Evanescent (39 page)

“I do not want to blame you. I am sorry for that. You did not create yourself, but you lied to me, to us all.”

“I’m sorry.” My eyes found the darkness behind him. “It’s hard,” I confessed.

“Do you know how hard it is for me, not to just let go, to keep reminding myself that whatever this is, the chemistry between us; it is not real?”

“It feels real,” I replied softly, and my eyes found his once again.

His hazel gaze was wide and pleading, as if begging me to release him from a trap I had coiled around him. I didn’t want him to feel like I had tricked him, but I had and I would, to get what I wanted.

He drew closer, his lips radiating heat over mine. All gravity centered around him, drawing me cruelly even closer. I sucked in all the air between us, as if that would pull him closer still.

“This can never happen.” He let me go.

The heaviness was like the entire sky falling down on me, a stifling cold sparked within my chest, and settled throughout my bones as I watched him walk away. And with him, he took the sensation of the wind through my hair, the breeze tickling my skin, the damp resting on my cheeks. I had to let him go, let my fake life tether away piece by piece. I wanted something real, or so I wanted to think. The only evidence of our moment was buried inside of me, a sick fantasy that could never be. Could I live without him? I had to find a way to live without any physical sensation. The only reason I could taste, or feel something was because of him. Once he was gone and the purification crystal burned out, I was on my own. A lonely, scary place. I had the furthest to fall in comparison to everyone around me. It sucked, truly badly and deeply, to be me. My desperation in wanting to see Legentium was growing stronger, tighter within me. I needed this torture to end. I scooped up my dress, and followed Troy silently. He wanted to trust me, and I wanted to trust myself. The only proof of my eternal conflict were the muscles that cramped in my hands from pulling them into tight fists. But, as we got to the camp, my hands almost seized. My body was changing.

When I stared into my warped reflection on the traveling mirror as it came to life, my heart beat painfully in my throat. I had to be braver than I’d ever been, and ever would be.
This is it for me, I will never come back the same.
And boy, I didn’t know how true that thought would turn out to be.

“Remember, if we are caught, you are Ava,” Kronan reiterated again. Because if I was killed, they would not be able to find Ava.

I nodded numbly. If it went bad, I wasn’t sure I wanted to survive. However, I had given Troy my word and if anything, I needed him to trust me. I needed him more than he could ever know. I am, because of him. This was true to me and my prime, which only made it our existence.

“Here, Arriana wanted you to have this.” Anaya placed something in my hand. I was puzzled as to why Arriana would ever want
me
to have anything. Technically, she did not know me. I stared at the engraving carved around the runic edges, silver-leaf filigree encased a blue crystal. I stared at its minor imperfections, which only made it the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I looked up into Anaya’s eyes ridden with a sorrow that was so new and raw to her, it almost stripped her of her luscious glow. She had removed the bands from me earlier upon discovering the illusive secret of who I was. Now she gave them back to me. These were the gauntlets I had worn, the ones from the treasuries. They belonged to Ava, and that was why they had no power with me. But Anaya was holding on, grief was an ugly thing, regret tainted it even more. The dark in her eyes spoke of a dark fear that could only be replaced by a thing called faith. The Minoans’ faith in the prophecy – a prophecy many had died and lived for – just to free everyone from the Shadow’s dark rule, a disease that had ruined a place called Earth, and now Noxia. Noxia was the planet where Legentium resided. I had found out that Legentium was one of the first Elite Circle members. He was the prophet; the one who had written the prophecy that had brought all of this to light. He was the ruler of the Elite Circle of Souls. Legentium held all our answers. We could die finding these very answers, because Noxia was now the home of the three queens, the higher hierarchy of the Shadowing kind. Our kind was destined to live from one horror to the next. It was true that we were cursed – broken. Things like me, Ava, and Troy, were tools created in a war to stop all wars, and I couldn’t help but feel a bit used at times. I placed the gauntlets back on my wrists, looking up as Kronan and Tatos went through the distorted mirror first. Dave and Anaya bowed to Queen Thandiwe, sharing a faint smile with her high guard, Bongiwe, or Bongi to us, and left Troy and me with one final look at what we had to come back for. We both turned back, the devastation of the previous night’s storm evident in the debris scattered across the landscape. I heard the sound of Zulu villagers already at work, inspecting damage and looking for ways to use what nature had given them.

