Astral Tide (The Otherborn Series) (13 page)

They’d spent the whole afternoon there waiting for Ash to return for them, but he never did. They just huddled around the empty fireplace, talking in whispers and reading from the various books. Elias didn’t say much after the readings. Unlike them, he seemed prepared to play host. He would disappear into another room for a while, and then return with a stack of folded blankets or a tray of food.

They’d had crusty bread and fresh honey with desert herbs and little glasses of goat’s milk. London loved the honey. It was a treat she was never afforded in Capital City, but the stringent herb flavors confounded her. Elias said the campers brought him regular deliveries of goat’s milk and cheese, loaves of bread, bundles of herbs and cactus pads, and the occasional fruits. But he didn’t comment on the honey. London was too afraid to ask. Elias unsettled her and yet brought out her unbridled curiosity at the same time. What was in those rooms he kept vanishing into? What was making that humming sound? Why, if the Outroaders didn’t want him living in their community, did they bring him supplies?

London watched him intently throughout the day. All these questions and about a million more were buzzing through her brain like the steady hum that emanated from behind the walls. Once, when he’d come back into the room where they were, he’d looked at her as though he had something on his mind, something to say, but Zen was hovering protectively nearby and Elias just scooted off again, silent.

Now, the day was gone, and with it, London’s chances of getting the answers she needed. Elias bid them good night about an hour ago and retired to one of his mysterious caves. London and Zen, and Tora and Kim, had partnered up on pallets in opposite corners. Hers was near the little table where the Beekeeper conducted his readings and London was gingerly fingering the bottle cap from his Oracle stash when Zen finally asked what they’d all been circling around that afternoon. She put it back with a sigh and lay down beside Zen. “About what?”

Zen’s voice was soft but urgent in the dark. “I don’t know—all of it. Take your pick.”

London tugged at her pouty bottom lip. She shrugged though she wasn’t sure Zen could see it in the darkness. To her, he was just a shadow leaning over her, a slight glint playing off the whites of his eyes and no more.

“Did any of it make sense to you?” he asked.

Yes. No.
“A little,” she admitted.

“Do you think he’s legit?” Zen said.

Yes.
“Maybe.” To London, the more pressing question was not whether Elias was legit, but whether he was truly human.

“I don’t know. I think he’s a loose goose,” Zen told her.

London laughed at his choice of words. “Well, he had you pegged.”

She could feel Zen stiffen beside her. “Hardly. About what?”

“I don’t know, secret-keeper. You tell me.”

Zen huffed.

London turned her head toward his. “Look, you can play your little games if it makes you feel better. But don’t insult me by asking me to play along. We both know you’re hiding something.”

Zen’s breathing stilled for a moment. Then his voice came back so quiet and serious, she felt guilty for wounding him. “They’re not games, London. I would never play when it comes to you.”

London swallowed the lump forming in her throat. Why did everything have to be so confusing? She wanted Zen to care about her as more than a friend. She knew that. She could feel the desire burning holes inside her heart like cigarettes. But she also wanted him to lay off. Every advance, every word and act of sincerity only terrified her more and heaped dung on the pile of guilt that was filling her. Even though Rye had betrayed her, she couldn’t bring herself to do the same.

London felt the tickle and caress of Zen’s lips near her ear. She went rigid as he moved over her, millimeters from her face, his breath hot and sweet against her skin. His lips found hers in the darkness and there was an eagerness she hadn’t sensed before. At first, she tried to hold back, but the hunger in his kiss beckoned her and she found herself giving in. She found an eagerness of her own to match his and he responded with tender insistence, his hand moving softly across her belly under her shirt until it found her breast. Suddenly, the string of girls she’d been forced to lie to on account of Zen’s romantic appetite flashed before her face. And she knew with perfect clarity that she wanted much more than that from him. She didn’t want to be one of Zen’s girls—she wanted to be his
only
girl.

The thought cleaved her heart in two.

London pushed at Zen’s heavy shoulders, forcing him off of her. “I…I can’t. I’m sorry.”

