Chapter 9 #2
I will not look at him.
I will not be looking at his soul.
“Mavyn,” he urges, but it sounds like a plea. “Please.”
Why couldn’t they have just pretended I didn’t exist? Why couldn’t they have seen me as nothing?
He shifts but his aura continues to encase me as the warmth of his body I feel becomes before me instead of behind.
I feel the flow of my aura within my veins as his begging feels tangible. A physical essence I’m sure I’d be able to touch if I reached my hand out right now. I don’t, though, as I follow the flow of my blood until I shift within and appear before those locked doors within me.
The first one containing my blue flame. The door feeling like a bright blue burning fire. The key always warm like how home feels warm.
The second containing my elements. Twining vines, fractured rock, and cracking light. Green and purple like crawling ivy and violets, brown like bark and soil and deep minerals, and red like rivers of blood. The key always warm like how life feels warm.
The third contains raw power. A black void holding limitless ether like the depths of space. A black hole of magic with a force that would seem uncontainable. The key always warm like how peace feels warm.
The fourth door contains my blood art. The feeling of this door – it feels like it’s made out of some sort of metal. A circular design is etched into it, twisting and twining with my blood flowing through the ridges that are made. The key for this door is always warm like how my blood is.
Then there is that fifth door.
I never go near that door.
Uncontainable.
I do now though.
“Mavyn,” he begs again.
Eyes are the closest way for someone to see another’s soul. That’s why those that are fated always stare into each other’s eyes after realizing – or rather suspecting. Seeing your fated’s soul. . . that’s how you know. When you see the fate connecting your souls together.
I tilt my head the smallest bit up in preparation before opening my eyes. Twin blood moons are staring at what I know are eyes just as red as his.
My breath leaves between my lips on a barely audible huff that clouds like smoke between us.
I’m registering the cold that has already seeped into my body.
It makes me want to shiver but I don’t move an inch to keep my entire focus on him.
On his eyes. On the fact that I see nothing else but red irises and black pupils.
I see no soul behind his eyes and no tie. No fate. No connection.
Something breaks within him. I can see the micro expressions crossing his face and through his eyes. Then he does what I predicted he would. A mask slips over his features covering the vulnerability he had been exposing before. When he had been begging for me to prove that we were fated.
He takes a calculated step back as his dark eyes gain a hard edge and he does a once over of me. “You need to be careful who you let around you. And who you let touch you. Your fated wouldn’t appreciate another males scent on you.”
He turns without another word and begins walking towards his house. The air turning sharper and making it feel like shards of glass are scraping against my throat as I suck in a breath. My exposed hands feel numb from the cold and without Thorne’s body heat my face prickles from the frozen air.
I wait for him to walk into his house before spinning around and bolting.
It would have made more sense and been so much easier to just run down the street and taken the path it makes towards the other buildings for other classes, but I make for the tree line opposite of Stone House.
The woods holding a secret lake very few have been able to find because of the magics working within the nature surrounding it.
On all the maps it’s a blotch in the middle of the woods showing that it does exist, but there is no map for how to get to it.
That lake is not where I’m heading though. I simply charge straight into the woods with the only intent to avoid anyone else and to try and get to the southern side of the school grounds. To the well surrounded by the three addition buildings holding extra classrooms.
There’s a wishing well by the gazebo I’ll eventually pass. There’s always someone there every time I pass it making a wish. Hoping and praying that whatever it is will come true. That the god or goddess watching over will answer and grant them whatever it is they want.
But the other well. . . the discarded, hated, forgotten well. . . the cursing well. . . that is one no one goes near.
When magic with its infinite definition and limitlessness is part of the equation, things like superstition and karma and fate are not to be toyed with.
The humans believe in these things for a reason even with no proof of magic or things impossible.
They hold weight and power no matter the world or universe.
Just as you don’t make wishes to dying stars, you don’t makes wishes through curses.
Except when you have nothing left.
Except when you are nothing.
The scent of nature and earth blinds me as I run without seeing. Dodging the huge trunks when I can but not slowing when my shoulders clip them or my face hits the lower hanging branches or my shins collide with fallen debris.
I stood before that fifth door within and then looked at Thorne. I looked at my fated and made our fate undetectable.
It won’t last long. Our souls will continue trying to pull us together until we see that line connecting us and cement the bond. Our primal instinct continuously drawing us together over and over and over again.
He will wonder why he still has feelings. Why he is constantly drawn to me. Why he has an obsession and possessiveness about me. His soul warring with his mind. So I need to be quick and I wish to no primordial or thing above that this will work.
I wish because hope is a faith in luck and I have no luck. I wish because prayer is a faith in the gods and goddesses and they have never done anything for me. I wish – because wishes go above it all.
It feels like I run for forever and yet I break the edge of the tree line in seemingly no time.
Continuing to run past that exact wishing well I had described and the gazebo next to it.
Past the small groupings of trees and through the space between to the three buildings that make up the extra classrooms.
To the cursing well. To what I wish will be my salvation.
The ornate fountain is huge. Its diameter at least thirty feet and the stone center piece extends a good fifteen feet up. The shower of water falling around like a dome. The stream constant and strong enough that someone could be hiding within and you would never know.
Coming to a stop at the edge, the stone edge only comes up to my hip, but within it’s bottomless – unlike the wishing well. Once made, you cannot take back your curse. Not unless you were to continue swimming as far as you can below until you simply die there.
It’s not all bottomless though. There are ledges and steps throughout, though they shift and move so actually finding them is the issue.
I take my hat off and start pulling my crewneck off. Dropping both and my MP3 player beside my feet, then I start toeing off my shoes and socks.
Despite it being called the cursing well and looking like a dark pit from hell, these waters are the safest anywhere. The only thing residing are curses, but they do nothing to you until you make one. And to make a curse, the first step is getting in.
The air bites into my exposed skin but I welcome it in because it cools the burning of my scars.
I’m betting on the fact that it’s a school day tomorrow and freezing outside right now for everyone being in doors.
There shouldn’t be a reason for anyone to be out, so therefore there shouldn’t be a reason anyone sees my scars.
Unless, of course, they’re like me and wanting to make a curse.
Pulling down my leggings, I drop them beside everything else and then grip the stone edge. Shivers race up my spine as I swing my leg over and dip it into the water. If I thought it was freezing out here, the water is a death-stilling cold.
Gritting my teeth together, I don’t think and fall in. Letting the frozen depths swallow me whole.
There’s always a chance it won’t work. Just as not all wishes come true, the same is for curses. But until I find a permanent solution to ridding my soul of this body, it’s the next best thing.
I swim down and down and down. I swim until my body goes numb and I can barely make my limbs function. I swim until my lunges are ready to explode. I swim until I’m able to make my curse.