Merciless Vows by Faith Summers
32
Aria
Amischievous smile tugs at my lips when I turn the handle, and the door opens.
I’m surprised when I walk into a garden similar to the court of roses that leads into a woodland area. The only light in the section is that of the moon.
I close the door behind me and proceed down the path into the woods.
As soon as I get in a little way, the air stalls in my lungs when my eyes rest on a plot of graves off in the distance.
My feet root to the soil, and I take in a shuddering breath.
My God.I was right. People are buried here.
It takes me a moment to snap my mind back to focus as the thought hits me that it might not be exactly what I previously thought.
Lucca’s family were killed here, and this was their home. His mother and father were in love with the roses. Wouldn’t it make sense for them to be buried here?
When I look at the plot properly, I count five gravestones.
His mother, father, two sisters, and brother—five.
I don’t know if it’s curiosity that’s calling to me— or them— but something gets my legs moving toward the plot.
There’s a little metal gate surrounding it. I open it and walk through.
When I get to the first grave, I realize I’m right this time.
Lucian Ilyas Dyshekov
January 10, 1959 – July 19, 2006
Beloved father and Friend.
Rest in Peace
That’s the wording on the first gravestone. The next is his mother, two sisters, and his brother.
When I take in the dates they were born and the dates they died, several things strike me at once.
The first is they all died on my tenth birthday. The next thing shocks me even more and breaks my heart all at once.
His sisters were ages sixteen and five. His brother, though, was only six months old.
Tears sting the backs of my eyes when I think of the depth of such evil. What kind of person could be so wicked as to kill a baby?
I swallow hard, past the lump in my throat, and blow out a ragged breath.
Lucca escaped this evil. I wonder what he was doing. If not, he’d be here too.
That screeching sound pierces the silence again. This time it’s more of a chirp, and I realize it’s a bird. But the sound isn’t like the birds I’ve heard during the daytime. It’s like it came from a special bird. Does that even make sense?
The sound is also familiar, so I leave the sadness of the family graves and move toward the direction I heard the sound.
It’s through the willow trees. Once I get past the thicket, I find a structure ahead of me that looks like a converted barn.
The door is open, so I continue inside, and my brows raise when I find myself looking at an aviary. The birds inside are special.
One look, and I know exactly what they are—Peregrine falcons.
Like in my dreams?
How strange that Lucca would have these same birds here. How strange that he would have them at all.
There are eleven of them. All are asleep, standing on one leg with their heads resting on their backs—six on one side and five on the other. The cage door for the twelfth is, however, open.
The screeching sound resonates again. It’s outside of the aviary, and I can hear the bird flying around.
I proceed down the aisle of birds, moving toward a faint amber light. When I get to the source, I find a little enclosure. It’s made of the same stone structure as the rest of the house and attached to a long archway that appears to lead back to the main section of the courtyard.
My guess is it’s either the same archway by Lucca’s private quarters or connects to it. It seems to be the way outside.
I walk inside the enclosure, leaving the birds. There I see oil paintings on the walls, like in a gallery.
I look at the paintings and find myself taken with them. There are some of two pretty little girls. One much younger than the other. There’s also one of a beautiful blonde woman smiling as she stands amongst the garden of roses.
My gaze swivel next to one with three children running in the garden. When I see a painting of the same three children and a baby sitting in the grass, I know that this was Lucca’s family. Maybe the woman was his mother.
The paintings I come across afterward are of each child, beginning with the eldest girl who looks like her mother. Next is the youngest girl. When I get to the painting after that, and my eyes lock with the boy, my chest caves, and every hair on my skin stands to attention.
As I take in those silver eyes and wild tousled hair, my whole being goes limp, as if my bones have dissolved away, leaving nothing but the shell of my body.
Those eyes, that hair, that face.
It’s Peter!
The vibrant image of him comes to my mind, and my mouth falls open. In my dreams, he was my world, and I would have followed him anywhere.
I’m looking at him like we could be in one of my dreams. But how could this be? He’s not supposed to be real.
But haven’t I also seen birds from my dreams too? Those wouldn’t have been real if the boy was something my mind truly made up.
And didn’t I just promise not to second guess myself?
So why am I doing it now when I can feel my brain trying so hard to tell me something I think I already knew.
The screech sounds again, closer now, and I hear footsteps outside. I drag my eyes away from the painting of Peter and allow my feet to move once more, carrying me to the answers I seek.
I stop just by the archway leading outside when I see him.
Lucca.
He’s standing shirtless in the moonlight with his back turned to me, and his right hand raised to the sky.
A falcon swoops down to him from high in the clouds and lands on his outstretched hand.
His hair picks up in the wind, and against the silver moon, he looks like the fairytale boy he was to me.
The sight confirms everything in my mind, my heart, my dreams.
The bird screeches, and he strokes the top of its head.
“Uspoykoysya,” he mutters, as if to give me more confirmation should I dare to question what my mind is telling me.
That’s what Peter said to the falcon in my dream. It means calm down. And the language is not just a language he used to speak to the bird. It sounds like Russian because it is.
Peter is Lucca.
Or rather, Lucca is my Peter.
Things come together in my mind as I look at him, and I think of what he said to Dad days ago. That Dad stoned him for looking at me.
There’s only one time when that would have been possible for Dad to do and get away with it. That could only have been when Lucca was a boy—when he was Peter
Shock numbs me and tears my mind apart.
Lucca turns to come back inside with the bird but stops short when he sees me standing in the archway watching him.
Seeing him face to face seals the deal, and I blend the face of the boy I once knew with the man I know now. Take away the beard, and he would almost look the same because of those eyes.
This was why I was drawn to him.
Why I felt things I didn’t understand.
Why I couldn’t control myself around him.
So, what happened to us?
How did we get here?
“It’s you, isn’t it? Peter?” I utter, and the second I speak those words, a flash of memory forces its way through my mind stealing the moment.
The memory is of me saying those same words to him. In my mind, I see him lifting me from the ground. I’m naked and crying— hurt. He’s scooping me up and covering me with his jacket. In my mind, he looks like he does now, but I recognized those eyes and knew he was my Peter. As the memory fades, he walks closer to me.
When he stops in front of me, my throat closes, and I realize I can’t handle accepting the truth—this truth. .
“It can’t be you.” I shake my head.
“Aria. I can explain.”
“Don’t… I can’t… I can’t do this.” It’s too much, and all the things I don’t understand are making it worse. I step back, away from him, and my instinct to flee kicks in.
“Aria, please.”
“No, just leave me alone.”
I’m glad he does, and I run from the truth.
I know there’s a reason for everything. I know people don’t just react to something when they haven’t been given a cause.
But I can’t grasp how he could be the same boy I knew who promised to never hurt me, and yet he did.
This whole arrangement is designed to hurt.
So maybe nothing was ever real.
Not in the past nor the present.
That was the truth behind the wall—the answer of who he was to me.
