Fae (16 page)

Minutes passed in silence
with me breathing in the fresh, airy scent of Cailen's sheets and
his fingers massaging my back. I closed my eyes and was just
entering the space between waking and sleeping when he broke the
silence.

"Are you going to tell
me?"

I groaned and turned onto
my back, all feelings of melty bliss gone. I stared at him, hard,
wondering if the dark look to his eyes was because he knew I kept
another secret from him or because he actually felt heroic and
maybe a little angry at whatever terrified me. I knew his secret
about Anna. Or maybe he knew how terrified I was about the
blackouts, how totally out of control I felt..

"Does it matter?" I
said.

His gaze softened and
dropped to my lips. He brushed the back of his hand along my jaw,
so soft, so chillingly delicate. "Yes," he whispered.

My heart pounded against
my chest, so loud in my ears I wondered if he could hear it. This
was the Cailen my stomach grew sick at the thought of losing. But I
couldn’t ever get myself to just relax and trust him. Maybe if I
hadn’t grown up alone, I would have been better at relationships,
but such wishing was futile. Despite how bad I knew I was at all
this, I didn’t know how else to be. I couldn't say any more about
Malik. Not ever. He would think I was crazy and then he'd leave
again. And I couldn't take that. Not again. Especially when I knew
Anna would be there waiting.

I looked to the side and
said the first thing that came to mind. "It's all just hitting me.
How real it is." I chuckled softly because though I'd intended to
lie, what I'd actually said was true. And then I groaned and rolled
over again because the full-blown truth of what I'd said hit me
like a burst of wind.

A Marid? Hundreds of
thousands of Fae'ri? The entire Mamood Armada? And now blacking out
and memories.

I was not prepared for
this.

Cailen lay down next to me
on his side, his arm draped across my lower back. His breath
caressed my cheeks.

I closed my eyes and
smiled as another oozing cloud of calm floated over from Cailen to
me. He was good at that, controlling emotions. Pretty soon I didn't
care about...anything. Within seconds, my brain went from a solid
wall of tension and defense to...fuzzy. Warm and fuzzy. And my
body. It just got heavier and heavier, sinking into the
mattress.

"I remember finding the
locket." The words came out slurred and unbidden. I sat up in
surprise. I grew instantly wary as the truth of what he’d done hit
me. I slammed the doors to my secrets shut as I pushed the last
vestiges of the fuzzy calmness out.

"Really?" he asked,
looking up at me, his eyes wide with innocence, and pretending not
to notice my suspicion. "Where did you find it? You never did tell
me."

But the calm was gone and
I knew he felt it.

"What are you
doing?"

"I'm just trying to get
rid of some of your stress, Ella. Believe it or not, some people
think being open and honest is a good thing."

I narrowed my eyes at him.
"Not when they're being forced to do it."

He tilted his head back
and laughed. "I'm not forcing you to tell me anything."

"Then how do you explain
what just happened?"

"It's a typical
Windbringer calming technique," he said as he slid his hands
between his head and the mattress. "We don't like being controlled
by our emotions. Sometimes the side-effect is honesty, but it
really all depends on the person. Obviously your emerging memories
are stressing you out and your subconscious way to deal with that
stress is to let it out."

"I think I'd rather not be
calmed." Especially not if my stupid mouth insisted on blurting out
secrets. Thank goodness it was just that one and not...

I shook my head to get the
thought out. I needed to be more careful around Cailen.

His eyes darkened and his
mouth pinched at the corners and suddenly I felt guilty. Really,
really guilty. Cailen deserved better than this. I should have been
able to trust him. He certainly hadn't done anything to prove
I
couldn't
trust
him. And really, wasn't that what are last fight was all about
anyway? My trust issues. And here I was, the one telling
lies.

But then the thought of
Anna slammed right back into the front of my mind. That girl's name
was Anna. It was the same one. It had to be. In that moment, I was
well past any doubt.

I shoved him away,
violently disgusted. "And you can go screw yourself,
anyway."

His face dropped into a
look of shock. "Where did that come from?"

"Oh, don't even pretend.
Don't even act like I didn't hear that girl's name.
Anna
. El help me,
because I swear I am so sick of dealing with all your
lies."

"My lies." A statement,
not a question. Finally, I'd gotten a real confession out of him.
"You are out of your mind."

"Then how do you explain
the first person you take me to, the only person you trust enough
to look over me, happens to have the same name of the girl I
distinctly remember you getting bonded with?"

His jaw dropped a little
more. He shook his head. "Give me a second here." He turned away,
pinching the bridge of his nose. I could hear his calm, heavy
breaths. After a few seconds, when he turned back around, the color
had come back to his face and his standard look of calm had taken
over his features. "First of all," he said. "The girl I took you to
happens to be a medical technician. In fact, she happens to be the
leading medical technician in this wing of the ship. Secondly, how
can you 'distinctly' remember me getting bonded to anyone named
Anna when that never happened?"

"Well, I may not remember
the day of the glorious event, but I certainly remember the day you
told me she was the girl chosen for you."

Cailen froze, his eyes
flaring just a little. He leaned forward. "You don't remember the
day I was supposed to be bonded to Anna?"

"No, but what does it
matter? I still know it happened."

He looked up at the
ceiling and then closed his eyes. "I thought you remembered all of
that. When you said you remembered Anna, I thought you
knew."

"Knew what?"

"Why it didn't
happen."

I started to say
something, then stopped. I started again, but still no
words.

"I didn't get bonded to
Anna. It was supposed to have happened, but it didn't."

