"Come," he told her, his voice hollow and his gaze scalding, "I will take you to the forest."
It was her special place. It was where she came to bathe alone on moonlit nights, and feel free and young and beautiful. It was where her beauty brought him and where they shared many a night together. It was where she plucked wild honey and he tasted its sweetness on her tongue.
He stopped behind the bushes, right where the faint tinkling of the water streaming into the lake could just be heard.
"Aren't you going with me?" she lifted her gaze up to him, searching his eyes for a sign, yet he looked away.
"No," he shook his head, "you go. This is your place. Your life. Your memory."
"Who are you, Goliath? Who are we to each other?" she asked for a final time, but he simply shook his head.
"Go," he whispered.
When he stepped forward half an hour later, she was on her knees and her face was buried in her hands. Upon hearing his steps, she lifted her face and looked at him. Her eyes were dry, but feverishly bright, and seemed almost too big for her face.
"The spell," she said, "the spell backfired. I should have taken precautions against that."
He looked at her without saying anything, and knew that both of them were thinking about the same thing – the words of love and the passionate embraces she so lavishly bestowed upon him a mere hour ago. He was glad now he had said so little in the way of emotions that could now be used against him, to taunt and humiliate him.
"Thank you," she finally said, grudgingly, through gritted teeth. She got up from her knees, brushing the twigs off her robes.
"For what?" he asked.
"For being the impeccably decent, morally sound, stalwart leader that you are," she replied bitterly.
Both knew full well that if only he had been less resistant and less scrupulous, they would still be in that cave and she would be giving him all the wild honey she had accumulated throughout the years.
"Why?" she asked. "Why allow this to happen? Did you want to see me become your enemy again?"
He gave her a long, piercing look.
"My enemy?" he asked quietly. "Are you really?"
She averted her eyes. No, she supposed they didn't fit this definition anymore, after saving each other's lives in a matter of weeks. But if they weren't enemies, what were they?
When she thought about it, she didn't understand why she ever hated him anyway. It was her own guilty rage that was eating her alive, but there was no way she would admit that now… was there?
"I have not told you this before," said Goliath, "but when I... found Thailog, I had managed to make him tell me what your rift was about."
A wary expression flickered in her black eyes.
"He was a petty criminal," she said dully, "an illegal weapon trader, with human greed and human principles."
"He wanted to get me and my clan out of the way for good," continued Goliath, "he wanted you to get to the castle during the day, in your human form, and smash us to dust in our sleep, sparing, he conceded, only Angela. You refused. He decided he can no longer count on your alliance, nor did he think he would need you any longer. There," he added, "now you know I know it."
Her eyes glowed bright red, then were extinguished, hollow, with shadows visible underneath them.
"In the way he was indoctrinated, Thailog was no true gargoyle," she said, "he had no clue about the ways of our kind. He could not grasp why I would never do what the Vikings had once done here," she looked towards the place where the castle had stood all those years ago, "even to a clan that is no longer mine. So," her lips twitched in a bitter smile, "it looks like you have finally won, Goliath. I no longer pose a danger to you and your clan."
No danger, he repeated in his mind. But what else would he call the poison coursing once more through his veins? Vividly, uncalled, flashes of recent memory sprang to his brain: her eyes, glowing with admiration as she read his poetry, for which she now had the key... her soft hands, lovingly caressing his face, her lips touching his on the night of the Equinox... her passionate words, the ardor of their embraces, and the resistance he had so heroically upheld until the very last. And her promise that still rang in his ears: "whatever might have been, it will not change how I feel about you"... well, that was just another falsehood, wasn't it? Now the expression of her face was hard, awkward and defiant at once, and he knew better than to remind her of what she had just so carelessly vowed.
In this brief spell of her memory loss, he had had the chance to glimpse a possibility of a different life, to see what his love could have been like without the burden of past tragedy. But our memories and experiences form an undeniable part of who we are, he realized. The past had changed them, and it was now part of them. To pretend otherwise would be futile.
"I have lingered too long, Goliath," she said, "I'm leaving."
"Don't expect me to hold you back," he rumbled, "but you know very well that if you just wander off here, it would be the most foolish thing you could do. And you can't leave without seeing Angela. She has suffered too much disappointment from you already."
"Very well," she whispered, inclining her head, "I will go back with you, say goodbye to Angela, and then leave."
"Very well," he repeated, "and on your head be it."