“London—” Zen started, but she cut him off.

“No. Don’t say anything. Let me talk for once.”

Zen fell back on the pallet next to her with a frustrated thud. “Shoot.”

“Everything is so damned complex. And I feel…I feel like I don’t know anything for certain anymore. I don’t know who anyone really is or where they really stand. I don’t even know myself these days,” she said, flexing the taut muscles in her arms and legs that made her, along with the relaxing hair and the sharpening bone structure in her face, some kind of London-Si’dah hybrid.

“Lon—” Zen tried again with a sigh.

Once more, she stopped him. “No. Let me finish. But here’s what I do know. I’ll never stop loving Rye. Ever. I can’t give you all of me. I can’t because part of me is already his and it always will be.”

Zen shifted back onto his elbow so that he was towering over her again. But he didn’t interrupt.

“Maybe what you had with Avery wasn’t the same. I don’t know. Maybe you have all the pieces of yourself to gift to someone. Maybe not. I think we’d both be kidding ourselves to say that you were entirely over her.”

He opened his mouth to protest and London quickly put a finger to his lips to silence him. “No. I’m not done. I’ve been trying to tell myself that nothing was different between us, that my feelings for you haven’t changed. But that’s not true anymore and I know it.” As soon as she said it, London felt the alarming certainty of it and knew she had to go on. “I want you, Zen. Whatever is left of me that doesn’t have Rye stamped across it, it wants you bad. I’m not a hundred percent sure of what I’m feeling for you, but I know that I want to be a hell of a lot more than just your friend or your partner in crime.”

She felt the shock roll through Zen. He wasn’t expecting this. He was probably expecting another
we’re just friends
speech. But London had a history of dealing in brutal honesty and she was tired of fighting what was growing between them. “But I— I won’t be another one of your conquests. Okay? Because that would break me. I can’t do a repeat of Rye. I can’t give myself away again to someone who’s going to sell me out. And right now, whatever I’m feeling, however badly I want to give in, I just don’t trust you enough yet. So, I’m not going to sleep with you.”

Zen’s thumb traced little patterns on her cheek that made her quiver. “London,” he said softly into her ear, “don’t you know you’re so much more to me?”

“No, I don’t,” she answered him. “But if you mean that, if you want to do this, it’s going to be on my terms.”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” he whispered and she could hear the smile in it.

“Good. Because I don’t want to just sleep with you. I want to really be with you. And since we only have what Rye and Avery left to share with one another, then I think…I think it’s important that we’re totally honest with each other.”

“I know where this is going,” Zen sighed, deflated.

“Zen, you have to be fully honest with me if you want me to trust you. If
we
want this to work.”

She could feel his energy pulling back from her in the darkness, retreating. “Forget it, London. I won’t do that.”

“But why?” she pleaded. She’d laid herself open for him and his rejection stung more than he could realize.

“Because you have no idea what you’re asking. You may as well ask me to stab you in the heart.”

“I don’t understand,” London said, her voice shaking with the tears that were flooding her eyes despite her efforts to restrain them.

“I’m not gonna do it. I’m not going to be his instrument of torture, his weapon to wound you.”

London shuddered on a sob and drew herself up, rolling over on her elbows. “Zen, please. I can’t be with someone who’s keeping things from me. You have to understand. After Avery…”

“Don’t
after Avery
me, alright? Nobody knows that sting better than I do. Have you ever heard the saying,
Don’t shoot the messenger
? I don’t want ‘us’ to be built on them, to be based on their betrayal.”

“On them? What do you mean,
on them
? What are you saying, Zen?” London sat up now. Zen was giving something away without meaning to. She was so close to drawing it out of him, she could feel it. It was like sucking the venom out of a snakebite. If she didn’t extract this secret, it would poison their relationship.

“Just forget it. You know what, London? This isn’t even about me. It’s about him. All you want is a way to get what I know about Rye out of me. I guess that’s been it all along. Right? You’ve just been jerking my chain to get closer to him? How could you do something so vile?” Zen shot up from where he was lying next to her and began gathering one of the blankets in his arms.

