Chapter 3

Help, I have done it again

I have been here many times before
I hurt myself again today
And, the worst part is there's no-one else to blame

- Breathe Me, Sia

I burst through the door to our house, a wide smile stamped on my face. It’s the first time I’ve had this much optimism in years.

“Belinda!” I yell anxiously, and then I realize she might not even be home. My heart sinks until a blonde head pops out from behind the kitchen cabinets. 

“What is it, Cordelia?” she asks, placing a hand on her hip, blatantly irritated with me for interrupting her business.

“We may just live!” I say excitedly, drawing the vial from the depths of my skirt pocket and ignoring her aggravated expression. I tenderly lift it up to the light and then place it in Belinda’s fingers.

She looks at it confusedly and then her eyes find my elated face.

“What is this?”

“Poison.” I whisper, almost as if I’m afraid Donnell will hear me from here.

The red liquid reflects off her cheek as she stares at the contents of the vial.

“Poison…” she repeats slowly, grasping the tear drop in her hand. For a moment she looks flustered, almost angry, but the she gives me a feeble nod and asks, “how do I…? When do I-”

“Make a date with him.” I say. “Go on an outing! Anything! …just as long as it’s soon.” I place my hand over hers gently. “You have less time to live than I do.”

She withdraws her hand from mine and pockets the lethal substance. I give her a weak smile and turn to go to my bed when the sound of her voice stops me.

“He knows that we know.” she says, her voice trembling a bit before she regains her composure.

I whisk around. “What!?”

“I told him we know that he’s going to kill us.”

I blink and then turn my eyes to the ground, unable to look my cousin in the eyes because I fear that I might see the truth in her eyes. She must be lying. There’s no way… A lump forms in my throat as I try to force the tears back into my eyes.

“He still trusts me.” she says loudly, obviously trying to get me to look at her again. I don’t.

“In fact, he trusts me even more now because I told him the truth.” she continues as I watch pools of light dance on the floor, the sun setting outside our window. “So don’t you worry your pretty little head off, Cordelia.” she spits out. I shiver at her choice of words. “You and I will be just fine.”

For once I don’t argue with her, my mouth silenced by the harshness of her tone and the image of my pretty little head rolling on the ground engrained in my mind. Instead, I lie in my bed and listen to the sound of Belinda cutting up vegetables to put in our supper. The thud of the knife hitting the table makes me wish I was somewhere else, but it’s already dark outside and I have nowhere else to go.

The fatigue I felt earlier reaches me again, and I feel my eyelids droop. The smell of boiling stew keeps me awake for a few more moments before I fall asleep.

I am in the forest again, my hands tracing lines over the signs that tell me not to go past the kingdom’s boundaries, but I overstep them anyway, leaping gracefully through the air as I find my freedom. I dance into the night, my white dress whirling around my ankles. I only stop when I come to a clearing, the moon’s bright light illuminating a dejected figure in the middle of my path.

“Get up!” I yell. “You’re in my way, and I’m trying to escape!”

The figure lifts his head and I’m staring into sunken eyes. I gasp, placing a hand over my mouth and retreating a few steps as I gape at the marred and bloodied face of Carwyn.

“Who did this to you?” I lean over him, taking his wounded face in one hand and stroking his hair with the other. He falls into my embrace, trembling and shaking with tears. My dress is instantly stained with his blood and I begin to cry as well. “Who? Who?” I persist, but no sound emits from Carwyn’s mouth. He merely raises a quivering finger and points into the trees before dropping his hand wearily to the ground.

Terror overtakes my mind as I realize his attacker is still in these very woods, ready to finish us both if we don’t leave quickly.

“Let’s go!” I whisper, grabbing Carwyn under armpit and trying to lift him up. His weight proves too difficult for me, and I drop him. He falls into a pile on the ground, and I’m in desperation now, trying to figure out some way to save him.

