Chapter 14 #2
I turn back to the garden, unable to meet his gaze, dissect his words, and right as I do, a drop of water hits my cheek, followed by another and another, until suddenly, rain pours from the sky in a frantic rhythm.
A smile breaks across my face. Closing my eyes, I tilt my head, allowing the cold droplets to consume me. My arms stretch wide, and before I know it, laughter spills from my lips, laughter I can’t seem to stop. The sound fills the air, rivaling the sound of the falling rain.
I peek one eye open, searching for the prince. He’s not hard to find. Standing just a few feet away. His clothes are already soaked through, clinging to his skin, providing a view that’s hard to look away from.
Water drips from his hair, from his fingers, making him look impossibly more beautiful than he already was. But it’s that smile on his face, the real one, the rare one, that makes my heart hammer against my rib cage.
“I thought it was the sun you were missing,” he says, his voice battling the sound of the cracking thunder.
I hum at his words.
“I miss it all, Jax. The sun, the moon, the stars, the rain. I miss all of it. It makes me feel alive.” I look back up to the heavens, embracing the storm’s cool caress. I don’t remember the last time I felt it pour like this, and I pray this water is somehow reaching Village 28.
“I’m sorry for depriving you of this.” His words are so quiet that I barely hear them. But what I do hear—clear and unmistakable—are footsteps. Footsteps that are not mine and are not his.
My eyes fly open and lock on Ryjax. I can tell by his expression that he can hear them, too.
He’s on me in a second. One moment he’s several feet away, the next, he’s directly in front of me, pulling me to him. And then, I see nothing but darkness.
Pure, unfiltered darkness. I can’t even see Jax, but I can feel him.
I can feel him everywhere.
The side of my head presses against his hard, wet chest, and his fingers tangle in my hair, holding me there.
The footsteps grow louder, and I cling to his shoulders, my nails digging into his skin, but he doesn’t so much as flinch.
“It’s okay,” Jax whispers against the shell of my ear, and I shiver, not because I’m cold—which I should be—but because of my proximity to him. And gods, does he smell good. Feel good. “They can’t see us or hear us. We just need to wait for them to pass.”
His shadows.
They’re wrapped around us, forming a protective barrier, shielding us from everyone and everything and right now, in this moment, it’s as if we’re the only two people that exist.
With the fear of being discovered slowly leaving me, I allow myself to focus on other things, but the only thing to focus on is him. His fingers cradling my head. The firm planes of his chest pressed against me.
Focus, Serafina, on literally anything but that.
“If…if they were to see me…what would happen?” I ask, my voice louder than I feel it should be, but with his shadows concealing us, I suppose we can be as loud as we want.
His body stiffens. He’s as still as a statue.
“They’d tell the king.”
“Your father?” I ask, and what a stupid question it is, because of course his father. But I do find it interesting he didn’t refer to him that way.
“Yes.”
“And what would he do?”
He’s silent for a while.. I pull my head back, as if to look at him, but I can’t see him. The darkness is keeping him hidden so I can’t read his face, not that I’d be able to anyway with how good he is at hiding his emotions.
“What would he do, Jax?”
His fingers shift, moving from my hair to the nape of my neck, which somehow feels even more intimate, and my pulse quickens.
“I worry he might try to kill you.”
“Kill me?” My voice cracks.
“Try to,” he corrects, his tone even, almost unnervingly calm.
“Try to?”
“I wouldn’t let him.”
I can’t speak. My tongue feels swollen, and my breaths leave me in ragged pants.
“But why?” I finally manage to ask because it doesn’t make sense. I’m not an evader, but perhaps he would still consider me one, and everyone knows such a crime comes with a death sentence, but still. The prince—his son—brought me here. Surely, that matters. Surely, it should matter.
“Because of what he thinks you might see.”
What I might see? What I might see?
“You do realize we’re all more than well aware of how you people live, right?
” I scoff, trying to pull away, but his grip remains firm, and suddenly, I don’t want to pull away anymore.
But I’m still angry, so angry, and I try to hold on to that feeling.
“We struggle. You don’t. We make a gallon of water last more than a week.
You waste that in a single day. We ration our food, consuming small portions.
You eat more than I could fathom in a single sitting.
What I see will come as no surprise to anyone.
” I feel myself losing control, growing hotter and hotter, and I’m not sure if his shadows will be able to hide my flames. “But he would kill me, regardless?”
His grip tightens on the back of my neck, steadying me, grounding me. “I will not let him,” he says again, “I need you to trust that, but more importantly, I need you to breathe, Nova. I need you to take a deep breath and breathe with me.”
Breathe.
Breathe.
I hadn’t even realized I’d stopped. I feel his chest rise and fall against mine. Over, and over, and over again.
When I finally force myself to do the same—my own chest matching the rise and fall of his—I no longer feel the raging heat that was begging to be set free, and my mind lingers back to that word again.
Trust.
Trust him.
Trust his promises. But how?
“Then, tell me something real,” I whisper. “If you want me to trust you, then tell me why you were outside Village 28 the night we met.” I’ve asked him this before.
But he lied.
He lied then, and who’s to say he isn’t lying now?
“I…I didn’t realize…” His voice fades. “I didn’t realize the poverty the people of Velegoria faced. I didn’t know how bad it was in the villages.”
My brain can barely process what he’s saying.
“What do you mean, you didn’t know?” How is that even possible? He is the prince. This is his kingdom, or at least, it will be.
“I knew things were hard. I knew food was being rationed. But when I formed my bond with Ajja, I started seeing the world through his eyes. And I…did not like what I saw.” He shivers, and I wonder what exactly Ajja had told him.
“I wanted to see it for myself. So with Ajja as my guide, I set out to explore the kingdom. We’d been traveling for three days when we came across you. ”
“So now that you know, what do you plan to do about it?” If anything at all because what can be done? Our planet is dying. Fresh water grows scarcer by the day. Food has never been so hard to grow.
“I don’t know yet.”
He’s quiet. And so am I. So quiet that I notice I no longer hear the guards’ footsteps.
We’re alone again.
His shadows recede, fading away, and for the first time in minutes, I can see his face. So very close to mine, and he’s looking right at me, straight into me. But then, he removes his hand from my neck and steps away.
“We should get you back to your room.” He turns on his heel, heading toward the door we’d come through.
I follow after him, my heart racing, unsure if it’s from the fear, the rain, or just…him.