Chapter 9
Nine
“You know,” Darian says cautiously as I let Castiel drop to the floor and tighten the locks of everything within to once again feel like nothing, “you were only able to detain him because he will not hurt you.”
So content was I to pretend he didn’t exist and that the little fate line between us wasn’t there. He was as well. . . until now.
I can feel Darian drawing closer so I shift so he’s now in my line of sight. His shirtless chest the first thing I see before I look up to his icy eyes.
I wait for it to happen. For fate to reveal itself and prove my suspicion.
But I do not get to see his soul and his smirk tells me he knows what I was waiting for.
“Disappointed?” he teases. When I don’t answer he glances at Castiel and tips his head. “Is that true? You ripping out your own soul?”
I look away from him to a random stack of books on a shelf. Leather bound, no titles, colored dark red, blue and green.
“I bet if I had been able to claw out my eyes when I was six I would have been able to rip out my soul with them.”
I can sense his body shift. His blood flowing faster as his heart trips.
His aura so carefully settled around him, so controlled all the time.
I remember Asher saying out of them it would be Darian, the angel of the group, who was the unhinged psychopath.
But I feel like he’s the one most in control.
So meticulous, right down to how he’s able to make other people perceive him.
Psychopath – probably. Unhinged – not even close. At least not truly.
“Unfortunately, that time I did truly lie,” I finally answer. Because lies by omission or fae lies are not true lies. “My soul remains within but I do not know why others can’t see it.”
“Anyone else you’re fated to?”
I look at him this time. Staring straight at him to see if it’ll happen this time. He smirks again but doesn’t say anything about it.
When nothing happens I turn towards the door. “Not that I currently am sure of.”
I pull my cap back on as I open the door and without another word I leave. Darian can deal with my demigod fated.
There’s more. . . I can feel it vibrating in the room. Questions, answers, confessions. I, however, do not wish to find them out now. I’m tired after the pain from burning and all I want to do is sleep before classes tomorrow. Classes, which unfortunately, will be with said fated.
I haven’t seen Callahan in two days, Varian since the incident in his own room – which I later found out was the place that didn’t look familiar – and Castiel will probably be pissed after he wakes up.
I follow the way I came in to the front door and leave without seeing anyone. A bit eerie, but walking out of that house and sucking in a deep breath of clean air clears all other feelings. It’s so different to the city, even the feeling of the air against my skin is just. . . more.
Magic.
The power of magic and things unexplainable.
I hate it.
Making my way down the steps, I observe the area before continuing.
I glance at Stone House over to the right and wonder where Thorne was when he saw me enter Breath.
His rooms are in – were in – the back. I wonder if they have them all fixed up again.
I wonder if Nana is sure Thorne – the blood demon who has tried to kill me, who is as cold as frozen stone, who is entitled and manipulative and cruel – is the same one she told me about when I was fourteen.
Who was her boy, a chess grandmaster, had the spirit of a strategist as well as a fierce warrior, a protector, but could also be kindhearted and gentle.
Choosing to save the snowy foxes trapped in a snare during one winter at his family’s cabin despite them biting him.
Always collecting little rocks or sea glass for his cousin who loves them despite the debris being worthless to celestials.
She told me so many stories about him. He was my first hero – and my first crush.
I roughly rub my hands over my face as I walk along the street that curves around the houses. It leads to the main street in front of the school, passing the training arena. Part of me is still contemplating heading over to release this rising frustration.
He was supposed to be a dream that eventually became reality – not a fucking nightmare.
And yes. . . it fucking hurts. Nana built him up like he was a savior.
Telling me his stories of how good he was.
How not all males are like the sun devil.
Letting me believe that maybe – despite not being able to have true physical contact – one day, one fucking day, there was someone good and trustworthy and gentle and uncaring that I was broken and ugly.
That I’d be able to actually trust another male enough to just be near without holding my breath waiting for when I need to unlock every door to defend myself.
I hadn’t cared before. I forced myself to be content with being alone for the rest of my life. I willed my body and mind to not care, to not be effected, to not react to those carnal feelings and to not give a single shit about my body or how it was viewed.
