Chapter 78 Not Nymphaea
DAINE
“You’re not my father,”
“Blast the day I would ever claim to be that monster. But I am your husband!”
“I am not Nymphaea!” Finn flew off the bed.
I reigned in the explosion, and made a U-turn for the balcony. One of these days….
My hands curled tightly around the handrails on the balcony. Three centuries was too damn much to fight over the same thing.
I am not Nymphaea Flore.
I am not Nymphaea Astre.
I am not Nymphaea Finn.
Even Nymphaea claimed to no longer feel like herself when she woke up that first time.
Ridiculous.
I would have blamed this all on feminine hysterics, but Finn was a man.
Uuuugh! I held back from punching the wall. Another house repair did not sound exciting after the recent one from the earthquake.
gods. I never thought the day would come where I craved sweetness I didn’t have to wrestle for, agreeableness I did not have to paddle their ass for.
Worse, the day when I found myself comparing Nymphaea to the silver-eyed doll living under my roof. Aching for her sweetness and submission, she freely gave.
I exhaled through my lips.
Hush. I loved Nymphaea, her arrogance and rebellion literally set my blood on fire, and we'll leave it that way.
Who cares if she was occasionally a double-horned mountain goat. She’ll always be my queen.
The sound of approaching footsteps made my shoulders tense.
“Please Finn. I’m done fighting.” I whispered in exasperation.
“Um… not here to fight.” He stopped beside me, his voice unusually soft and quiet.
I glanced sideways at him, watching him lean against the glass balustrade. “I’m sorry.”
I looked away.
My exhaustion was bone deep. As if I had been running for centuries, chasing my wife, barely touching her before she slipped through my fingers like silk, eluding me every time.
I winced at the faint outline of the San Gabriel Mountains in the distance, the slow red and white ribbon of traffic on the 101 freeway far below. Even this life I lived, an expensive silence, no neighbors in sight, was a nod to my grief.
Hiding up in Hollywood Hills like a shamed god.
“I was in your dream.”
My head jerked sideways, “You remember?”
He gave a hasty head shake. “Never said that, only that I… I was in your dream. I saw her.”
He frowned now, and I was still trying to correctly label the expression on his face when he shrugged, and it was gone.
“How did she die?”
I stared down at my hands still on the handrails.
They were shaking.
This is what those damned dreams do to me. They pull me back, make me relive it, make sure I never forgot how much it hurt.
And then I wake up, lonely, with a beautiful boy who did not recognize himself as my wife of nearly four hundred years.
“If…” I stopped. “You were in the dream so you know already that she went to Tokyo, stubbornly.”
I paced my breath, my chest moving visibly.
It did not matter that it was a hundred years ago, it still hurt like hell.
The death hurt, but more so because it could have been avoided.
If she had just listened. If only she had not stubbornly insisted.
“It was the Kantô Earthquake on the first day of September that year,” I said in a rush. “The tremors Hale felt on his visit there were real. It snaked all the way from Tokyo to Yokohama, killing over a hundred thousand people.”
I inhaled now, my eyes tracing the basil leaves, lemon balm, oregano, among other herbs Finn had planted in a small glass conservatory under my balcony.
“Even with the Junker F 13, it took me one week to arrive at the site.” A shiver ran through me.
It took a lot to get me to shiver, but my body trembled at the sudden memory of the smoking ground, blank-eyed survivors, ash falling from the sky, covering the city in haze.
I cleared my throat, momentarily smelling the wet ash and scorched timber and bitter mineral hanging in the air, a hundred years later.
“Tokyo had been burning for days at that point. I never recovered her body. Konrad was with her.”
My head fell back in sudden laughter. The irony.
In all of Nymphaea's lifetime, a man had died by her side.
This time, it was the polite German I could not stand.
“Why did you hate him?”
I turned to Finn, and there was confusion in those glassy eyes.
“He never did anything to you. But you were just so relentlessly rude to him.”
My brows furrowed. “You must be getting your memories back if you’re already defending Konrad a century later.”
He winced, looking away. “He was the person I felt the most connected with in that room. He… he oddly reminded me of how I’m treated here. In all seven districts, really. They treat me like I uh… like I’ve got some sort of disease or something. And not only do they hate the disease, they hate me for having it.”
“Finn,” I moved towards him, but he raised a hand.
“Never did anything to no one, you know. No one. But y’all are the only ones who treat me like I... Like, like I'm a person. Hale, You…” He swallowed hard, like there was a lump in his throat. “Lys.”
He said her name in a breathless whisper, and his hands gripped the handrails till veins stood out in his forearms.
“All the others, even my… my father.”
I tore my gaze away.
Any time I thought of that man… It wasn’t enough to have killed him the way we did.
He did not deserve a clean death. It should have been something messier, uglier.
From the corner of my eyes, I saw Finn reach up to angrily wipe his cheek. “So... um. seeing you treat the German like that was just… just difficult.”
“Forgive me.” I said finally.
He nodded quickly, almost dismissively. They all knew I never gave an apology I did not mean.
We stayed silent as the night air grew colder, filled with the occasional sound of traffic the wind brought up the hill.
Twice, I stopped myself from texting Hale to ask when they would be returning. They deserved the night out to themselves.
“I think she was hot though.”
I turned to find Finn smiling shyly, a blush spreading from his cheeks to the bridge of his nose, just like it did with the doll whenever she blushed.
“What was that man’s name who couldn’t stop staring at his own reflection again?”
“Narcissus.”
He was laughing now, gorgeous in a way that made my heart race.
I pulled my eyes away before I lost control, before I yanked him to myself and tasted those lips one more time. For real this time, not because I wanted to search his memory.
“I’m sorry, Daine.” He moved closer, oblivious to my thoughts. “I understand you don’t want to hear this, but I really feel no connection to Nymphaea. Not even in that dream.”
“Then how do you explain having the same dream?” I asked patiently.
“We… We slept in the same bed, shared a pillow and all. You’re a dragon. Might have pulled me there with you.”
I caught his cheek now, and caressed. I could allow myself that much at least, and thankfully he did not pull away.
“I have never even shared a dream with Hale, sweet boy.”
His cheeks reddened, and then he broke our gaze for a second before looking back at me.
“It’s been four days. Four days of trying to retrieve this memory you believe should be nestled somewhere in my soul. Don’t you think it’s time you started thinking of other possible 'women' who could be Nymphaea?”