Fae (13 page)

I shook my shoulders to
get the creepy, crawly feeling away. No one had seen me read about
her. And no one could have known. I looked over my shoulder one
more time to make sure.

When I was satisfied I really was
alone, I picked the first category that caught my eye.

Ella

Heir to the throne and
kidnapped daughter of the ruling Aurume, Eliot. Subject of the
First Aurumenas (Search for the Child of Auru).

Her whereabouts:
unknown.

Radioactive signature:
undetected.

Lord Admiral Galen took
charge of the search from the beginning and gave up authority only
when his son, Cailen, graduated from the Academy at
Freor.

Update: found

Update (2): With her
father, Eliot, dead, Ella is now the ruling Aurume. However, the
throne remains vacant and the windsongs do not cease.

Update (3): Ella has
proven herself to be the prophesied Destructor. Her first act as
the prophesied savior of the galaxy has been noticed by the Fae'ri.
El save us all.

I turned the TSHV off and dropped it
onto the bed. Ice chilled in my veins and I shook
uncontrollably.

El save us all.

That's what they'd said about
me.

For the rest of the night
and the day after, I sat on Cailen's bed, refusing to look at the
TSHV and refusing to sleep in case someone else broke in. I ignored
all the dings that came from the wall and my stomach burned with
hunger until I was sure I wouldn't be able to take another moment
without food. One would have thought I hadn't spent the majority of
my life without it. Of course, starvation couldn't really be
something someone trained for, which was too bad since it was the
one thing I knew the most about.

Cailen never showed up.
Not once. On the third morning, a message showed up on Cailen's
bedroom wall—somehow they knew I was there. Meir's detox was going
well. He'd stopped banging his head against the wall and punching
himself in the face. No more screaming for information. I could
visit him if I wanted, at least for a few minutes.

As the words scrolled
across my wall and faded into oblivion, the weight of the room and
the past few days came crashing in on me. I fell to my knees and
gasped for breath. Everything I'd been trying to ignore—and
miserably failing at—reared up in one fell swoop.

Meir.

Cailen.

...

Cailen hadn't denied Anna.

Chapter Six

Breaking

There. I acknowledged it.
Finally.

I imagined ripping out this mystery
girl's throat. Where was she, anyway? How could she let her bond
partner go off and trick me like Cailen had?

I bet they were getting a real chuckle
out of it right now.

And I was the fool.

My heart sank, my stomach
lurched, and I knew I was going to be sick. I'd been putting much
more faith in our supposed drilium bond than I'd originally
thought. I hadn't hated it, I'd counted on it. It had been mine,
something no one could take away from me. No matter how bad I got,
I knew Cailen would always be there with me.

I pushed myself up from the bed and
stumbled to the sink. A mirror hung on the wall and I looked at it,
I looked at me. Tear tracks cut down my face like scars. My eyes
swollen, dead.

I rammed my fist into the
mirror. A crack spider-webbed where my knuckles made contact and I
hit it again. Shards crashed to the floor and I hit and I hit and I
hit over and over and over. I didn't stop until every last shard
left on the wall dripped with my blood.

My hand stung with a
thousand cuts and deep gashes, and I smiled. I wiped the blood on
my lovely silver dress and slid to the floor. Dozens of pieces of
mirror cracked under me. I picked up a larger one and grabbed a
chunk of my hair. I sliced through the strands and grabbed another
chunk. When I was finished, I looked around at all the silky hair
Cailen had admired so often. And then I looked at my reflection in
the piece of mirror in my hand. My hair, so straight, fell in
jagged edges across my face. Where just minutes ago it had extended
all the way down to my waist, now the longest parts barely brushed
past my shoulders.

I threw my head back and laughed. And
then I closed my eyes and listened to the beating of my own
heart.

Bump. Bump. Ba-dump.

So quiet. So alone.

So empty.

Nothing.

...

Eventually maybe hours
later, maybe minutes. Who knew? But eventually, I did decide to get
up again. My knuckles were purple and swollen, but they'd stopped
bleeding. The broken shards on the floor were covered with hair and
dried blood. I kicked it all away and pulled myself up, cradling my
hand against my chest.

My stomach screamed at me for food. I
ignored it.

First, I had to check on
Meir. They said he was getting better. Well, I needed to see that
for myself. Screw hiding from them. This was Meir.

Out in the corridor, bodies froze and
wide, terrified eyes stared back at me. Every person I passed
looked down their noses in horror at my bloody clothes and
hands.

I looked straight ahead
and pretended they weren't there. What they chose to think didn’t
matter.

A guard stood in front of Meir's door
pulling sentry duty. With a look of such austere coolness that
really did him a lot of credit considering the situation, he
motioned for me to enter as he prepared to open the
door.

"I was told you might
visit today," he said as he waved his keycard in front of the
screen.

I stood to the side,
waiting.

Meir sat across the room
on his bed, both his good leg and bad leg stretched out and a smile
on his lips. A wide ebony against ivory Meir smile. His eyes
sparkled with knowing, and love.

A tear slid down my cheek as I ran to
his side and fell into his arms.

Chapter Seven

Annihilation

Sweet euphoria permeated
my dreams that night. No real images, just blue and green and
tingly warm peace. And heaviness, like a thick blanket. I felt
myself falling deeper and deeper, never wanting to get
out.

And then Sirens blared through hidden
speakers in the wall.

I sat up with a groan.
Crust had welded itself to my eyelids and despite the fact I raised
my eyebrows as far as they would go, I couldn't open them. I picked
at one corner and winced as I ripped out a few eyelashes. The
sirens' incessant beeping wailed on.

