15 - Return
A soft gale rose from the languid air, swirling a quiet dance around their entwined bodies. The silent breeze washed over the fiery leaves that lay scattered upon the earth, picking them up from their sleep to resume their astral dance.
In this world where the leaves twirled their resplendent ballet, Danae's lips met Lucas' once more. Her hand touched his cheek tenderly, his fingers caressing hers. As they finally broke apart, Lucas crushed her in his embrace. "Don't go," he breathed, the warmth of his breath keeping the iciness of the boreal winds away.
Danae bit her lip, but did not reply, and in that inconsequential movement, she held back far more than the words she wished to utter. It held back tears. Tears that she forbade to fall.
"Lucas." A new presence had joined their clandestine conversation, one that was not welcome. Her heartbeat rose in its frequency, and her fingers tightened around Lucas'.
Lucas did not move, allowing himself to remain motionless, arms still laced around Danae. He spoke without turning around; the voice that had spoken moments earlier was much too familiar in its belligerence and harshness. "Is a little privacy too much to ask?" Lucas said.
"It's time," was the ringmaster's only reply. When neither of them made an attempt to break apart, Ferran said, "Do not make this hard, Lucas."
At this, Lucas finally straightened. He twisted to meet Ferran's stare with one of his own. "I'll take her back," he said flatly.
"No. You will remain here. I will bring her back," the ringmaster snapped in reply, eyes knowing. He shifted his steady gaze to hers, and raised a hand.
Danae shut her eyes as the pain returned to haunt her. "Lucas," she murmured as he turned back to face her. Amber eyes collided with the blue, the sun and the moon, each eternally different. One step back, and then another, until their fingers, still linked, were the only things left bridging them together. Her hands, clutched for so long around his, found it difficult to let go. "Together," she whispered.
Lucas did not reply, but simply looked at her, eyes holding not just the anger but also home to the distress she had first seen when he lost Erelieva. Her heart twisted and thrashed in her chest as realization struck. Don't, they seemed to beg her, plead with her.
She steeled herself, speaking her words in her mind; he would hear her.
One, she murmured, feeling the word drift in his mind.
Two. She forced her fingers to slacken its grasp upon his hand.
"Three," she whispered. And she wrenched her fingers from his.
As she twisted, she ran from him, and allowed her hand to fall into Ferran's. Not once did she look back, but she saw his pain with perfect clarity. As the ground disappeared from beneath her, awareness burned her like a brand, a permanent imprint that scorched her heart.
Black and white. Gold and silver. Amber and blue. Human and siren. As she finally realized the fool she had been to believe they were ever going to be together, she heard it.
His last message, words that clawed their way from her ears down to her chest, where they seared a gaping hole in her torn heart:
Together, Danae. Forever.
Silence.
That was all that remained as the winds died, and earth reappeared beneath Danae's feet. As she lifted her lashes, the wooden-tiled floor stretched out beneath her, and as she traced its journey throughout the room, recognition scalded her.
Her fingers clenched around air as comprehension drew them together into a fist. She twisted, completing a full circle as she sought for the things and people who were not there. Her bag laid in the corner of her room, but Ferran had vanished, back to the circus, leaving nothing behind but the sweet scent of mint, and with disappearance, he had left her with only memories.
It was not just he who had gone. She took a step forward and the diminutive movement incited the ethereal dance of the dust that had gathered in the place that was once, and now will be again, her bedroom. But her belongings had gone, leaving only the bulkiest items to stand guard over the emptiness. Her bed had remained, and her cupboard as well, but as she wrenched open the latter, she found nothing but the remnants of a gossamer web, spun intricately over a corner of the darkness.
A sigh left her lips, and pain converged at her heart, which thrashed painfully in response. There was nothing left for her. Suddenly, the vacancy became too much to bear, and she tore open the door.
A lingering silence and darkness greeted her, and she automatically reached out for the light switch. Flicking it on, she wished she hadn't.
The hall that had once seemed so grand and everlasting had deteriorated into nothing more than an abandoned corridor. The portraits that had once embellished the walls had vanished, probably taken down when the police had realized she was gone.
