“Mon abeille,” Augustine whispers.
“I can explain, I can,” I say, really not sure how I can explain what the fuck just happened.
“You are truly a goddess among men, my queen.” An awe-filled smile stretches across his face as he stands.
He rounds the desk as I flounder, trying to remember what happened before I entered the library. Where had I come from, what I was doing, how the fuck I got here again. As he kneels at my feet, Augustine grips my hands, pins them together until my shaking fingers are still at last. Hazel eyes meet mine and my world collapses around me, tears dripping off my cheek. I can’t bear the look of adoration on his face, everything in me folding in on itself.
“Joanna,” His fingers brush across my cheek, and he turns my face in his direction. “What are these tears for? Why does your scent sour with guilt?”
Blinking away the tears, I say, “I-I don’t know what happened, Augustine. He just walked into the tunnel. He-he was covered in all this gold stuff and screaming and crying and you were just lying on the floor-”
My voice cracks as a sob strangles my throat.
He looks at me with confusion and then it dawns on him. His expression softens, a soft coo vibrating his throat as he pulls me onto the floor with him. My knees sink into the plush rug. I can’t stop the guilt from clutching tighter around my heart. I am the reason he is gone. Lance was going to kill me, I had no other choice, and yet I still chose.
“You did what you had to do,” he murmurs, kissing my hair like I deserve comfort. “You are alive, you belong, you are mine. You will never be apart from me. Nothing you do or want will scare me away, Joanna.”
“You don’t understand,” I cry. “Lance walked down that tunnel because I told him he would find what he was looking for there. I didn’t know. I just needed time for you to wake up.”
My voice cracks as another sob takes over me, and I can’t force out the right words. Augustine holds me tighter, his fingers digging into my sore flesh the least I deserve.
“You did what you had to do to survive a nightmare,” he tells me. “Mon abeille, he was going to die.”
“How do you know that?”
“He was going to end up in this library one way or another, your hand or mine. Lance was going to die tonight, no matter what. If anything, you gave him a much easier demise than I would have.”
“I-I could feel his emotions, or he was feeling mine, I don’t know. It’s all mixed up, and I just had to get him away.”
“You did the right thing.”
“It feels so wrong, Augustine. I feel wrong.”
“It will fade, in this life or the next,” Augustine says with such certainty it makes me feel even worse. How can I ever move past what I have done?
“If it doesn’t?”
“Then I will remind you, every day, for the rest of our lives, how much you are worth to me and the world, alive and well and in my arms.”
Augustine’s spines emerge from his back and slowly, the black sands surround us, encompassing all of us in a blissful darkness. My fingers dig into his jacket. I am desperate to hold onto him, desperate to hold on to the darkness I know rather than one that is trying to consume me whole. Even with my face buried against Augustine’s shoulder, there is still too much light. I blink and blink away tears, trying to make the dots and colours go away, but they won’t.
“Mon abeille,” he whispers, lips stretched and pressed against my mark. With everything churning inside of me, I miss the silly feeling behind my ear. I miss the bond that flows between the two of us until I am overwhelmed with a sense of awe and adoration. “Do not hide away in the dark when you are the light.”
Fingers dig into my hair until I am pulled away from his shoulder. I blink away tears, scrubbing the heel of my hand into my cheek. The long sleeves of my tea gown are ruined with tears and snot, but when I can finally see, I can’t bring myself to care. Surrounding our beautiful dark sands are dots of gold. They float and dance around, landing on the thin branches formed from Augustine’s sands.
“These are yours, Joanna, my honey bee, my queen,” Augustine says, the conviction of his words bringing more tears to my eyes.
They don’t make the guilt go away, they don’t change what has happened or what will happen, but they settle me into this new world that I am officially a part of now. The darkness that surrounds Augustine, the choices he makes and the ones I will undoubtedly have to make again weigh on my shoulders, press into my chest until it is hard to breathe, but I don’t fight it. Augustine lets me cry into his shoulder until my tears have dried up and my soul is as tired as my body feels.
“It’s time to wake up so we can go home,mon abeille,” Augustine whispers.
I shake my head, content to never open my eyes again, but I can already feel this dream slipping away. My sands pull and pull all the way back into my being as I slowly awaken.
Epilogue
56 days
I pour boiling water into a cracked ceramic mug, watching the mass-manufactured tea bag bloat and expand. While it steeps, I pour a cup of coffee into another mug, adding two spoons of sugar and a splash of the new creamer bottle that arrived tonight. When that is done, I toss the tea bag from my mug into the trash and set the spoon aside to be washed. Chemical sweeteners assault my senses as the steam from the mugs in my hands wafts into my face. I do not pull a look, but if I were the type to do such a thing, it would be one of disgust.
