16. Kiera
Chapter 16
Kiera
" K iera, slow down!" I don't listen to Ruen's call, choosing instead to take the stairs leading out of the secret underground prison two at a time until the fresh warm air of the level above slaps me in the face. Even then, I don't stop moving. The second my feet land on the final step, I practically leap out of the stairwell and start running.
Down the darkened corridors, through the maze of tunnels that Ara's mental map had given me. Into the great hall of Ortus Academy and then finally to the residential corridor full of bedchambers. All the while, I can sense Ruen's hurried steps keeping pace behind me. The door to my bedchamber comes into view and I cross the last distance to it with such incredible speed that it doesn't even feel as if my feet are touching the ground.
My chest heaves with great effort as that long-ago memory spurs me on. No one is coming to save you. No one is coming to save you. No one is coming to save you.
Damn it. Tears well within my eyes, hot and heavy. I try to shove them back, knowing after the last ten years of my life that no amount of tears will ever ease any type of pain. They simply make a person weaker than the circumstances they face. Strong women don't cry. They don't curl into balls and beg the universe for a savior. They don't wait like the damsels in fairytales. If I'd waited for someone to save me in the Underworld, then I would have died years ago.
Even if I didn't know it back then, the fact is, Caedmon had at least taught me one thing—all of that bullshit Tryphone spouts about how mortals can't kill gods is just that. Bullshit.
I slam into my room and grab ahold of the door's edge, meaning to close it behind me and lock it when Ruen's bulky frame barrels past me at the last second. Panting, heaving, covered in dust and sweat and trembling from the sheer force of my emotions, I release the door and point.
"Get out," I snap, proud of the way my voice doesn't betray the rage and pain and betrayal stinging at the back of my eyes.
Ruen doesn't speak for a moment, his chest rising and falling as he takes in several lungfuls of air. Then he steps forward. "Kiera?—"
"Get out!" I scream, uncaring of who I wake now. I can't do this. I can't be alone with him. I can't let him—anyone—see me like this.
Ruen stomps forward, and when I stiffen, clenching one hand into a fist and raising it to meet him, he narrowly dodges. Instead, he grabs ahold of the door and slams it shut before flicking the lock. "No." I shake my head. "You're supposed to be on the other side. I don't want you in here."
"Too fucking bad." Fine trembles creep up my finger to my wrists and arms and soon enough, they are all over me, consuming me.
I clamp my hands over my face as a spill of tears bursts through. "Go..." I gasp for breath. "Please, fuck ... Ruen, please go away."
My legs collapse from underneath me. I expect to feel the hard floor crack into my kneecaps, but a pair of strong arms come around me, lifting me up and into an equally powerful chest. "It's alright," Ruen murmurs, his voice deeper, lower than I've ever heard from him. "You're alright."
I feel rather than see him cross the room to the bed because my hands are still clamped over my face in a vain effort to hide the fall of my tears. I'm not all right. In fact, I don't think I've been all right for a long fucking time and tonight, the final walls have been cracked.
Air swirls around us as Ruen lowers himself and me onto the edge of the mattress. He settles me more firmly on his lap and rocks back and forth. One hand touches the back of my head, fingers grazing through my hair, stroking. Turning my face into his chest and shoulder, I finally release my own arms and wrap them around his shoulders. I burrow closer, gasping for breath as scalding tears soak into the front of his tunic.
I don't even bother to ask if he closed the secret door. I don't think about how cruel it was for me to leave Caedmon and ... my mother ... as they were. The ice of their prison. No food. No light. Nothing. I don't have the energy to face it. All too much. All too fast, my emotions burst within me, exploding like dried-out timber beneath a flame.
No one is coming to save you. Something inside me is breaking, coming apart. Or perhaps ... it was broken all along, just a cracked shell of a soul just barely surviving for the last ten years of my life. But tonight something changed. I'd looked into the eyes of the one person who should've chosen me above all others, and when I'd wanted to feel love, relief, and all manner of hope—all I'd felt instead was wrath. Hurt. Betrayal.
No one is coming to save you. My insides are being pulled apart, bit by bit, unraveled until all that is left are the outlines of what was once a person. What was once me.
No one is coming to save you. I curl deeper into myself, the sensation of Ruen's body heat against my own drifting away. Ruen's hand in my hair disappears. The entire room and Ortus itself disappear until all that's left is the jagged bones and ripped cartilage of the remains of my soul.
"No one is coming to save me." The words from so long ago pierce my skull and drag forth more pain than I ever thought one person capable of withstanding.
Tightness constricts around me, gathering all of the shards of my body into one place. "I will."
For a long time, I don't realize who's responding or the fact that I'd spoken the last phrase from so long ago aloud. Opening my eyes and blinking past the blurriness caused by tears, I look up as Ruen stares down at me. The color of midnight is that of a storm over black waters. It is a forest of dead bodies given to the Gods of darkness and beauty. It is pomegranates and blackberries crushed under waves of siren calls. And somehow, above all that, the color of midnight reflected in a Mortal God's gaze is what drags me back from the brink.
Ruen cups my face, thumb stroking and wiping against the sticky salt of my drying tears. "I will always come to save you," he whispers.
Then, without waiting for any sort of assent from me, he dips his head and touches his lips to the corner of my mouth. He doesn't kiss me right away, not just yet, but lets his lips steal away the evidence of my tears. Shame threatens to drag me back under, but his hands on my body remain steadfast, gripping tight enough to ground me in the here and now.
He slowly drags his mouth up my cheek until I'm forced to close my eyes, my wet lashes sticking to each other and then my skin when he presses a delicate kiss to my closed lids. First one and then the other. Then his mouth is brushing down my other cheek and traveling back to my lips. By the time he reaches them, I'm gasping for breath.
Ruen pulls away then and stares down at me as his body holds me in a constrictive bind to him. I just want him to understand—I want someone to understand—I don't hate her. Never that. But the resentment that's been building for the last twenty years of my life, exacerbated by my father's death and then my years with Ophelia in the Underworld—it can't go away in a single night. It needs somewhere to unleash.
This body and soul of mine, drenched in blood and pain, needs to be cleansed and no apologies from her are going to help. I don't know what will.
Ruen touches my chin, forcing me to look him in the eyes and when I want to withdraw, to look away, his grip becomes harsher.
"Don't," he warns. "Don't you dare look away from me."
My lip trembles until I bite down on it, my teeth sinking into the soft flesh there. The blue-purple color of his irises appears to burst into flame, his pupils widening until they swallow nearly all of the midnight fire he lays at my feet.
"No matter how far, no matter how lost, I would sink myself into the sea and challenge death for one more night in your arms." My heart beats a wild, rapid tempo against my ribcage. Fresh sweat beads pop up along my spine beneath my cloak and tunic. The strings of the latter clenching so tight around my throat that I'm afraid I might pass out. Even Ruen is still wearing his, neither of us having had any mind to remove our clothing before settling on the bed.
Ruen's lips twitch as if he can sense my wandering thoughts and he leans ever closer until his eyes bore into me and the heat of his breath as he whispers the final words of his promise to me wafts over my mouth.
"I. Will. Always. Come. To. Save. You."