Thandiwe smiled faintly, her hands shaky. “They thought our ancestors silly for building our huts circular,” she said, her smile growing as we stared at the sturdy, upright huts; the wind had scraped past, lifting only the straw roofs, leaving the round bases and walls untouched. “Now they know that design had a purpose.”

She hugged me tight, her belly resting against mine. I gasped, pulling away when I felt that thing inside of her move. I stared into her eyes, sweat dampened her entire face. I held her shaky hand in mine. “You will make it through this thing, you know that right?” The memory of her trying to save Ava came flooding back, and then another of her at Enoch’s feet when they had been caught trying to escape the Zulu castle on the night of Ava’s devastating transformation, or infection as we saw it.

She nodded, though not convincingly.

“You’ve seen something, haven’t you?”

She smiled dryly, shaking her head while slowly rubbing away at her pregnant belly. “I see no more. Perhaps this is the end.”

I started to panic. What if her baby was like his father, and had the talent to take others’ abilities?

“But sometimes I do not mind, because for once my mind has quietened and my heart is at peace.”

I tightened my lips, hardening my stare on her. I hoped she was right, that she was not going to give into this ‘Change’. She had a better chance at surviving the effects as she had grown up outside the confounds of our facility, our school – our mind games. She knew how to control emotions, how to feel and be guided by her soul. Perhaps, due to her being less subjected to the brainwashing, she would be one of the first broken to survive giving birth.

Troy
pulled me by my arm, our time had come to leave. I stared into the crisp, amethyst of daybreak, took in the scent of a fresh storm, the tang of broken bark. I held on to it, the feeling of the possibility of a new home when I came back. I held on to my pendant, as if transferring my last memories into it. My hand glided away from the smooth, glass-like surface, reached into the freezing surface of the mirror starting to take shape as the silver and gold glowed. Troy held on to my other hand, as we took the step through. At the exact moment my body was halfway through, I wondered how long I would be able to be suspended in time before it tore my body in half. My heart froze as the pricking of my skin started to turn into one single, hot, and then cold frenzy. Being near Troy meant I could feel the good, and the bad. I let the past go as the remaining parts of my body climbed though the mirror, instantly freezing and cutting at my skin, at my insides. But, it wasn’t long before I stepped right through to this other land. I moved my hood from my eyes, taking in Noxia. I moved past David and Anaya, pushed Kronan aside to find myself in a place I could never have imagined, and never in a million years would I have imagined it like that. There was no way of telling if these lands were cursed. My feet dragged me closer to the side of a cliff. I held on to the green, mossy rock in awe. I saw the sun and the moon glowing at the same time, an eerie, foggy-yellow glow against a dark, blue-gray sky. I had never seen a blue sky before. It was the most beautiful skyline I had ever seen. Just like a picture, everything was frozen in place. It was almost like those depictions of Earth before the final days of WW3. Stars, sun, moon, and clouds on one perfect canvas. Trees, dark and lovely swaying in a gentle breeze. It was then that I felt the rock beneath my finger move. I jumped back, almost swearing.

Laughter erupted behind me. I swung out of fright, my gray cloak hooking on a nearby branch, but when I tried to tug it free the branches of the bush clasped around the edges of the gray cloak and pulled me back. I screamed, staring into branches that threatened to eat my coat, pulling me over the edge. I screamed for Troy, because if I allowed myself to panic, to feel danger, it would draw the shift. Once I shifted, the three queens would immediately know I was there. They were just like me, only more evolved – Shadows, and we all know that those of Shadowing were bound to others of their kind. Unlike them, though, I had not turned fully to the disease, but each time I shifted it would take a little more from me. They warned me that because Noxia was cursed by the Shadowing disease, it would only take a moment before I was taken asunder by its power. I tugged my coat, but the claws of blackened branches kept pulling, sharp fingers piercing the material. Tatos released a shot that sliced through black, wiry branches, which caused me to take a step back and lose my balance as my heels went over the edge. Troy lunged at me just as I was about to slip over the brink of both the cliff, and the shift. He knocked the wind from my lungs as he pinned me to the ground, an eruption of all my senses kicked in like a blow to the head.

