69. Chapter Sixty-Nine
ELODIE
This time, when I was woken from my dream, it wasn’t by strong, warm arms holding me gently. No, this time it was a torrent of icy water that streamed down my face, soaking my clothes and the bed sheets beneath me.
With a gasp that just meant I choked on more water, I lashed out, knocking aside the jug that was hovering above me, and cutting off my impromptu waterboarding experience before I shot upwards. Wiping the water from my eyes, my pyjamas sticking to my skin, Blair’s face came into focus, standing by the side of my bed.
“What the actual fuck,” I spluttered, my voice hoarse; a twinge of pain shooting through my throat. As beads of water continued dripping down my face, I ignored them, instead staring at Blair with incredulity.
“You were having a nightmare.”
The painful thud of my heart, and the light layer of sweat that gleamed on my skin in all the places the water hadn’t reached, told me she was right, but I couldn’t recall it.
If the security here was supposed to be next level, then why do I keep getting broken into?
My eyes circled the room noting that it was just the two of us. “And that was the only way you could think of to wake me?”
“It worked, didn’t it?” She shrugged, not an ounce of remorse on her face.
She had a point.
“How do you keep getting in here, anyway?” I asked, scraping the wet hair from my face, and shivering slightly as the icy water seeped into my skin as my heartbeat shuddered through my body.
“Just do.” Was her way of an answer.
“And is there a reason for that? Other than the water torture of course?”
My hand slid to a non-wet part of the empty bed; the sheets were cold, though part of me was sure Kaius had been here last night.
A hazy memory flitted through my mind, one of trees and a gentle blue sky. A large figure on their knees. Cracked and bleeding fingers. Something inside me recoiled at the image.
Had that been part of the dream?
My eyes caught on the dirt caked underneath my nails, and I frowned down at them.
All confusion about the state of my hands were forgotten as the main door slammed open. I twisted towards the sound, followed only moments later by the bedroom door flying back on its hinges. Energy surged into my fingertips as a tell-tale heat preceded its maker.
Blair, of course , remained utterly unbothered.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me right now!” Bastian’s towering form barged his way into my room, the swell of my power retreating a little. “Again?”
I didn’t have the brain space to bring up his midnight visit, the empty place where I had grown accustomed to Kaius’ pendant was unnerving, along with the flashback of being restrained by flaming ropes.
As was the realisation I’d kind of liked it.
Do not fucking go there.
“Where is he?” he demanded, eyes darting around, ignoring my annoyance completely.
“Get out,” I said, closing my eyes and rubbing at my wet temples to relieve the lingering tension of the nightmare Blair had just pulled me from. I was grateful, she just could have chosen a better method.
When I opened them again and found Big Man still there, I reluctantly ground out, “Where is who?”
“Kaius,” he growled, now pinning his attention on me, and I didn’t miss how his eyes dipped to the wet top plastered across my chest. They moved past me, landing on something that upped his anger levels, if that was even possible.
“Not here, obviously ,” I replied, hand gesturing to the room that was clearly empty of anyone but us. “Unless you think I have him stashed under the bed, or something equally ridiculous that could only come from your thick skull?”
He looked ready to argue with those facts before thinking better of it.
“Why are you here? Come to think of it, why are either of you here?”
Bastian’s eyes narrowed into his trademark glare as if me asking him why he was here was the issue.
I wouldn’t put it past him to pull off all the covers to check Kaius wasn’t playing peek-a-boo under there.
“He’s gone.” The unnerving monotone of Blair answered him, speaking as though her words were a complete explanation.
A trickle of dread crawled down my spine as Bastian’s body grew rigid. The scowl that was so naturally ingrained on his face whenever we were in the same room dissolving into one of panic, my eyes flicked between them as I struggled to make sense of his reaction.
“No.” The whispered word was laced with a fear that punched through to my soul, flashes of my dream beginning to play more clearly before my eyes, and I found myself unfolding from the bed, feet hitting the warm floor as I cautiously stepped forward.
“NO!” Bastian repeated, this time his voice a guttural roar, followed by a low whoosh that vibrated through the room. An acrid scent hit me a moment later, and I knew something was currently on fire, but I didn’t turn to look, too caught on the facts that were straining to arrange themselves as they pushed and pulled at my psyche.
“What do you mean, he’s gone ?” My nightmare was now a vivid picture playing in my mind. “Gone where?”
Blair’s eyes slid past me, meeting Bastian’s over my shoulder, and a suffocating heat bathed the room, magik beginning to surface within me in response through no urging of my own. It rose in a violent wave that stole my breath as it crashed against my skin, and for a moment, the darkened room blinked out of existence. I twisted around blindly as my senses were taken from me, until the flare of Bastian’s heat pressed sharply across the skin of my shoulders. I leaned into its touch, sucking in air as my vision was returned and he appeared before me.
Gone was the vulnerability of his fear, and in its stead was the anger that was so often aimed at me. I was unsure what I had done this time, but Bastian rarely needed a justified reason to turn his ire my way.
Flames were dancing within his eyes along with the ones just outside my field of sight as my mind grew heavy, my thoughts sluggish as something pulled at the fabric of my being, and his face flickered in and out of view. A cold that didn’t belong in this room threatened to invade my body, the cloying smell of damp replacing the charcoal and Maplewood scent of him.
I stumbled forward, head spinning with the speed at which my vision was changing, and as it cleared, my eyes locked with glittering emerald ones, creased now with a look of concern that was so out of place on his handsome face. I couldn’t look away as they offered me an anchor. One I couldn’t claim as my body sagged, growing heavier under the onslaught of magik that was pulsing within me.