But Nana kept saying how good he was, and Ms. Elaycia had always said physical contact and connection is essential, and my stupid sixteen-year-old brain thought that maybe he wouldn’t care about all my faults.
I stop in my tracks, right in front of his motherfucking house, and glare hatefully at it. Needles pricking within my nose but I refuse to shed a single tear over the loss of a juvenile’s dream.
It’s not fair.
But it’s never fair.
It never will be fair.
“Mavyllora.” I don’t move. His voice isn’t drawling this time. I wish I just kept walking. “Will you look at me?”
No.
After everything I had just felt and have been thinking about. After what had just happened in Darian’s rooms.
“I need you to look at me,” he says quietly. Gently. Just like Nana fucking said he could be. “Please.”
I tilt my head back and stare at the dark sky. The only lights are from the scones beside the front door of his house and above. Stars gleaming with the nearly full moon rising behind me. It will be a full moon tomorrow, on the fifteenth, six days before the winter solstice.
“Darian isn’t,” I whisper into the air. Breathing it to life because I had thought. . . but three is enough. Three is too much.
A pinprick of a memory – a feeling, a want, a wish – appears from the shadows of my mind. The reason I did not want to admit out loud who my fated were. The reason I did not want to say it.
I need to rip my soul out.
I can feel him drawing closer. His blood humming with a need to rush but his blood art keeps it flowing calmly.
His heart beating steadily. Even though his aura is flooding.
I can see the ribbons of it colored in an array.
Black, white, blue, green, red. Thunder and blood drifting with it and surrounding me.
His body heat reaches me now that he’s closer and his aura and scent encloses around me. The stars above twinkle and then one of them shoots through the sky. I contemplate making a wish to a dying star. Maybe another curse will be better.
He’s so close I can tell if I were to shift my weight I’d feel his chest against my back.
What a twisted joke.
Tortured, abused, and molested with a curse making it so no one can touch me and yet I don’t have just one, just two, just three, but four fated.
Most likely five because fate and karma and the universe and my fucked up soul and whatever monster I was in a past life and everything else. . . points to them five.
And I remember the fated death blow on the field. I told myself it was mild curiosity for why I intervened. That I would probably be saddened because Mr. Kyros would be dead and I wasn’t able to speak with him further.
But I looked at Varian first. His stance not relaxing like Mr. Kyros’s did. Then I glanced at Castiel whose body was accepting the fate. Then to the blood demon.
Thorne who was at the very front line with his double pointed staff and blood humming aura. He had looked. . . he had looked like Darian. The demon and angel both not just accepting this blood fate that was written, but teeming with a want for it.
They were ready to die on that battlefield not because that was their fate and they were accepting it, but because they wanted to die.
Why?
Even Callahan with his soul and thoughts I can see does not want to die. But them. . . ?
“You weren’t supposed to be her,” he breathes. His words sounding right above my ear. I’m sure he had to lower his head quite a bit with his tall-ass self. “Esmirra knew.”
I shut my eyes and slowly straighten my head. I can feel my hair dragging along his chest so I’m careful to keep my body ridged to keep from pressing back into him.
Of course, Nana knew. The first time she had told me about her boy was after I had already been there for a couple weeks.
We had been making tonics in the kitchen, her over by the cauldron hanging above the fire and me on the counter hanging herbs to dry.
Randomly, breaking the peaceful silence we had as we worked, she said fate is always set.
The destinations are always set, no matter what path – or destiny – we choose to get there.
Fated are the same. They are already connected, sometimes long before we are even born, it’s simply getting to the point when you realize the tie is there.
Nana told me I and her boy were connected. She could feel it.
Not that she was an oracle or starseer or fate reader or anything having to do with reading the future – she was solely saying it off of old grandmother wishes that her two students who she saw like family would be together.
Though superstitions and instinct have a way of holding and giving power.
“For the first time in four years I had heard a name I was told was my fated from a witch who had lived thousands of years.” His words penetrate the darkness I’m within as I squeeze my eyes shut tighter. “Look at me Mavyn.”
I will not.