My bed sunk as someone or
something put weight on it. I clutched my blanket tight to my
chest, suddenly all too aware of my naked body under the
sheets.

"It's just me," a familiar voice said.
"Let me help you."

I melted under Cailen's
feather touch as he peeled my eyelids open. Perhaps if someone else
had been doing it, I would have been humiliated, but with Cailen it
felt like the most intimate of moments. His fingers spoke the love
he felt for me.

I stared at him for a long
moment, waiting for my eyes to adjust. He stared back with a
guarded, jade gaze. His wings glowed blue and green behind
him.

Then fury ripped through me as I
remembered everything and the moment was gone. I shoved at his
chest, pushing him away.

"I'm sorry." He took hold
of both my hands and pressed them tighter to his chest. "I
shouldn't have been gone that long."

I ripped my hands away
from his even though it tore at my heart to do it. I wanted nothing
more than to be touched by him, to feel the spike of energy
coursing through my skin every time he was near. But I couldn't.
"Anna," I reminded him.

He tensed and a dark
shadow passed over his eyes. "Of all the things you had to
remember,
that
had to be it."

"So you don't deny you're
bonded with her, that you've been lying to me?" I inched as far
away as I could go.

"This is what I can't
stand," he said with clenched fists. "You look for problems. You
have one fleeting memory and come up with the worst possible
assumption, forgetting all the evidence against it." He cupped his
hand almost roughly against my neck. My skin hummed and oozed with
warmth at the contact. "You feel that, don't you?" he said, his
voice softening. "You know we're bonded. There is no one
else."

"Then why did you leave? Why did you
stay away so long?"

His other hand cupped my
neck and his thumbs traced paths along my jaw. He closed his eyes
as we both felt energy pass between us, numbing us from the inside
out. He looked at me again before answering. "Things are so much
worse than we imagined."

We were both silent,
letting his words sink in as the sirens blared around us. My
insides twisted. I’d spent so much time being mad at Cailen,
doubting him, and whole worlds were falling apart around us. He’d
been able to stay focused, but I hadn’t. I’d done the one thing I
promised myself I wouldn’t: jumped to conclusions without hearing
him out first. We were bonded. I never should have doubted that. It
wasn't Cailen and Anna; it was Cailen and Ella, as it should have
been. And I'd hurt him by not trusting. "Cailen, I'm
sorry."

"Don't push me away
anymore." He brought his face closer to mine as he slid his hands
down to my bare shoulders. I clutched the sheets tighter to my
chest even as I grazed his back with my free hand.

The electricity between us
spiked and hummed through every pore. It traveled deep inside me,
warming me, making my legs go numb. He pressed his lips against my
collarbone and pulled at my skin, traveling up my neck.

A deep, husky sound came from my
throat.

His lips stopped at the
corner of my mouth. My fingers clawed at his shirt, gathering its
folds into my grasp, and we both lost ourselves in the moment,
overwhelmed by everything happening around us and needing these few
moments of escape. We were all skin and breath and hands, pouring
into each other every last want and need of the past few
weeks.

With three light kisses on
my lips and one on the space between my eyes, Cailen pressed his
forehead against mine and brought the moment to an end, his
breathing heavy. "We should go see what that alarm means." The
flutter of his lips against my skin sent shivers up my spine. It
took me a second to process what he'd even said.

When Cailen pulled away, I
went with him. Breaking the connection would cause physical pain,
and that was something I just couldn't tolerate. Not when the fuzzy
stupor clouding my mind had shoved away all the pain from
before.

He chuckled and kissed me on the
forehead. "It might be important."

As if to prove his point,
the alarms changed pitch and frequency. I was willing to bet
animals on the other side of the planet were howling in agony at
this precise moment.

I sighed, defeated. "You're probably
right."

"I'll be outside while you
get dressed." His gaze moved downward and I was pretty sure he
smiled. And then he was gone, out the door, and I was left dazed
and breathing erratically.

I took a few deep breaths to clear my
head, then went over to my bag. The bloody shards and hair were
gone from the floor. I looked down at my hand in surprise. All the
cuts were healed and the bruises gone.

Then I remembered Cailen's
wings had been out. I sighed, not sure if I should have been
relieved or annoyed.

I pulled out a purple
dress with silver embellishments. And since worlds were coming to
an end, I also grabbed my cloak. No sense in going anywhere
unprepared. We were at war, after all.

Nausea crawled in my stomach. I was
suddenly glad I'd spent so much time training. I just hoped it was
enough. If not, I knew I could always fall back into my old style
of fighting.

I looked at the
ceiling—through it—imagining all the people waiting for me above
the planet.
Bring it, Mamood. Bring it.
This is El's Destructor you've come to fight.

And with a smile I could feel creeping
its way onto my lips, I pressed the keypad for the door and joined
Cailen in the corridor.

"Nice hair," he said as he
took my hand and we hurried down the corridor, weaving in and out
of groups of marching Ladeshian soldiers.

"Where are we going?" I
asked.

"To Lastrini." He squeezed
my hand and we both picked up our pace right toward the solid wall
that I knew was also a door to the Secret Place. Before we'd gotten
within feet of it, the seam appeared and the doors slid apart,
grinding metal against metal. I looked up at Cailen and saw his
brow pushed forward in concentration.

We passed through the open
doors and stormed down the empty corridor. Moments later, Cailen
turned a corner and we were in a control room of some sort with
silver-suited soldiers lining the walls and panel after panel of
streaming words and lights and holographic projections and a
million other things I didn't even recognize.