Evanescent (17 page)

“We have to take her to Legentium,” Kronan spoke from behind me.

I turned. “Can I be fixed?”

Kronan smiled, but I couldn’t tell in the dark – I felt it in my mind as he pushed it there for reassurance.

Slowly, I felt the cold of the water, the smoothness of the waves over my skin, I heard his beat before he even spoke. “You are not broken,” he said, suddenly there, thigh deep in the water beside me.

His hand trailed over my lower back, pulling me in to face him. He leaned his forehead against mine. “I can feel you,” I said to him as heat and pleasure erupted in delicious waves over me.

“The water helps you.” His face was concealed in shadow, but in his voice there was a slight smile.

I nodded. “Perhaps.”

He handed me the bag containing my mother’s journals.

“You went back for it,” I said.

The longer he stayed and the more we touched, the more I felt like I was a living creature – human even. His warmth, his smell, his touch kept the Shadow at bay. Smells of crisp salty ocean, the breeze and sounds of horses from the village stables over the ocean’s silent whispers, the smell of them, of leaves, of him, swirled around in thick tufts of reassurance. He gave me wings to lift me from the devastating world that had engulfed me in its dark claws, all at a mere touch as he strapped my bag over my shoulders. He didn’t have to say a word, because his eyes said it all. One day, everything would be revealed. As long as we were together, we were each other’s antidote and strength.

I awoke the next morning to the thundering drone of loud snoring. Looking up and right into Greg’s face as he lay half slumped on Arriana’s blue sofa, I poked him on his cheek with an extended finger, the snoring almost immediately stopped as I let out a soft groan. I felt like I hadn’t slept in ages, only to be woken by snoring! I smiled, pleased about granting myself a few more seconds of being curled up in Troy’s blissfully strong arms, with only a thin, blue blanket covering our legs in front of a fireless fireplace. Delightfully unaware his eyes were open, I stared at his perfect face and traced my fingers over his full, luscious lips. My fingertips continued over his picture-perfect jaw line, and I shuddered at his warmth and deliciousness so close to me. Subtle outside noises bristled against the straw roof of the cottage, something that always made me feel at home, even with all the bad memories it may have held once. My cheek had glued to the skin on his chest when I tried to sit up with a faint yawn. The black top clung to my body with sweat from the furnace of being so close to him, but I hadn’t dared move away from him during the night. Gray morning light spilled in, the distant rumble of the ocean seeped through open windows, white curtains bellowed into the room, and I drew in and savored the calm before the storm. Those little moments were the glue that held together all the pieces of our lives, evanescent on my chest as I inhaled his sweet scent, fully aware that this moment held no real truth. Nonetheless, I lay back down, nestling myself back into the safety of Troy’s arms and listened to his heartbeat, memorizing each soft thump, each drawn breath. There were soft shuffles on the floorboards, cupboards gently being opened and shut, the smell of fresh bread swirled around me in a daze as Troy pretended to wake. His chest rose, taking in the fresh morning air, his arms tightening over me. He looked past me, frowned, extended his arm and smacked Greg on the head. Greg jumped from the couch, feet digging into the edges of our floor bed.

“What!”

“You were snoring,” he said callously.

“I was?”

“Bro, you’re supposed to have kept guard.”

Greg sat back on the sofa, rubbing his neck. “Rion and Willard…” he started.

“Hey, I asked you, not the young warriors –
you
!”

Greg mumbled and got up off the couch. “Smells great,” he said.

There was a slapping sound.

“Women and children first,” Anaya reprimanded from the kitchen.

The subtle casualness reminded me of the first time in the cottage with Maya.

“Morning,” Troy said softly, tucking my hair behind my ear. I looked away feeling self–conscious all of a sudden, like he hadn’t already seen me at my worst.

“Don’t,” he said, lifting my chin so our eyes could meet. “You are beautiful.” He smiled.

But his words should have held more truth, because until he fully knew what I was and what I was capable of…

“You don’t take compliments very well do you?” He pinched the soft skin beneath my hip.

I giggled.

“Oh, you can feel that now, can you?” He proceeded to tickle the tender flesh between my ribs and hip. I squealed a sweet torture.

Not being able to take it anymore, I rolled onto my knees.

“You have ten minutes to freshen up before this goes to the vultures,” Anaya said from the kitchen.

He smiled. Leaning over, I kissed Troy on his lips, the zing rippled down over my spine and my chest filled with warm, peacefully sweet air. I pulled the blanket from Troy to cover the hot-pants I had borrowed from Sam the previous night. As I walked away, I wondered how she was, if one night away from the Council’s influence had made any significant change in her mind and attitude.

“Hey!” Troy pretended to grab the blanket, but I took off with loud thumps over the wooden floor into the passage where I stopped, hitting a strange sense of déjà vu full on. A soft, pink morning glow filtered through the small window in the passage as I leaned back against the wall, no longer feeling the sheet against my legs, or the wall pressing against my back. I took in the distance between Troy and me, the boundary of his touch just inches away. I pressed the sheet with a fist to my chest. How long will this happiness stay before it, too, leaves me like my physical senses? How long will he stay before he realizes… A flash hits me – a previous memory of me standing in this exact hallway.
Déjà
vu tugging me out of reality. Suddenly, cold air left my lungs in white tufts. I had dropped my brush. Enoch eyeing it out. I let out a shaken gasp. How had I not seen that? We had been standing in that very passage when he’d taken hair from my brush to make that voodoo doll. Back then, he must have pushed my mind so all I had seen was him handing me the brush. I hit myself on the forehead. A crushing sickness threatened to spill from my mouth. I was blinded by new affections back then, but they would never be mine to have, it was all a trick – a beautiful lie.