My knees buckled, and I reached out to the man before me. Watching in a distant surprise as he reached back, strong hands grabbing onto my biceps in an attempt to keep me upright. Scores of heat marking me where our skin connected, but it was too late. A flare of magik that I had felt once before breached the barrier of my own as his skin met mine, and our energies melded together in a heady clash. It heated my body, a delicious warmth that chased away the chill. Where our skin touched, it blazed, searing into my bones.
But still, I was falling, and as he dropped with me, pulling me into his hard body, my eyes darkened once more. Whatever part of me it was that left, that escaped my physical form to drift away, did just that.
My knees slammed into a hard floor that, unlike the warmth in my room that I had become accustomed to, was unnervingly cold. Painfully so.
It leached into my bones as I shivered there on the floor, no longer able to feel the heat of Bastian’s hands on me, or the magik that had flooded me only a second ago. I was submerged in a bone-deep loneliness that I wasn’t sure belonged to me. The wet fabric of my pyjamas aided the invading freeze as it crept through me inch by inch.
The pungent smell of mould and damp places filled my nose as I shrank away from the looming darkness. Shafts of light filtered down from a murky window set high in a dirty brown wall, covered in huge, flaking patches of peeling paint. There was just enough light to see that I was tucked into a corner, the edges of my vision draped in a thick shadow that gave nothing away. If anything else was here with me, it was hiding within their veil.
But then, I wasn’t even really here.
Twisting on my knees, I winced at the touch of solid stones beneath me, rough on my torn skin. Unlike the other times I had been pulled from my body; I wasn’t just overlooking something happening. I could feel the cold, hard floor beneath me. The chill in the air a presence that invaded my lungs with a strange thickness that coated my tongue, different from any cold I had experienced in Incaendium.
A flurry of motion had me scrambling back, my back hitting the wall as I panted against it. The shadows lurched around me, coming so close they grazed my skin, and for one fear-inducing moment, the memory of my back being sliced open consumed me until their touch sparked a bolt of familiarity that I wanted to run from.
He couldn’t be here.
They pulled away, retreating to the edges they looked on from, their depths revealing a new layer to this nightmare as a sharp tug in my chest stole my next breath.
As the cold wound around my lungs, I struggled to pull in any air as I faced the man who had somehow filled spaces inside me I hadn’t known were there. His molten silver eyes were glazed, unfocused and now dull in a way I had never seen them before.
I crawled forward instantly, needing to be closer, and though Kaius’ beautiful face was directly in front of me, there was nothing on his features that suggested he saw anyone else in here with him.
A barely perceptible twinge of energy flickered in the tips of my fingers, but I couldn’t find the will to reach for it; I was frozen. The haunted look that was etched on his features as he knelt before me, a mirror of my own. I stared in horror as his expression began to morph, eyes tightly closed, mouth gritted into one of complete agony.
A quiet, steady, drip, drip, drip became the only sound I could focus on despite the rush of my own heartbeat so loud in my ears. My stomach churned at the dark stains that were steadily growing across the stone floor, scarlet puddles pooling with every second I couldn’t look away.
The tears that had begun streaming down my face would soon create their own pools. Gone as fast as it came, I winced as a flash of heat seared across my forearms, forcing me to look at him fully once more.
His hands were clenched into fists as rivulets of blood traced patterns down his skin, dripping off his knuckles from cuts hidden under the fabric of his jumper. A flash of my nightmare, of charred skin and burning flesh, was enough to give me an idea of what was hidden. Drawn again to the red streams painting his skin, I noticed amongst the silver rings that adorned his knuckles a single gold ring.
One I knew intimately, one I had made. One that I suspected, if I ever got a chance to go back home again, would be missing from the wooden box it had been kept in.
“Oh, Kaius,” I managed to croak out, chest wrenching in recognition, and my shaky voice reverberated through the cold room, shattering whatever veil I had been hidden behind.
The shadows that had concealed the edges of the room had begun to converge, drawing closer, almost brushing against him as he strained in an effort to control his pain.
“What do you want?” he demanded, chest heaving, and our eyes met as he finally noticed I was there.
A panic that had been fluttering just beneath the surface since Blair had woken me began to stir, its claws grating along my insides an incessant caress reminding me just how lost I was right now.
Is this what she had meant about Kaius being gone?
I couldn’t trust that this was real, but I couldn’t count on it being false, either. I’d had such little time to explore whatever powers I had, I knew that I had no fucking clue what was happening. I could feel myself as a solid presence, the man before me just the same as he had been the last time I’d been in his arms, but there was something about the room that didn’t feel real.
“Who are you?” Kaius’ brow furrowed in confusion. “What’s your name?”
Not a flicker of recognition was anywhere to be seen as I reached out towards him, straining to touch him, needing to ease his suffering. I willed even the slightest ounce of magik to flow into me, but it just wasn’t there.
A pain all my own sliced through me as he flinched away, whatever plane I had crossed to be here was not enough for me to breach this barrier between us. I didn’t know what he could see. Whether I was just another shadow like the ones slowly creeping up on us, or if somehow he didn’t know who I was.
Kaius threw his head back, the muscles of his neck tensing as he clenched his jaw, biting down on a groan of agony. His chest heaved as a sickening splatter of blood followed, splashing hot across my exposed knees, but I refused to look down.
Heat was blooming across my forearms, the room around me fading as it grew. I willed myself to stay, to be here with him, so I inched closer, ignoring how the floor beneath me grew slicker the closer I got. The sharp sting of my torn knees centred my mind, pulling Kaius more clearly into focus.
All I could hear other than his ragged, agony-laced breathing and the drip of his blood onto the hard floor was the sound of my heart being shredded.
“Elodie,” I whispered softly to the dark room as my soul screamed out for his. “My name is Elodie.”