Chapter 35 #4
It’s her voice, as well as her words. Words repeated when I was a little girl, her hands gently cupping mine, her long, delicate fingers encasing my palm protectively.
Words, whispered like magic, while we pretended to blow life into a tiny, invisible flame.
I fall into the memory, feeling her soft hair brush against my cheek. her arms providing me with the only safety I ever knew, trapped in the nightmare of our home.
“Softly. Gently. Perfect. Just like that, my little ember.”
I see her now, kneeling across from me, her knees touching mine, our hair curtaining our faces, and a secret, knowing smile on her lips.
“It’s there, but it’s small. Only you can make it grow. Only you can bring it to life.”
Her Omega perfume swirls around me until she’s all I can smell.
The scent of home. The scent of stories told in whispers and giggles, long afternoons spent gazing at the sunlight peeking through the glittering fronds under our Willow tree.
Our place. The only place where we could hide from all the pain and fear and shouting.
“Yes. You know what to do. It’s time now, my sweet girl.”
Her mouth moves, urging me, encouraging me as only she can. Filling me with confidence. Filling me with strength. Her voice warps and changes until it no longer sounds like hers at all.
It sounds like mine.
“Let it burn.”
The air around me ripples like heat on summer asphalt, pulsing with static electricity and the smell of ozone.
I can see Vae’s mouth moving, but I can’t hear him.
I lean forward as the floor begins to shake beneath my palms. The stones vibrate. The walls quiver. My own bones shake like a chord struck too hard. The bottles of water tremble violently until they fall, rolling into the wall.
The air splits with a sharp crack of thunder. But it’s not thunder from the sky.
It’s inside. In here, with us.
The ancient wooden beams above us groan a deep, protesting sound that resonates from everywhere at once.
Then, with a moaning snap, they splinter apart and explode.
Shards of wood tear through the room like needle-sharp shrapnel.
I watch them fly through the air, soaring in a determined arc in every direction.
I know, intuitively, that if I wished it, they’d shred through everything in their path.
I don’t flinch, or scream, or cry. I’m not afraid. I know, with that same calm certainty, that whatever this is won’t harm me.
And as much as I want to hate him, as much as he’s hurt me, it won’t wound Vae, either.
The debris curves around us like we’re two eyes of the storm, protected by something inside that’s angry, but not malicious. I feel it coursing through me—fire and lightning at once, echoes of power zapping through my veins and coursing through my blood.
It’s destruction when I want it to be. It’s release when I need it to be.
It’s beautiful chaos.
Then… silence.
There are no voices or movements. Just a high-pitched ringing that makes me wonder if I’m breathing too hard, or not at all.
Vae rises cautiously from his crouched position.
He’s covered in dust and pale ash, shaking splinters of wood and debris out of his hair and clothing.
His knuckles are white, and his mouth is slightly parted like he wants to speak but has no idea what to say.
He keeps his gaze trained on me warily, like I’m a bomb that might go off.
Again.
The flame in my chest flickers one last time. Above me, in response, the lights do the same. Then, like a dying ember that’s run out of fuel, it gutters.
The warm numbness bathing me dissipates like grains of sand through my fingers, until there’s nothing left but confusion and a strange sense of loss.
The fire’s still there, though, and I now understand that it’s never truly gone out. All those times when I thought I was broken and empty, that flame had been there. Watching.
Waiting for something to burn.
With the numbness and warmth gone, my body feels a thousand times heavier than normal. Every ache and pain feels magnified. I feel empty. My bones hurt, my head is fuzzy, and I’m so thirsty I might have begged for water.
But there’s no begging in this house. Begging gets you nowhere.
I slump to the side and curl into the fetal position, too exhausted to move. Something warm and sticky tracks over my lips, and the smell of copper and iron fills my nose.
Vae is crouched in a defensive position. His beautiful eyes are trained on me and full of accusation.
“What the fuck are you?” He whispers.
Not, ‘What was that?’ Not, ‘What just happened?’ Not, ‘Are you hurt?’
He asks me the one question I’ve been asking myself since I saw the scorch marks on the floor this morning.
What am I?
I smile sadly, my lashes fluttering closed. “I don’t know,” I murmur.
My fingers curl into the hard floor, and distantly, I hear the scrape of his boots over the stone floor. The door squeaks open and slams shut.
I gladly let the darkness take me.