"How did you expect me to
know that?" I yelled. "This whole time we've been arguing about it
and you could have just said, 'Hey, you know, you're right. I was
supposed to get bonded to her, but it didn't happen.'"

"Well, you weren't exactly
explicit when you said you remembered her. I thought you remembered
everything about her."

"How many times do I have
to tell you that you need to tell me things before you get that
you. need. to. tell. me. things. It's called memory loss. That
means I don't remember. Anything. Or hardly anything. And if I say
I
do
remember
something, assume the details are still a bit fuzzy."

He stared at me, red in
the face and with nostrils flared, and then he started
laughing.

"This is not funny," I
said.

He wrapped his arms around
me and pressed his cheek against the top of my head. "It
is."

"Which part? The one where
I've been going crazy with not trusting you, but forcing myself to
think that I did?" I just wanted to scream. I wanted to rip myself
from his arms, from this ship, from everything.

Instead, I sat there
fuming on the inside, tears streaming on the outside.

"So we've both made some
mistakes," he said. "We both assumed something that wasn't true.
But we know the truth now. There's no more reason to be
angry."

He was right, of course,
but I still wanted to be mad. He deserved at least a few more
minutes of that punishment. But it wasn't all his fault. We'd both
made assumptions and I certainly hadn't been diligent in getting
the right answers. I'd fooled myself into thinking I wanted to know
the truth, but now I realized how terrified of the truth I really
was. I guess I'd been avoiding it, letting myself think I was doing
everything I could.

He sighed and sat up, his
hand finding mine. "Listen, I get it." He chuckled softly as if
just remembering a secret joke. "Get some rest. I have a surprise
for you later." And then his lips curved up into a smile so big a
dimple I'd never seen before formed on his right cheek. My heart
skipped a beat and I think I might have actually gasped. He pushed
me gently back down onto the mattress and for the first time I
realized I was
lying on Cailen's
bed
. He brushed the newly shortened
strands of hair away from my face and studied me a moment before
leaving.

As he walked through the
door, I let out my breath in one long whoosh.

I got up and paced back
and forth across the room. Going to sleep was not an option.
Especially not when my body hummed with excited energy I knew
didn't come from the drilium. This energy was similar, but oh so
different.

How could he smile at me
like that and just...leave?

I looked around at
Cailen's room--
Cailen's
room
--trying to get little tidbits of the
person he was. Most of it was pretty much like the rest of the ship
I'd seen. Glowing green walls that actually pulsed with life. A
floor that squished under my feet like grass. No windows. Just a
bed and a side table. Something sat on the little table that piqued
my interest, so I picked it up. It was a grey disk that looked
almost exactly like the one he'd had on Soltak. The little red
light in the center called to me, almost begging to be
touched.

I set it back down. In a
room practically bare of anything but the essentials, I didn't want
to accidentally break the only special thing Cailen had. But as the
minutes passed and my attention kept going back to the disk, I
couldn’t resist any longer. If it was truly special to him,
I
had
to know
more about it.

The red light pulsed
through my skin as I pressed my finger down. A spherical holograph
comprised of millions of points of lights solidified before my eyes
and I saw…an unmade bed, walls painted crimson with dirty words. It
was my room on Soltak. Tears welled in my eyes as I realized
absolutely everything I’d thought about Cailen had been wrong. He’d
been watching me, pining for me, never letting me out of his sight
this whole time.

He loved me, and I knew at
that moment just how deeply we existed for each other.

Chapter Three

The Aurora

Cailen stood in the
doorway with one corner of his mouth drawn up and a hand behind his
back. I was on his bed with my knees pressed against my chest. I'd
just been wondering how soon we
’d have to
go back to Soltak to fight in the war that was my doing. I'd also
been thinking about Meir still trapped on the planet and Malik in
my head and the memories I couldn't seem to control.

But with Cailen standing
there looking innocent and gorgeous with those bright green eyes
and that dimple hiding just underneath the surface, I forgot about
everything except the heat building up deep down in places I'd
never really thought about before. The drilium oozed through my
blood and I welcomed it. I had a fleeting thought that I should do
something to look sexy before heat rushed to my cheeks and I looked
away, humiliated.

He chuckled and the blush
on my face burned hotter because I knew he felt my
embarrassment.

"What's wrong?" he
asked.

I let a look of feigned
anger pass across my face and leaned forward with a scowl, and a
smile hiding just underneath. "You know, I get that you can't
control the fact you always know what I'm feeling, but you don't
have to rub my face in it."

"You're being ridiculous.”
He returned the fake scowl with a hidden smile of his own. “I don't
need to feel your emotions to know you're embarrassed. The rather
bright red hue to your face kind of gave it away."

I laughed in response, but
inside a part of me was starting to feel a little angry that he
always knew exactly how I felt. The secretive part that had spent
the last ten years of her life alone sometimes resented the fact
that this all-encompassing relationship was forced on her. I leaned
back and turned away from him. It didn’t help that I always lost my
temper and Cailen was always so calm and collected.

As if hearing my thoughts
and not just reading my feelings, he ran his fingers down my arm
and a whole new wave of calm descended on me. I knew it didn't come
from him, though. This blissful feeling was mine, the way my body
always reacted when he touched me.

"I'm a Windbringer, Ella.
And let's face it, we all know you sympathize with your passionate
sides more than your reasonable one." He sat next to me, pushing
the mattress down with his weight. "You're the Aurume. You'll
always have the three sides to your personality. But I'm just a
Windbringer. I'll only ever have the one."