FOREVER KNIGHTS: #16 To Keep Her

Stepping back into the grove he found her standing, alert. Looking around to verify no one followed him.

“Here.” She led him deeper into the trees where she’d cleaned off the stump off of a former holiday tree. He threw his cloak down and she gave him a quick look that might have been thanks before seating herself.

He sat across from her and poured it for her.

She took a sip. “Mmm. Delicious…”

“It is.” He beamed. “Shame you missed it for so many years.”

“Perhaps I was a bit too proud.” She admitted.

“Perhaps you were confused.”

She shrugged.

They drank in amicable silence. She smiled in a way that told him she savored the drink.

“I’d make you more if you’d meet me tomorrow?”

She gave him an apologetic look.

“Please, Els. I’d like to bring you, your gift.”

“I thought gifts were not for a fortnight yet.”

“I’d bring yours to you, if you’d meet me again?”

She looked at him askance.

“Please.” He persuaded.

“Are you using The Voice?”

“No.” He shook his head.

I’m not. He knew doing that would only drive her further away.

“Please come back.” He coaxed.

“I’ll think on it.”

“And I shall bring the chocolate in the morning.”

She nodded slowly.

Come back. He willed her.

“I must go.” She said. Turning with her cloak flowing over the dead leaves and rolling the snow.

“Elsabet!” He ran up behind her and linked an arm around her neck in a manner that could’ve been threatening.

She stiffened and caught his elbow but didn’t resist.

He wrapped his other arm around her waist and his face to the back of her neck. Holding her. Unable to let go just yet.

She was still as a statue letting him touch her.

But none of the warmth in her that was unleashed on the rare occasion she made love with me.

Did she ever care at all? Because I could never leave her if she wanted me to stay as bad as I want her to.

“Sebastian…” She whispered.

His head lifted. Looking at the back of her hood. “What?”

She blew a long breath. “I must go. Now is not the time.”

“Time for what.” He didn’t release her.

She caught his wrist and lightly pulled him lose. Never looking back as she walked away.

Look back at me. He willed her. Give me some sign you care.

But she didn’t.

Sebastian never saw the tears trailing her face as she walked away from him through the snowy trees.

Bast saw the glimmer of a fire in the distance as he dressed in the early hours of the morning. He’d been pacing awhile now and when he glimpsed the flame, he’d hurriedly begun dressing. Patience be damned!

He heated the chocolate as he promised and went out. Eagerly making his way off Meadow Mountain and into Warlock Grove. Further into the trees where the border of needle trees began. He saw the smoke from where a fire had been. He followed the acrid smell to where the fire had been staunched.

He looked all around but found no trace of her.

He realized then what he’d feared yesterday. She’s not coming back.

One cup clattered to the ground. Sloshing chocolate in a steaming puddle which melted the snow.

Mine. He still gripped the other. It wasn’t mine to discard.

He scooted it into the snow at the base of a trunk as he went to leave.

The last place he thought to look was the stump where he’d drank with her the day before. He stepped between two trees and glimpsed a stake sticking out of the stump.

In his attention to the stump, he didn’t see a white hand snake around the tree behind him to slip the cup of chocolate out of view.

He was intensely focused on approaching that sharpened bit of wood piercing the stump.

When close enough he saw it pinned a bit of parchment with only a few words strewn over it.

I’ll love you forever. Happy Holiday, Sebastian. His gut sunk as he stared at the words. Reading and re-reading them.

It’s her handwriting.

She wrote this. And had left it for him.

Removing the stake, he took the parchment, unable to walk away and leave it. Rolling it, he used the tether from his hair to encircle it. So lost in thought he didn’t realize he had walked a short way the wrong direction.

He registered it as he kicked the wooden cup he’d dropped. Sighing he knelt to lift it. And noticed the tree only a few feet in-front of him, where the snow was melted under the wooden mug he’d set there.

But no cup. Rising he looked around. She was here.

And she took it. A heartbroken smile turned one corner of his mouth. Good. It was yours.