The sun beats down from above, pressing against my closed eyelids. The air is warm and dry, and a breeze flutters through my hair. I can smell the crisp scent of pine, and my heart lifts with hope.
The way the dirt feels under my hands and the way the breeze feels on my skin is so reminiscent of the meadow that I’m sure I’ve found my way back to Caelan.
Please, let me be back with him.
When I open my eyes, I realize quickly that this isn’t the meadow. I’m lying on a path in the woods on a softly sloping hill. There are trees everywhere, the sun shining through the branches and leaves, casting shadows over my skin, the grass, the ground.
Slowly, I sit up, taking stock of my body. I’m still in my clothes. Still barefoot.
Standing, I brush dirt off the back of my pants and spin in a slow circle. A bird chirps on a branch above me, bringing a legit army smile to my face.
It’s been weeks since I’ve been outside.
I peer through the leaves, trying to get a better look at the bird. It’s not quite a bluebird.
It’s smaller, more vivid, with obsidian-black eyes and cobalt feathers that shimmer faintly in the light.
I’ve never seen anything like it.
It flutters to the ground near my feet and chirps again, tilting its head curiously. Its chirp sounds almost like a flute.
“Hello,” I murmur, crouching down.
It hops closer, feathers fluttering, then, without warning, flies up and lands gracefully on my shoulder.
I laugh, startled. “Alright then. I suppose if I did get kicked out, I at least have a friend to keep me company while I try to find a town.”
Nothing looks familiar, but that doesn’t surprise me. I’ve never been off HQ’s grounds before.
I can’t remember anything that happened after I made the beams in the attic explode. It makes sense, I suppose, that they’d throw me out in the woods and be done with me.
It’s the only reason I can think of to explain why I’m out here.
I set out with quiet determination. I don’t know where I am exactly, but I know one thing. I have to figure out how to get back to Caelan.
As I walk, the sun beats down on my shoulders, and the wind whispers through the trees.
It feels so similar to the meadow, right down to the oddness of the too-perfect dirt beneath my feet. It’s a vivid brown, not a rock or pebble to be found. Even the leaves are perfectly symmetrical, untouched by time or rot.
After about twenty minutes, the feeling that something is off has only grown more intense.
“This is stupid,” I whisper to myself. “This feels too real to be a dream.”
I bite my bottom lip, looking around, trying to figure out where I am. All I can see are trees and more trees.
The bird chirps again, expectantly.
I sigh. “Alright, fine.” Lifting my hand, I watched as it flits from my shoulder to my fingers, then trills.
Speaking to it feels oddly normal. Natural, even.
I should be able to speak to the bird. Shouldn’t I?
“We are going to follow this path for ten more minutes,” I say firmly. “But after that, we’re turning around.”
It zips around my head in a tight circle, then resumes its perch on my shoulder.
A few minutes later, I round a bend in the path. A large cave looms ahead, its shadowed mouth carved directly into the hillside.
At this point, I’m weirdly calm.
And increasingly sure I’m not really here.
This isn’t real life, or one of the normal, hazy dreams that fade upon waking. It’s one of those too-real dreamscapes like I shared with Caelan. My body’s in the attic, but my mind and soul have somehow been transported here.
So, with that figured out and nothing else to do, I keep walking. After all, I’ll wake up eventually, and who knows what kind of hell I’ll be facing once the other Alphas hear what happened.
I try to replay the events in the attic, but my mind is oddly disconnected. The memories slip through my hands like water, and I have the strangest feeling that wherever I am, it’s preventing me from concentrating on anything except this place.
The moment I step inside the cave, the air around me becomes wet, thick, and heavy.
The temperature drops significantly. Even stranger is that despite it being pitch black, I can still see almost perfectly.
More proof that this isn’t normal.
A few more steps in and I’m ankle deep in water that’s still as stone and clear as glass.
The silt on the bottom is soft like silk between my toes.
The bird gives one last happy chirp and nuzzles its beak into my neck in farewell. It launches off my shoulder and takes off back the way we came. I watch with an odd sense of melancholy as it soars out of the cavern entrance and disappears into the trees.
“Alright,” I mutter. “Apparently, I’m on my own.”
It’s pointless to turn back now. Another twenty feet in, and the water is up to my knees.
The cave walls are the kind of dark that swallows the shadows. The black is deep and endless, with an odd sensation of falling into something I’ll never crawl out of.