Bab 12: Cursed With Love
I knew I could no longer hide my pain from him. "I can feel something in my chest," I said through gritted teeth. "Something throbbing there, as if it's alive. I don't know what it is."
He laughed. "Oh Hyacinth, that's just your heart!" he said. "My kiss did startle you, after all."
"But demons don't have hearts," I replied, scandalised. The pain was growing weaker now, supsiding into a dull ache.
"Really?"
He clearly didn't believe me. I took his hand and placed it against my chest. He turned red, but didn't pull away. "Can you feel what I'm talking about? Like something hitting me inside my chest."
"It feels just like a heartbeat to me," he said. "Very, very faint, but unmistakeable. A heartbeat going 'th-thump, th-thump, th-thump'."
I stared down at his hand in mine, clutched against my chest. That warmth, that strange warmth, rushed up inside me, overwhelming me. Dizzy, I heard that beating noise rising up from my chest, echoing in my ears. Th-thump, th-thump, th-thump, like he'd said. I was being lifted up into the air, as though I was flying. I looked up and saw myself reflected in his eyes. And then I knew.
At that moment I realised what all that warmth was, that feeling of floating, that bittersweet joy that filled me to overflowing, the warmth that brought the pain.
It was love. I loved him."
The courtroom fell utterly silent. Hyacinth felt the eyes of everyone present burning into her. She bowed her head in shame.
Then Voreus leaped to her feet, her face exultant. "Condemned!" she shrieked. "Condemned by her own mouth!"
The prosecutor's outburst shattered the taut silence and the court at once descended into chaos. The public gallery was the first to roar with howls of anger and fear and disgust, but the disorder quickly spread to the jury as well. Skelemis struck his gavel against his bench but when the banging remained unheard over the tumult he leaped to his feet and started shouting. The attendant devils and their helpers the imps struggled to regain order but it wasn't until the doors of the court burst open and the alastors came in and incinerated the first row of the public gallery that anything resembling order returned.
"Oh dear," murmured Abraxas, wringing his claws as fire and smoke filled the court. "Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear...."
Hyacinth stared down at the table. Ash was spreading across it, covering her hands. She shut her eyes at the sight. The hideous pain in her chest had grown so powerful that her whole body had gone numb.
Pain was all she knew, and so she didn't notice that the court had fallen silent with a cowed peace until Skelemis cleared his throat and spoke.
"Well," said the judge. "It seems that there is no longer any need for-"
"You Horror," Hyacinth broke in, her voice thick with pain. "Please. I haven't finished my statement yet."
"There's more?" Skelemis exhaled and then said, "Very well. But I must warn you, Miss Thermise, I have little doubt that anything you say further will merely compound your guilt."
"I just want to finish my story," said Hyacinth, tired. "And be done with it."
"Very well," said Skelemis, sitting back. "I doubt there are any further horrors you can reveal. If you would, Miss Thermise."
Hyacinth took a deep breath and continued. "So this warmth was love. I turned away. His eyes terrified me. Yes, I was frightened by a human. I took his hand.
"Let's go home," I said.
After phasing into his basement we quickly grew solid again. I looked around us at his room. How long had it been so neat and tidy? It no longer resembled the place I'd visited that night so many weeks ago. None of the items in the room were any different, and yet the removal of all the clutter had transformed it into a totally different place.
How had I not noticed?
The desk. The desk with his paper and drawing implements. The order had spread from there.
He was chuckling to himself. "You know, Hyacinth, I'm glad you can phase through walls like that. Imagine if my parents caught us sneaking in. What would they say?"
I said nothing, still lost in my thoughts.
"I mean, I'd love to introduce you to them. It's a bit weird, don't you think, keeping your girlfriend hidden in the basement?"
"I'm a succubus," I murmured. His words lay dark on my heart and a dull black fire kindled there.
"Of course I know that. It's just that..."
"Just that what?" I slumped down onto his bed. I stared across the room at the opposite wall, seeing nothing. This place that had made me so happy to visit had suddenly turned alien.
"Just that-" His voice grew troubled.
I knew then I'd been dreaming since that first night he'd opened his eyes. Dreaming I was something I wasn't all these weeks, that we were something, something impossible.
"So you're not a dream." That was what he said, that first night.
I may as well have been a dream.
All those picture he'd drawn and was so proud of. The two of us walking together in sunshine. The two of us sitting together under a tree in a park. All those things he wanted. All those things I couldn't give him.
No, not a dream.
My chest grew heavy with despair. Pushing away the pain, I motioned for him to sit down beside me on his bed. He did.
I placed my hand on his and called him by his name. "I'm going now," I told him. "I... I will not return."
He laughed. The sound cut into me.
"Hey. Hyacinth, you're joking, right?"
I shook my head.
The slow change of expression on his face, then, as he realised I was telling the truth was the most piteous thing I've ever seen. Piteous? Yes, I felt pity now. The contagion had spread through every part of me. Tenderness, affection, shame, guilt and, yes, pity, emotions born of my love for him.
The face I loved crumbled in despair and his eyes filled with tears.
Humans are so fragile, this one especially so. My own eyes grew hot. Could eyes grow hot? I'd never known such a thing!
He was weeping now, his hands covering his face. I drew closer, reached out for him. I wished to comfort him. But why? I was the one who had triggered this reaction in him! All of this was my fault. I felt guilt again, then, but this time it was a razor of black ice buried in my chest.
He raised his face from his hands. His eyes were red and swollen, his cheeks smeared with tears.
"Why, Hyacinth?" he whispered.
Why? I made no reply and turned away. My eyes grew hotter, and then turned liquid. I dipped a finger beneath an eye and the tip came back wet.
How was such a thing possible?
"Hyacinth," he said. His voice was hoarse, breaking in his despair. "Hyacinth, please don't go. Hyacinth, please. I- I love you."
That word, and with that word the truth, and with the truth the pain in my chest reached its zenith. I shuddered in horror, and with the horror came an uncontrollable rage. This suffering, this suffering triggered by his suffering, it wasn't fair, not fair! What had he done to me? All these emotions, the pain of this cloying, crushing human world? Why should I suffer like a human? His love had contaminated me, infected me.
I doubled over. That hideous cold fire flared like a nova in my chest, pulsing pain through my body.
I hated myself. I hated him. Oh, how I how I hated him!
He reached for me but I pushed him away and got to my feet. I strode across to his desk. The pictures. The pictures he'd drawn. This is where it had all started, the source of the contagion. The pain had begun when I'd seen myself drawn by his hand, portrayed in those loving lines. I'd looked upon love and been cursed with it.
Status Power Mingguan
-- Peringkat
Power 
-- Power
stone