Page 10 of Joy Guardian
She jerkily raised her hand to the injury, her smile slipping away.
“It is,” she assured me. “We just don’t heal as quickly as you guys. The Keepers have been nervous about it too. They said thaton a fae, it’d be long gone by now. But for me, it'll still take a few days. It’s normal.”
Nothing about a woman’s bruised skin was normal when someone had clearly injured her. I just prayed whoever did it had already died a torturous death.
“Who did this to you?” I asked, knowing that I shouldn’t. It was not for me to know and not for me to avenge.
“My husband,” she said softly, and my knees gave in.
I plopped on the bench next to her.
“Were you forced to marry him?”
“No.” She sighed so deeply, as if the weight of the entire world pressed on her fragile shoulders. “I married for love.” She exhaled a humorless laugh. “I was so madly, head-over-heels in love with him.”
Compassion rose in me. Love was the curse no one could fight.
“Do you still love him?”
“Not anymore. But for the longest time, I did. Even after he’d already shown me how unworthy of my love he really was.” She gave me one of her shy smiles. “You must think me crazy. Or stupid. Or both.”
I shook my head. “Love has claimed souls and lives of men and women much stronger than you. One doesn’t choose to be afflicted by it.”
“You talk about love like it’s a disease.”
“How is it not? Like an illness, it weakens even the strongest of men. Except that unlike an illness, even if gone, love can still ravage one’s mind with torment. I’ve heard about people who perished because of love.”
“I suppose if you can’t feel the pleasure of love, you would see it only as a curse and torture.”
“What pleasure is there in love?” The image of her moaning on the altar flashed through my mind. “Or are you talking about sex?”
She laughed. It was a brief, quiet laughter, but I promptlyadded it to my catalogue of things about her that would surely torment me with longing while I tossed and turned in my bed the next day.
“No, Kurai, I didn’t marry for sex.”
I noted the sound of my name coming from her and stored it in my memories, too, to replay it over and over when she wasn’t with me.
“Love brings a wide spectrum of pleasures,” she said. “And with the right person, it feels wonderful to be in love. It felt right with Dylan at the beginning too. We were so young when we met, just kids really. My mom passed away early, and I missed her terribly.” She flinched, clasping her hands in her lap. “But Dylan was there. With him, I didn’t feel lonely. He always thought of something to do. And he loved big gestures that he said were supposed to make me feel special.”
“What do you mean by big gestures?”
“Like he would buy a thousand roses and lay them over the stairs and along the path to the school bus for my birthday. Or he’d bring a huge bunch of pink balloons withFor Cianawritten on them and release them in the school atrium on Valentine’s Day. The custodian had no easy way to get to the balloons so high. So he just left them for almost the entire week until the helium escaped enough for the balloons to come down. And every time Dylan and I walked through the atrium or up the stairs, he’d grin smugly and shake his head, saying, ‘The things I do for you.’”
“Did you enjoy thesegrandgestures?” I asked.
She tilted her head, casting her gaze upwards in a moment of reflection.
“Well, I didn’t hate them,” she admitted. “I felt flattered to have everyone’s attention. Now, when I think about it… And I’ve been thinking a lot lately.” She gave me another one of her flitting apologetic smiles. “Now I know it wasn’t love on his part. All his grand gestures were always public. He did it for the admiration of the crowd more than he did it for me. I was just a prize he collected like one of his numerous sports trophies. As a smart, popular girl, with lots of friends, bright prospects, and a family tragedy in the form of a dead mother, I had lots of boys asking me out, but of course I had to fall for Dylan’s blue eyes and dimpled smile. Intentionally or not, he also got all my friends on his side by doing all those public displays of affection. Everyone was saying, ‘Aw, he loves you so much. Look at all the things he does for you.’ I heard it so often, I believed it with all my heart too.”
“Is that the typical courting process for humans? Grand gestures?” I had no idea why I asked that. What the fuck did I care about the human’s mating rituals? But everything about Ciana fascinated me. For some inexplicable reason, I had to know all about her past too.
“Typical?” Ciana seemed to consider it. “I’m not sure. I have little experience with dating. Dylan was my first and only boyfriend. But from my parents, I learned that a man didn’t need to be big or loud when expressing his love for a woman. Sometimes, small, intimate actions are more valuable and probably far more sincere. But…” She heaved a breath. “When Dylan said that he loved me, I believed him. And when he asked me to put my college plans on hold and move with him to the city after my graduation, I felt excited for our new adventure together. My father died shortly after, and I felt so utterly alone in the world. Dylan said I would never be alone as long as I had him. He was so good at finding just the right words when I needed something to hold on to. He said we were together, just the two of us against the entire world. He said I didn’t need to worry about college or even looking for a job, that I could take as much time as I needed to grieve and recover while he went to classes and worked for his dad’s company at home in the afternoon.”
“Did you marry him?”
“No. Not right away, but I always wanted to have a family—a husband, kids, a dog, a cat or two. You know, the whole thing. At first, I thought it was unbelievably kind of Dylan to offer to look after me like that. Now I know that was just another step to make me wholly reliant on him. Without the education, I had fewoptions outside of my life with him. Without a job, I had no people I could talk to and no money other than what he gave me to buy groceries. When he offered to get married shortly after, it wasn’t accompanied by any of his grand gestures of before. He just looked up from his phone while we were having dinner and said it’d be much easier for him to take care of me if we were married. I said no.”
“You did?” I asked, utterly absorbed by her story.
