Chapter 6
EVER
We're out the door fourteen minutes later, three packs stuffed with bars, weapons, ammo, canteens and clothes. My hair and body are finally clean. Mostly. I wear Eli’s familiar black T-shirt and baggy pants again after he dumped a couple of buckets of water over my head in a rush to get moving.
Then we left my mother under Coen and Sola’s watch.
Kelter had a point that it would raise suspicion if they went along.
As the only two out of us that already matured and linked, they would tower above everyone else in Caldera, too tall to fit in.
Hours later, gray clouds make up the midday sky and spill a heavy rain over us. A hesitant wind tosses branches about. Thick trunks line the invisible path we walk, shadowing the woods with their heights.
“I’m sick of all this rain,” Sypher complains from Eli’s other side.
Kaleida passes her hands over her soaked white shirt and down to the thighs of her gray pants. “It’s only water.”
Sypher tugs on the cobalt blue fabric between his legs.
“My jumpsuit is chafing.” He still wears the Service Sphere jumpsuit, noticeably tight around his middle, even though he’s no longer a guard after becoming a traitor for helping Eli, like the rest of them.
His steps are rapid to keep pace with Eli’s long strides, and he juggles a tiny brown fur ball from one hand to the other, a rodent-like creature with black teeth and a green tail.
It was on his shoulder for hours without issue, but it’s rattled now, as if it senses the approaching border. “What’s it like in Caldera?”
“Would you at least search for threats while you pretend we don’t have an entire realm out to kill us?” Eli asks.
“Fast,” I say, ignoring Eli and remembering the speeding cars and impatient people in Caldera, back when life revolved around a clock and expectations.
“And mostly pointless. It’s hundreds of miles of pure city surrounded by forests and oceans.
Nobody cares about anyone or anything. And there’s way too many people. Millions.”
“Well, you’ve convinced me,” Kaleida jokes, almost landing a hand on my shoulder before Eli’s glare scares her off. “Sonnet only has ten thousand or so Vaile, I’d guess. It’s mostly land and what’s left of villages with no one in them. Nobody even goes to the realms up north anymore.”
“That’s too many as it is,” Eli grumbles.
“You can’t bring the scarver with you. It’s magical,” Milo says to Sypher, whipping wet locks from his forehead.
Sypher hugs the creature close to his chest. “If we can cross the border, so can Wendell.”
Milo tousels his short hair. “Don’t be surprised if your old blitzer swoops down and eats Wendell for lunch.”
Sypher’s beady brown eyes expand. “She wouldn’t do that.”
Milo shrugs, placating him with a pat on the back.
“You’re quiet.” Kaleida tugs on Kelter’s cuffs.
“I’m enjoying the scenery,” he says dryly.
“Isn’t it nice to get out?” she says with a cheek-bunching smile, pretending to be blissfully unaware of Kelter’s sarcasm as she bumps her shoulder into his. “It’s as if Eli didn’t steal a prisoner, chain up the Centress and turn the realm against us.”
Kelter turns to inspect her beaming face, a light pink shade hiding behind his sparse freckles. But his innocent expression shifts, his brows diving inward. “Shut the fuck up, Eli.”
Kaleida jolts.
“Damn. He didn’t even speak,” Milo says.
Kelter bites his lip, eyes wild, rain dripping from his brows. “Right.”
“What was that about?” I ask, but he looks away. I pull on the chain to get Eli’s attention. “Let go, Eli. I want to talk to Kelt for a minute.”
He turns around. “No.” His darkness spills through the crisp air with the crack of his neck and tightening shoulders. “You stay with me.”
“You won’t let me?”
“He never will,” Kelter answers for him. “He told you over and over that he’ll never let you go, but you don’t have to listen to him.”
I stop. My blood halts and hardens inside me.
He can’t keep doing this. He can’t pull these memories from his head that belong to Eli, to me, moments that were ours.
He can’t claim them as his own, refer to them as if it were his lips on mine, sealing the words between us like a silent promise. I force my insides back to life.
Eli tugs me closer. I make note of how he doesn’t deny Kelter’s claim, not a shake of his head or an eye roll, nothing to set me at ease. Everyone has stopped now, staring at me as though Eli holds me writhing in his fists like Sypher’s wet scarver creature.
“Of course he won’t let me go,” I snap at Kelter. “He doesn’t have me to begin with!” Thunder rolls above us with a satisfying boom.
“Move,” Eli commands, saving me from further scrutiny. The others turn around and walk immediately, except Kelter. Kaleida drags him with her.
Eli hovers near as we walk, and with a look around and over each shoulder, he leans in close to my ear, his voice an instant seduction, his hot breath a spell. “You don’t really believe you could escape me, do you?”
Why must he make me want him like that? He’s impossible to ignore. I catch the breath that left me and rake in anger from every corner of my body. “You don’t really believe you can make me promise to never love you, then try to keep me for yourself, do you?”
“That’s exactly what I’m going to do.”
“You can’t say that. Not when it sounds like you’re serious.”
His voice drops, each word wrapping around my heart, pulling tighter. “And if I am? What if I like knowing you’re right where I left you?”
I stop short and hold my arms out again, wrist bones and cuffs mashed together.
“You want to make me your prisoner again? Then don’t fuck around.
You’ve already got me cuffed. Put me behind bars.
Take my clothes. Throw me to the floor. Give me a damned bucket to pee in, and maybe then I’ll believe you. ”
He looks sick with desire. As though he very much would like to do each and every one of those things to me. And more.
“Do it,” I say, pushing closer into the suffocating, desire-laden air between us.
He nearly jumps out of the way.
“Oh, wait,” I thrust my lower lip out in false concern. “You can’t even touch your little prisoner.”
“Never”—he tightens his grip on the chain, skin stretched over his knuckles, eyes as threatening as his tone—“just you fucking wait.”
I drop to my knees as thunder claps above us. Metal clangs.
“There’s no time for that,” Eli says, pulling on the chain to stand me up again, then stumbling.
My breath falters, and I fall forward.
“Shit,” he mutters.
Kelter shouts an instant later. “Ever!” Footsteps shake the ground, then he’s crouching over me, panting. “H-how?”