“Are you okay?” he asked, his body holding mine to the ground. I nodded, staring into his eyes. I saw my eyes reflect in his and looked away, feeling guilty for what I was going to do to make him love me. He gently pulled me to sit next to him when a chuckle escaped his lips. He started removing leaves and twigs from my tangled hair, and flicked dust from my cheeks with the tips of his fingers. When I felt the fire beneath his skin and mine, I kept my stare hard on his eyes. Was he seeing what I was seeing? Did he feel it too, the burn, the yearn, the hunger I felt for him? He cleared his throat and pulled me to my feet, tucking my hood back over my face, then drawing his hoodie over his eyes to conceal his concern. Faces stared back at us in disbelief. They had no reason to believe I was already using my Shadowing abilities to draw him in. Little did they know the dark powers had clawed its way into my mind already. There was no way I was going to let Troy leave here without me.

He turned to the others.

“This world has already begun to work against us, it won’t be long now before…” Kronan started to say upon reading the panic in Troy’s eyes.

I still continued to stare at Troy’s eyes in awe. They were green – totally green, but it was what I saw inside them; a fire so pure in light it looked something similar to lightning. The same lightning I had seen in my very own eyes once before – just before my very first shift. I felt a tight pinch of the claw of confusion closing in on me. Ava’s and my memories were beginning to blur together.

Kronan gathered the others. “We need to find Legentium soon, he is hard to track. Anaya did you…?”

She almost laughed and raising an eyebrow, said, “Yes, but of course.” Like he had been ridiculous for even asking.

She reached into her cloak, took out a key and handed it to Kronan. Their hands folded over each others, the ornate key glowing between their fingers. A locating spell. How clever that the object to locate Legentium was a key.

Kronan moaned, disappointed, looking in the direction of a dark forest. “I had really hoped we wouldn’t have to travel that way.” He shook his head, and took Maya by the shoulder. “Now, you know what to do should anything turn against us.”

Maya nodded, hand resting on her dagger for security.

“You’ve had the sustainability elixir?”

She nodded again.

“Stop worrying over her,” Tatos spoke. “She has prepared for this her entire life, unlike…” He nudged his head my way.

I rolled my eyes at him.

Kronan looked up. “Really, Tatos, now of all times you’re going to remind me how much of a failure my teachings have been, how my rebellious behavior tricked me with the clone?”

Anaya pulled Tatos aside. “Stop it you two!” She looked at Kronan. “Tatos is merely stressing the fact that here, there is no time for slipping up, for losing your grip, but to focus on what’s important. No mind reading, pushing, and...”

“And no magic beyond the safe zone.”

She nodded to Kronan.

I studied the hostility between Tatos and Kronan. Tatos was mad and hurt that Kronan had abandoned his Minoan dressings.

“As soon as we step outside the protective barrier of the mirror’s extended shield, we act humanoid. Anything to the contrary will give away our presence here, remember that,” Anaya said.

“Soooo, weapons only.” Dave beamed, his gun shining in the twilight of day and night.

I tried to digest the word, humanoid. I had recently discovered ‘human’ was further away from my evolution than I or my prime had once hoped. Unfortunately, it was the human part we needed to keep us sane through everything that was to come.

“Can we just get on with it!” Rion called from behind me, eyeballing everything that moved around us. “This place creeps me out.”

The trail down the mountain was dimly lit by gray light, narrow and concealed by dark twisting overgrown bushes, branches that moved and moaned as they flowed along. The very ground we walked upon seemed to grab at us.

“It wasn’t always like this on the planet, the organisms seem to have been consumed by the curse released when the queens got here. They are either protecting themselves, or somehow it’s all connected to their dark power,” Kronan was saying to Maya, who looked just as creeped out as the rest of us.