And her name is…

I don’t notice Wulfric come up behind me until Tiago has joined him and taken us back. At this point it’s habit to go to Wulfric’s room, so when he takes my hand and leads me outside I follow with confusion. Once we’re outside he wraps his arm around my waist, walking and guiding me towards the garden that is thriving early in the year with all the extra fertilizer it’s received. I look up at him, but I’m cautious about saying anything while we’re still so close to the house. When we finally hit the back lane of gardens I look up at him questioningly.

“What’s going on?” I ask, but secretly I know it would make everything easier if he was bringing me out here to stab me in the back now that he has my trust.

Emotions are so much less complicated when you don’t trust anyone else with your own.

“You enjoyed everything about our run, but when we got back something changed. I’m supposed to leave the day after tomorrow but I can’t go if something is up with you. What’s going on?” He asks, squeezing my hips gently and pulling me close to him.

“It’s nothing,” I insist.

He shakes his head. “I thought you didn’t lie?” He captures my lips and, for asecond, I falter. “What is it little mouse?” he asks instantly, like he was so attuned to everything about me that the small change was daunting.

“Nothing,” I try again but his hand moves to grip my cheeks and squeezes them.

“Don’t you lie to me. You hesitated. What doubt is keeping a part of you from me?” He asks it like it’s easy to say out loud but I don’t reply fast enough. “What part ofIwas born for you don’t you understand? We were born on the same day.. don’t you know what that means?” I shake my head because I need him to say it. “I am yours just as much as you are mine. We were meant to be together.”

My eyes shoot to his and he leads us over to a bench where we sit. He doesn’t say anything else, and I’m not honestly sure what I want to say. I don’t want to tell him the truth, not again, not so close to when everything’s supposed to happen. Somehow I know if I told him now he’d believe me, and now I’m absolutely sure that every time they thought I was exaggerating before was a good thing.

I look over at Vera’s garden, the flowers mixed with vegetables and lean to touch the nearest weed I can reach, killing it and pulling it out. The act reminds me of home, and I reach to the next one to do the same. I have a small pile by my feet before I need to move onto the ground to reach more, and Wulfric just follows beside me. He watches me kill them and then moves my hand to pull them up.

We’ve done the whole garden bed before I speak.

“This was my job at home. My mom hated weeding despite loving gardening. I did it for others in town too. When I was small they would trade me sweets to help out in their gardens, and when I got older… some still traded sweets or baked good, but I preferred favours. My dad was the repairman at home, and when he died the home fell into disrepair for a while. Favours were how I got things like my roof fixed, or the window shutters put on.”

I shutter at the memory and Wulfric guides me to the next garden bed to continue. “That sounds nice. Towns that run on a barter system tend to be very friendly.”

I nod. “My parents paved the way for me in that. Marketing my affinity and it’s usefulness so that I could contribute and provide for myself. I thought when my dad died that my mom would bring me over the mountain to meet her side of my family,… but she couldn’t live without him.”

I pull out a large thistle invading the garden and cut my hands on the thorns, but the pain is nice. The pain keep the tears back and I reach for another. To Wulfric’s credit, he doesn’t stop me or try to look over my hands as I reach for another a little further over. My hands are bleeding into the ground and making the flowers and produce I’m leaving behind grow fuller.

“My affinity truly is a blessing and a curse, you know?” I mutter.

I feel myself unable to stop the torrent of words I want to put out into the world. If I’m going to die in four days I wantsomeoneto know the truth. He was the first one I told my name to, and I /wanthim to be the one to know me. I feel a selfish knot in my chest that this might grow his attachment but, like the way that I’ve unconsciously tuned out so many conversations before this, I find myself unable to stop talking now.

“He may not have been my blood, but that manraisedme from birth. For all intents and purposes, he will always be my dad, even though he was human. So when I started seeing more grey in his hair and lines on his face… I started making his coffee every morning. I’d prick my finger on one of my claws and drip just a couple drops of my blood into his drink.” I reach for another weed and drain it into dust by accident, wanting the release of pulling it out. “It was two decades before either of them realized what I was doing. My dad found out first. He got up before me one morning and made his own coffee, but it didn’t give him the same boost of energy it normally did so the next day he spied on me making it.”

“Was he upset?” Wulfric asks gently, taking the next weed I’ve plucked to join the growing pile near this bed.

I smirk at the memory. “A little. He felt like he was using me, but… I broke down. I told him how terrified I was of him getting older and dying before me, and he forgave me. We kept it from my mom for a while longer, but my magic has it’s limits. He was still aging, just slower, and his body couldn’t last forever. When all of his friends had died, mom caught on and we had a long discussion about it. We were able to keep it going for a while, but it got to the point that his body was requiring more and more just to function, and he felt sick about taking so much from me. It didn’t matter how much I told him I’d gladly do it forever, he was done fighting.”

I sniffle and tear up a few more weeds before crawling over to the next area. Wulfric moves with me, taking the stocks I tear up and tossing them into a pile. Our piles ruin the clean pathways, but I think Vera will forgive us when she sees the weeding is done.My hands are dirty but healed from the thistles and I keep going, searching for even the smallest weeds to remove early on.

“My mom couldn’t stand seeing him like that, and the idea of living without waking up beside him made her a complete mess.” My breath catches in my throat and I nearly choke on the sob that crawls its way out. “I could hear then fighting one night. He was weak, but my ears were alert enough to hear everything. Dad wanted me to take back all the energy I’d given him before he went on his own, like it was the last thing he could give me to take care of me. Mom wanted to follow him.”

“Theo….”

“See I couldn’t siphon from mom, not without hurting myself,” I interrupt him, turning away to get another cluster of weeds. “But see.. mom was very adept with poisons…” I choke up and Wulfric’s arms quickly wrap around me and pull me into his lap, the weed I’ve just plucked with me. “She begged me not to save her.Begged.My mother never begged for anything, and my dad’s life was the first one I ever took.” I’m weeping, tears and snot on my face, and Wulfric wipes my face with his sleeve. “Things got so much harder for me after that first taste,” I whisper.

He squeezes me tightly. “She knew what she was asking,” he tells me again. “It was unfair of her to put that on you.”

But I understand,I want to say.I understand not wanting to wake up in an empty bed or house without those you’ve grown accustomed to.

I don’t say that. I don’t defend my mom and her choice, I don’t go into detail on how I locked myself in the house and waited a whole day to burry them. Part of me was afraid it was some twisted joke and I would burry them only for them to wake up six feet under the marigolds. When they were finally in the ground I stayed in the house for so long that people in the town got worried about me. I told them off the deaths as a way to cover the real reason I was hiding. Helping my dad go peacefully, while all his organs were failing, woke up the blood lust in me and it craved more.

After their show of concern I had gone to every home after midnight and rid their gardens of every single weed I could find. There wasn’t a lot of energy to be found in such a task, but it soothed me and the next day people were bringing me fresh baked goods and produce. We had a funeral for my parents a few days later, but I couldn’t bring myself to cry anymore.

“If that’s love I don’t want it,” I say suddenly and Wulfric jumps a little. “I don’t want someone to see me as so much of themselves that they can’t live without me.”

My heart is begging for him to agree. My entire chest seems to clench with the anticipation of hearing him say that I’m right. The seconds between us seem to stretch on forever and I need this to end with words.

“Promise me,” I say gently, almost casually. “Promise me that you’ll never die just because someone else has to.”

He does say anything right away, so I grab his hand in mine and let a guttural sob out.

“I promise,” he whispers in my ear, nuzzling the side of my face and kissing my tears.

Why am I so cruel.