“Please try to walk, please!” I cry quietly, tugging on his sleeve. “I can’t leave you! I can’t-”

“Kill me.”

He speaks for the first time in a raspy voice, his hands frantically clutching to my dress as he tries to pull me down to his level. I stumble away from him as his eyes roll back into his head.

“Kill me!” he yells again, anguish in his voice. His nails dig into my skin and he yanks me to the ground. “Kill me, please!”

“Stop!” I scream, horrified of his now completely white eyes. I try to detach myself from him, and he begins to writhe on the ground in pain.

“Please!” he yells out, still thrashing about. My fear subsides as I watch my best friend call out for my help. I crawl over to him, trying to hold him down, trying to stop his fit, but nothing relieves his suffering.

“Kill me.” he barely manages to choke out, and I sob onto his besieged body.

“I can’t do that!”

“Oh, but you must, Cordelia.”

I look up to see a man emerge from the forest. His face is flooded with light as he steps into the clearing, a smirk on his face.

It is the king, Carwyn’s assailant. I am immediately filled with rage as he makes his way over to us, his body completely unscathed as we lie on the ground, broken.

“You’re killing him!” I shriek, trying to find the strength to get up, but an unknown power holds me where I am.

“And you’re only making him suffer longer.” Donnell says solemnly. “And he will continue to suffer like this until you put him out of his misery.”

I recognize that he is right as I gaze upon my best friend still squirming in the grass, soaking the ground with blood.

“How am I supposed to kill him, then?” I ask, both my voice and my heart breaking.

The king smiles and reaches a hand into his jacket, extracting a vial in the shape of a tear-drop… my vial.

He drops the container into my hand and it seems as if the whole clearing is glowing red, just like the toxic substance in the vial. My heart sinks. He knew. He knew the whole time that it was poison and he didn’t drink it. And this is his means of taking revenge on me… making me feed the poison that was intended for him to my best friend. Killing my best friend. Just like he will kill me in three month’s time.

My hand quavers as I pop the cork off the vial and then tilt it towards Carwyn’s violently trembling lips. I use my other hand to hold his head still, all the while my heart pounding brutally in reaction to this sadistic form of punishment.

“I’m sorry.” I whisper, kissing Carwyn’s forehead before a drop of the poison falls into his open mouth. As soon as he dies, I plan on drinking the rest of the vial’s contents. But before I get the chance to feed him another drop, he sits bold upright, a spine-chilling smile etched on his face. His eyes glow crimson and he speaks, but it’s not Carwyn’s voice that emits from his mouth.

“Your turn, Cordelia!” Donnell’s voice escapes from Carwyn’s lips as he forcefully grabs the vial from me and encloses his hands around my throat. I scream, knowing full well the potion will turn me into Donnell as well-

And then I am awake, sweating and shrieking and throwing off my blankets as I quickly realize it was all just a nightmare. A new nightmare…

“Honestly, Cordelia?” Belinda grumbles from her bed. It’s morning, I have slept through dinner, and she didn’t even bother to wake me. So instead of feeling guilty for disturbing her slumber again, I try to force the vivid images out of my brain that haunt me even when I’m conscious.

I decide the best thing for me at this point is a breath of fresh air, and I grab an apple from the basket in our kitchen before slipping out the front door. But not before noticing the shining red vial sitting on the table before me.

Still a bit too nauseous to eat, I tuck the apple into my skirt pocket and begin to run. I have no idea where I’m going, but I like it this way. I don’t have to think about anything or anyone. All I can do is concentrate on the cold wind burning my face and keeping me sane. That is, until I see a pair of very familiar shoes headed in my direction.

I look up and see Carwyn. We both come to a halt as our eyes meet, and I quickly turn away from him, remembering my dream. I think I hear him breathe out my name, but I still can’t bring myself to look at him in fear that I might start crying.

“Where are you going?” I ask, pretending to be fascinated with a yellow flower growing on the side of the pathway.