The police.
She froze in her steps. They would have ransacked her home looking for her, and horror struck as she remembered the fragile photos her mother had kept in her parents' room. Her calmness ruptured; she sprinted down the hall to her parents' room, stirring up the dust as she passed.
She pulled the door open, and lifted her hand to cover her mouth as the tears slid from her lashes.
Danae's mother kept the most precious, the most beautiful of the family's pictures on her dressing table, framed up and balanced upon the wooden table. But the table had been taken away, and whoever had lifted it from the earth had been stupid and careless.
Now, the photographs, yellowed and blacked with the dust, laid haphazardly upon the floor, the glass cracked, some shattered. Unprotected from the sunlight and dust, these pictures were in the worst condition. She stepped over the glass gingerly, and picked one up from where it lay. Nothing else remained of the picture but the faint trace of a beach.
Danae dropped her hands, feeling the tears fall freely. How stupid she had been to leave these photographs here when she had left!
She wrenched herself erect. There was someone she had to visit, and iron fist around her heart loosened its grip as the name soothed the ache: Vincent.
She had no hope that her car would still be lying in the garage, awaiting her return. The ring burned on her finger. Lucas? she called in her mind but only silence returned her tentative call. Panic swooped down upon her. Lucas! she screamed his name, willing his familiar voice to echo her name in her head, to calm her fluttering heart and fearful mind.
But, just like when Ferran had left her alone in her home, only silence remained of their love.
She bit back her tortured cry, her eyes forbidding the tears to fall. It had been the only way she could be with him. How could that magic be gone?
As that realization cut through her heart, she suddenly felt... vacant. As if nothing was left of her, as if her heart had shrank back within itself. She shook her head. Vincent, she reminded herself.
Her gaze lingered upon the pictures, before she ghosted through the empty doorway and back into the hall. The blue irises swept past the walls with longing ache, before the decision and yearning to lay eyes upon her best friend again tore her gaze from them, and she slipped out into the starry night.
Three months away, and as Danae walked through the empty road alone, her thoughts wandered from one to another: Vincent, her home, her parents' death, Darien, the circus, and finally, a memory that always rebounded back to haunt her—Lucas.
She twisted the ring on her finger as in her mind she called for him once more, and yet, the results remained unchanged. Silence parried her pleading cry, and nothing else accompanied it.
She hissed through her gritted teeth, her sadness morphing abruptly into an anger unparallelled by any she had ever felt. Foolish girl to believe the ring would keep them together, she thought furiously.
The landscape changed. The foliage gave way to the streets she was well familiar with, and her footfalls quickened. The gathered shadows shielded her from any prying eyes that were still open at this time, and this was welcome. A flash of white caught her eye as she moved silently, and she paused to catch a closer glimpse of the paper that had been plastered not just on the lamp post from which she had cruelly ripped it, but also pasted across all the lamps that followed the empty road.
Her picture was printed on the paper, and in simple letters over the top, the question screamed at her, Have you seen this girl?
Danae's fingers closed around the paper, crushing it momentarily before she let the paper drift off with the wintry winds, and as it was swept away from her sights, it tore the anger away and she was aware of the despair that crushed her.
But that feeling was forced into a small corner of her heart as the roads became one that she was pleased to see, and further on she found the house that she was longing to return to the day she left it.
"Vincent," she murmured.
Danae ran the last few steps, and stopping breathless at the door that would lead her to Vincent. She gathered herself, looking at the lights that were switched on in the home, and her thoughts froze in sync with her footsteps.
Everyone knew of the mysterious disappearance of Danae Levesque, but no on but Vincent knew the reason and the truth behind it. She trusted him to keep that secret, but should she turn up abruptly at his home, her secret would be revealed, the revelation would mean danger for the circus.
But even as those thoughts crossed her mind, another seemed to escort it: she missed him to let him go.
Braving the fear that tore at her heart, she walked forward, and raised a tentative hand. But her hand had not made contact with the wood, it gave way before her to reveal Leora Hunt standing before her.