“Ava,” Maya’s voice coming from her room brought me back to the present, as traces of my memory physically ripped from me with a bang. I rushed in, left the door swinging behind me. A slither of light shone in from the window above her bed, illuminating her beautiful face. Reflections from the colored bottles danced on the floor in a kaleidoscope of bright, beautiful swirls. She was still sleeping, dreaming – and deep under the sedation spell, to my disappointment and misplaced relief.

“She just needs time,” Anaya said from the door.

“Would you stop sneaking up on me?” I pushed her.

I hovered above Maya, hesitant to touch her because last time I did she nearly took my head off – literally.

“When I get my hands on him…” I said to myself on the way out.

Anaya brushed her hand over my shoulder as I broke past her into the passage. “I kept your breakfast in the oven, the boys could not wait a minute longer.”

“Thank you,” I whispered.

“There is a pair of old denims, a white shirt you left here, some underwear, and socks in the bathroom by your bag.”

“Thank you,” I said again, turning back to her. I think I actually meant those words. I hesitated before going into the bathroom. My entire body felt heavy with every step I took closer to his room. I dawdled outside Enoch’s door, my hand hung over the intricate silver door handle, my heart a loud thump in my ears, a sickening memory of us on that bed – I pulled back as I heard someone come down the passage. I slipped into the bathroom and sank against the shower wall. I let the soothing water rush over my head, wash the poisonous bad memories of my former from my skin. Slipping in to Maya’s old pair of denims with a little tear by the knee, I stared at my pale skin, waiting for the nothingness to return, to somehow block all of my priors out, when I noticed my hand gripping the basin so tightly it began to crack. I pulled back. Whatever was happening inside was slowly killing me. The pain I should have felt, the steam on my face, the breeze from the open window over my skin, were all signs of my slow death. I combed my fingers through my damp knots, let them fall over my shoulders, made sure my hair covered the tattoo over my neck, and stared into the dark glass acting like a screen or mirror. I bit down on my lip. How long could I keep the secret to myself, how long would it take to completely take me under? In the village, and when near Troy, I was somewhat able to part from its wicked ways. But I cannot hide from it forever, it was inside of me, waiting for something. My breath clouded over the ‘mirror’ and my face disappeared.

After breakfast, we made sure to leave before the rest of the village awoke for their daily duties. The chief and his son had granted us one night only in the village, as our presence would put them in danger, too. Clouds started to roll in, the rustle of wind through the trees reminded me of better days, as did the ground beneath the huge jacaranda tree carpeted in purple flowers outside the cottage. The rush of the stream over rocks and tree stumps in the distance, called to me for a while. I turned to look down the path, pulling my bag to my chest, kept my fists over where my heart should have felt something, other than the weight of my mistakes, and let my eyes trail down the river. A reminder of how Troy and I had been kidnapped was threatening to pull me into one of those sick memories where it came alive inside my head. Troy took my hand, saving me from that spot once more, and led me through the overgrown path toward the russet gate. It squeaked open – a pleasant, nostalgic sound. Staring into the gems set in the metal, silver filigree as I closed it behind me, they stared back with not as much as a whisper of a glow. I had learned by then that the glow meant some kind of foreseeing; something I had not learned to read yet. But as it was, the gems and crystals weren’t saying much to me. Letting go of Troy’s warm hand, I kept staring at the huge jacaranda tree branches; they seemed to reach into the sky like they would bring back some part of me that had long elapsed. Beneath the bent branches, I imagined our footprints on the river bank. The deep-set marks of our bodies as we were pushed and hit to the ground, claw marks as I tried to get away from the blows, from Zulu spears and knobkerries as I fought for my life and his. A heavy blow hit my chest as I tore my eyes away from swaying reeds, and looked back at what felt like the last time I would ever look upon the empty pottery wheel where Arriana would have been sitting, spinning away in the early morning mist. When I turned, Anaya’s comforting blue-green eyes were staring back.

“It will pass, I promise.”

I nodded, adjusted my bag on my back and stared ahead. Tatos and Kronan led the way, Willard stayed at the horse’s side where my sister’s comatose body lay in Rion’s arms. Dawn’s rays glistened off the horse’s dark, gray pelt, and shimmered off of Rion’s jet-black hair, the horse’s white tail nonchalantly swinging wildly in the wind.

Minutes later, tracking through the Minoan market place, we stood among Minoan warriors that dared leave the confines of their safety among their chief and villagers to see Kronan and Anaya off, to pay their respects for the loss of Arriana, a sister, a mother and a Pure. Troy saluted the few Jaguar gang’s members, those that hadn’t stayed behind to shelter the runaways from the Council, as they neared the beach.