“I was coming to see you.” he says feebly, and in my peripheral vision I watch him approach me. I roll the petals of the flower between my fingers and brush off the golden dust it discards on them.

“Oh.” I say sadly. Carwyn plays with the leaves of the flower and a silence falls over the both of us. I hate myself for thinking about my dream and the way Carwyn looked as he died… I stifle a sob and my hand finds his, grabbing it for the comfort of another human’s warmth, for the comfort of knowing he is alive.

“Look, about yesterday-” he starts.

“Just forget it.” Our fingers entwine. “Let’s pretend like it never happened, okay?” I finally muster enough strength to look up at him, and a few unexpected tears fall down my face.

“But it did happen, Cordelia!” He is looking up at the sky with an almost angry expression. “And I feel you slipping away from me! I don’t want to lose my best friend, but I feel like you’re keeping secrets from me. And how are we-”

His sentence breaks off as he sees my tears for the first time. “What’s wrong?” he asks anxiously.

“I- I had a bad dream. The other night... the night before you came home… I dreamed that you went with me into the forest to see Ionor, and then Donnell found you, and killed you.” The lie slips easily from my tongue as I weave a more intricate web of deceit, Carwyn, the confused fly trapped in the middle of it all. “I didn’t want to take you with me because of my dream, because I was terrified.”

For a moment, it seems as if he believes me, but then he breaks away from me, showing me his back. “Why didn’t you just tell me that yesterday?”

Perhaps he sees through my lies. Perhaps he’s a lot more perceptive than I give him credit for. Or perhaps he just doesn’t trust me anymore. “Because… it was too painful. I couldn’t-”

“You know, you can stop lying to me now.” He turns back to me, his fists clenched. I’ve never seen him like this. “I’m not stupid, Cor! I can tell the difference between you being sincere and you being fake.”

“Well then, what do you want me to do?” I ask, throwing my hands up in the air in frustration. “Did you ever stop to think for a second that I’m lying for a reason? To keep you safe, to prevent you from doing something stupid, to not ruin our friendship?!”

“Well, which one is it?” he grabs me by the shoulders and shakes me. “Tell the truth! You can trust me!” His grip on me loosens and he stares at me intently, searching for something in my eyes- maybe some indication that I do trust him. Or maybe he’s trying to show me that he is honest.

“I can’t tell you!” I yell, pushing him away and struggling to fight the tears that threaten to spill over. “I’m sorry, but if you can’t accept that, then I don’t know how we can stay friends.” I gulp, hardly able to choke out that last sentence.

“Cordelia…” I’ve broken him. I know I have. Just like in my nightmare, he’s in pain and it’s all my fault.

I can’t stand being in his presence anymore, and I keep running. I’m always running. Away from someone or something important, and towards nothing in particular.

Ten years of friendship… ten years of Carwyn being my only real friend, and I’ve gone and ruined everything.

I trust Carwyn with my life… so why can’t I tell him about the king? Yes, I want to keep him safe from Donnell’s wrath, and I want him live happily without the threat of death hanging over him. But I also know that he would never be happy if he were to find out about my impending death. Carwyn is the type of person who would have a hysterical and mental breakdown about that sort of thing. And even though all I want to do is be close to him, maybe I keep pushing him away so it’s not as hard when my 18^th  birthday arrives.

If Belinda and I can somehow manage to kill Donnell, then everything will be right again. I won’t have to worry about my 18^th birthday. Carwyn and I will reconcile and be best friends again. That’s why I have to kill him. But until then, Carwyn can’t know.

It takes me until noon to get my bearings straight and head back home. I finally eat my apple even though I still feel sick; I just need something to quench my irritating hunger. On my way back home, I purposefully avoid the spot where Carwyn and I fought. But when I arrive at my doorstep, I get another painful reminder of our shattered friendship.

There lays a yellow flower, crumpled and shriveled on the ground.