Leora's eyes widened at the sight of the girl standing before her, and recognition was like a flame in her eyes. "Danae," she whispered.
"Mrs Hunt," Danae replied softly, and against her will her eyes turned away, as if she were afraid. "I—" The remainder of her sentence was lost as Leora swept her up in a tight embrace, one that radiated relief.
The sudden gesture startled Danae, but it was one that was greatly welcomed. She returned the warm hug with one of her own, before she finally broke away. Leora's eyes glimmered beneath the lights as she looked Danae up and down, and said, "Where have you been? Are you alright?"
"I'm alright, Mrs Hunt," Danae assured her. "I was always alright." She peered over Leora's shoulder, hoping for a glimpse of the boy she wished to see. "Where's Vincent?"
Leora faltered in her reply, and as she gazed evenly at Danae, her eyes were mildly curious. "You mean... you don't know?" she asked cautiously.
It was as if the winds had penetrated the warm little house, and encaged her in ice, so cold was her heart as that moment that she feared the words that Leora would utter, and yet, she had to ask. "Know what?" The voice that slipped past her lips was a whisper, nothing more.
Leora's grey eyes, looking so much like Vincent's, returned Danae's panicked one with a calmness that contrasted too much with her tone:
"He's missing."
"Missing?" Danae echoed the words with a fear that did not quicken her heartbeat, but freeze it altogether. "No!" she growled. "What happened?"
Abruptly, exhaustion seemed to overcome Leora, and defeat saturated her voice. "One week ago, he disappeared in the middle of the night. I woke up in the morning to find his bed untouched, and nothing else missing from the house other than my son."
Danae reached out, and grasped Leora's hand in comfort. She squeezed it lightly, and the pressure was returned by Leora, who inhaled sharply, as if bracing herself to speak the words that followed. "Nothing remained, no message, except for a note."
"A note? Can I see it, please?" Danae asked. With a slight nod Leora shifted, moving to the drawer that stood beside the sofa as she motioned for Danae to sit. She handed her a pieced of creased paper, and Danae smoothed it out cautiously to read the words that were etched upon it.
"I showed this to the police, but they had absolutely no idea what it meant. It wasn't in any language we knew," explained Leora.
But those words went unheard by Danae, because she understood the words perfectly as if she had written them herself, or... or as if it had been written for only her eyes to see and her mind to comprehend. "A code," she murmured, too soft for Leora to hear. Her eyes scanned the note, going through it once, twice, three times, and the words popped effortlessly into her mind:
Watch your step, siren. We know your secret. We await you at your sanctuary.
"We await you at your sanctuary," Danae murmured softy. How many places did she see as sanctuaries? Her home, Vincent's home, the circus...
And her head snapped up. "The lake," she whispered as understanding threw its light on the words, giving them a new meaning. She was on her feet in an instant, and moving towards the door.
"Where are you going?" Leora asked, and though she was wary of the sudden change in Danae she made no move to stop her.
"I need to go, Mrs Hunt, I'm sorry," she replied, pushing the words out hurriedly in a plea. Her eyes begged for understanding, and an unspoken request.
A second's pause, and Leora nodded. "No one will know you were here. Get him back to me, please."
"I will," Danae whispered her reply, her voice a sigh loud enough for Leora to catch, before she turned. Above her, the sky belly rumbled in the distance, and as the rain begun to fall, she started to run, this time against time and fate to save a boy who loved her.
A boy who loved her the way she never did.
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Thank you all so much for reading!
I'm so sorry for not updating for so long due to exams, but now that they're over, I have more time to write :)
Things are getting interesting as Vincent starts to return to the equation, and time turns against Danae. Again, votes and comments are welcome and really extremely appreciated.
This chapter goes out to prettyfrickinliars for her wonderful book trailer, which I will post in the final chapter, but if you would like to watch it, the external link to my website is on the right, where I have posted the video. Just check "Updates". The second post about the book trailer will tell you where to find it on the website. Please do check it out! ^^
Anyway, hoped you enjoy this chapter, and stay with me through this story, because it's coming to an end soon. Many thanks again! <3