“Zen…no, wait! Please. You don’t understand.” She snatched at the blanket but he pulled it away.

“No, that’s the problem. I understand perfectly. I just never knew you could be such a bitch.” And with that, he stormed off across the room and put the blanket down, folding it over itself into a single bed. He laid down with his back to her.

London rolled over and put a hand to her forehead. How did that go so terribly wrong? How did she manage to completely screw it up? Nothing made sense anymore. Nothing. Not Rye. Not Zen. Not even Si’dah. Certainly not the Beekeeper and all his cryptic warnings. Everything was a mess and she felt like she was at the center of it, just like that feather in her reading. And then it hit her.
The answers you seek cannot be found in this world
.

If this world was too much for her to take, there was only one place to go. One place where everything, however senseless, always seemed to make perfect sense to her.

The Astral.

SI’DAH TAPPED HER foot impatiently against the lush meadow floor of the Midplane. In the distance, she could see Hantu waiting for her, but she wasn’t sure she was up to all his wise words and warping practice tonight. London prowled restlessly in her, just under the surface like a hungry cat. Focus would be difficult. Why did she come here at all?

Just then, a tiny winged body darted past her face in midair, whirring like a bullet as it sped by. Her head jerked left and it circled back, winding wide around her and moving off again. She caught a glimpse as it did so and recognized it was a bee. The striped and segmented body hung from busy, translucent wings that hummed as it flew.

Again it rounded back, made a circle around her and sped off. It seemed to be beckoning her with its gestures, urging her to follow. She looked once more to Hantu, whose eager face smiled back, waiting to carry on with their patient training. And she knew there was no question, she was not up for it tonight. Her curiosity echoed the bee’s vibrations and she turned, leaving Hantu behind, as she stepped quickly after her new guide.

She wasn’t warping the bee into being, she knew that much. But whether or not this was something—or someone—more, she wasn’t certain. It moved quickly, but always boomeranged back to her whenever she fell behind. It seemed they carried on this way for miles, until Si’dah found that tree saplings began to spring up on either side of her as she followed, creating an avenue of sorts. It was down this path that the bee continued, always careful to be sure its partner was still in tow.

Where are you leading me?
Si’dah wondered, but it was too late to turn back. The trees had grown into a tangled wall of leaves and limbs, hedging her in. She had no choice but to keep moving forward.

Eventually, the forest around her grew until she was no longer walking a lone avenue but picking her way through a solitary path that cut a meandering route into the stretch of growth running as far as the eye could see in every direction. This was a part of the Astral that Si’dah had never known before and it frightened her. She felt she must be on the fringes of the Midplane somewhere, bordering the lost marshes of the Lowplane, but she couldn’t say for sure. Only her little guide seemed confident of where they were going.

Si’dah pushed her way through the dense knot-work of vines and branches that crowded in on her. With every shove, the Astral pushed back, as though it did not want her to carry on. But she was determined. There was something oddly familiar about her leader and, for reasons she could not explain, she trusted the bee. Overhead, the mass of canopy blocked out almost all sight of the hovering Highplane and the Astral grew darker with each step, feeling savage and foreign to her. Si’dah felt as though she had stumbled onto another plane entirely. But that was impossible.

At last, the bee buzzed to a halt, lighting on a thick branch covered on one side by colorful fungus. The smooth bark reminded her of the ronan trees back home, but unlike the ronan trees, one couldn’t say where these Astral trees began or ended. It seemed they grew into each other, feeding into a network of forest that appeared almost more as one, infinite tree rather than many singular ones.

Si’dah placed a broad hand on the branch and swung herself up off the ground. She crouched in her skirts upon it next to the bee. She gave the creature a small nod and peered ahead. Through a break in the limbs she saw into a small, dark clearing where two shadows were conversing and their hushed voices carried back to her from it.

“You could have compromised everything,”
a female voice scolded in harsh whispers.

The other shadow seemed to hang its head.
“But I didn’t.”

“Luckily for you. Their patience with us is wearing thin. We cannot afford to keep failing them.”