Chapter 18 #2
“Are you sleeping?” I whispered.
Then, at last, he blinked and said slowly, “Too many questions. You’re only allowed one at a time.”
I huffed and decided not to ask any at all from now on. Rather, I leaned over the side of the boat and trailed my fingers through the water, rivulets forming in their wake.
My eyes drifted shut a few more times. Then I began scooping up water and letting it spill from my palm to keep myself awake. We rounded a bend, and the breeze picked up to a gust. I shivered once.
Then again.
I brought my arms back into the boat to wrap them tight around myself.
The boat creaked when the equilibrium shifted.
With the surface beneath me changing its balance, I dared to turn my chin slightly and watch Soren approach.
He settled right next to me with his back to the opposite side of the boat. He didn’t lean back, though, but forward.
And I had nowhere to go.
Soren rubbed my arms with both his hands, still not looking at me, his eyes fixed on the jungle beyond. I think he meant to warm me up, but it only brought on another shiver. Not from the cold of his hands—maybe from the warmth of them.
I swallowed hard and closed my eyes to stop myself from studying him. I buried my head in my knees and mumbled, “How long have you known?”
As long a pause as possible.
Then Soren responded with a low, “Hm?”
I raised my head until the tip of my nose rested on my right knee, peeking at him through the curtain of my tangled hair.
He wasn’t watching the forest anymore.
His eyes were on me. On my arms, now scaly with chill, his touch only making it worse.
“How long have you known about The Tower?” I spoke up this time. “And Earth still existing?”
His hands stopped. His gaze sharpened.
The swirling blacks were back, and I squirmed under their searching.
“Since birth.”
I sat up straight. My mouth hung open, and I had to move my arms to peel the strands of hair from my lips.
It was too late when I realized my shifting had made Soren drop his hands. But then he reached over and grabbed the sweatshirt.
“I was born out here,” he continued. I hadn’t heard his voice that soft before. He scrunched the sweatshirt so the hole for the head was lined up with the bottom opening. Then he slipped it over the top of my head.
I pulled back and started to shove my arms through the sleeves on my own.
“You were born outside of The Tower? How?” My next question came out one word at a time, like I was trying not to sound like an idiot. “You mean like the old way?”
His laugh was surprisingly loud for how close he still was. Then he stared at me, his eyes scanning my face as if scanning for something particular.
I guess he didn’t find it because then he leaned back again and turned his gaze to the jungle with a grimace. Maybe he would find what he was looking for out there.
We were quiet again as the boat drifted down the canal.
My next yawn was the loudest yet.
“Sorry.”
“Apologies are useless,” he said curtly, still not looking at me.
Then softer again, “It’ll take a while. You should lie down.” He unfolded his arms and ran a hand along his thigh.
I watched the motion, transfixed.
Then my brows shot up.
He expects me to put my head there?!
I shook my head too vehemently and turned to face away from him, looking over the side of the boat again. I stacked my arms on the rim and rested my cheek on my forearms so that he could only see the back of my head.
“How did you know where we were earlier?” I slurred, each word slower than the last. He’d found Veda and me as if he’d been tracking us all along. We’d only left my room for maybe seven minutes before he showed up.
I think he might have said something along the lines of, “I always know where you are, Xiao Ying,” but the nature sounds and the hum of my slow, steady pulse drowned it out.
I let my eyes close for just a moment.
“We’re almost there,” Soren’s voice came from far away, approaching this time rather than fading.
Cool fingers combed against my scalp, somehow not getting strangled in my C1 hair that would have sent Astrid into a coma if she saw how knotted it was.
I scrunched my eyes tighter and then blinked them open. Another yawn.
One of the most annoying feelings in the world was a yawn cut short, but annoyance was the least of my problems.
My eyes snapped open.
I had shifted during my yawn, and the solid yet somehow comfortable surface under my cheek was now at the back of my head.
That surface clearly wasn’t my forearms anymore.
