She sighs in relief. Then, she stares at my face with a curious brow raised. "Are you crying?"
I quickly sit up, wiping my face from the tears that has seemingly stained my cheeks. "I wasn't." I answer her before grabbing Steve's diary from my bed and clutching it close to my chest. "Let's go, Efeiza. We can't waste any more time here. We need to find the prince as soon as possible."
When Steve told me to call out his fairy name when I am in trouble, something tells me that it will only be a one time use. Seeing as how he can barely manage to keep his human form in the dream, I don't think that I have to ask what the price is if he runs out of magic.
No matter what happens, I swear I will not call out for him. Ever.
*~*~*~END OF CHAPTER~*~*~*~*
Klovis or Zhier? I'm curious.🌝🌚