I stared straight up at dark, melted eyes, shadowed by a mess of black hair.
There was nothing readable in Soren’s expression except that he was staring right back.
The hand that had been massaging my scalp was his. It now rested somewhere between my chest and my neck. The mark I’d borne my entire life thrummed beneath the weight of it.
Had it been his voice that woke me?
He tilted his chin about two degrees to the left—his left, not mine.
The shadows danced to shield his right eye, obscuring it from view, and silver sprang to life in the dark pool of his left eye.
The only way I could describe it: swaths of sheer fabric, millions of layers.
Black and silver performing on a stage, their non-quite-color quality forming a symphony more beautiful than any other hue could offer.
I was frozen in his stare.
No breathing.
No pulse.
But then his thumb skated against my skin.
That was my undoing.
This man’s touch could destroy galaxies and build universes.
It caused my tongue to slip out between my lips and curl slightly against the bottom one. That’s it. I didn’t swipe it left or right. It barely even grazed my top lip. Then it was back in my mouth.
The silver in his eye took flight, fighting for dominance.
The slightest tick in his jaw was my warning.
“I’ll bite it.”
Heat.
Then an icy chill.
I sprang up and scooted back, praying I hadn’t left a drool stain on his leg and that his earlier threat was a joke. I wiped my mouth and prepared an apology, but he did that thing where he looked like he was laughing in his head. Only a breath of air puffed out. No sound.
I then forgot how to say sorry in any language that had ever existed.
Relief flooded in when he turned toward a dock and waved at Veda, who waved back wildly beside a boy who had to be related to her. They were nearly twins, minus the scar.
Oh, right.
He’d said we were almost there.
Behind Veda and the boy lay a field of weeds and wildflowers, surrounded by thick forest, interrupted only by an ornate stone building with steeples and glowing stained-glass windows.
“Come on, slowpokes!” Veda shouted.
“How did she get here first?” I asked as Soren rowed us right up next to the dock. My tongue was still in my mouth, so I figured might as well use it while I could. I even dared to lick my lips again while he wasn’t looking—too focused on the rope.
Another question buried itself in his unanswered-questions graveyard, where all mine apparently went to die.
He concentrated on winding a rope around the cleat. The lazy, precise movement of his hand suggested his thoughts were somewhere else entirely.
I doubted any cardiologist would be able to explain why my heart skipped again when he turned to me with an outstretched hand and one foot already on the dock.
“Veda can give you a tour and show you your room,” he said.
His hand was cold as usual when my fingers slid into it. His other arm reached behind me to lightly take hold of my waist. I braced all of my weight into my left leg to push myself up onto the dock and avoid giving him the chance to catch me in my clumsiness again.
I had both feet on the dock and tried to pull my hand back when his other arm slid in and caged me. Both hands were on me now as he leaned in, whispering in my ear:
“No sneaking around tonight, Xiao Ying.”
My tongue was still in my mouth. I’d kept it there, and he hadn’t bitten it off as previously promised.
But he’d whispered a warning that felt slightly like a promise and more dangerous than dismemberment.
His hands were gone before he’d even finished with that blasted nickname.
And as weird as it was, his utterance of that warning might have been the spark that ignited the current rippling through my nervous system when he walked away, brushing past Veda and the boy without a word to them or a glance back at me.
He’d given me an idea, one that thrilled me with the chance to disobey him.
The electricity of anticipation came alive in every cell.
What if I do? And what if he catches me?
I inhaled. Balled my fists. Set my teeth. Exhaled.
Training. I’m here for training. And biding my time.
None of that includes baiting the scary man with death in his eyes.
I stalked toward Veda with a smile that probably reached my mouth and eyes but nowhere else, because my brain had already started the bullet points.
Kill Azazel.
Kill Soren.
Get the hell out of here.
And go where, though?
I sure as hell couldn’t go back to The Tower.
Guess I was an Earthling now.
A murderous Earthling.
How appropriately nostalgic.