Chapter 24
EVER
Kelter returns, still barefoot and shirtless. I slap my hand over my knifeless pocket again, feeling empty and defenseless, but I can’t imagine shoving it through that tan skin of his anyway. I don’t know how to hate him. My heart says to keep him close, but that’s another thing I can’t trust.
It’s night, though the Underbroke looks the same any time of day. I can only tell because the cold seeps through the walls and into me. My visions wear on me, and my arms and legs are sore, as if stretched beyond their limits, making the cold an even more brutal assault.
I sit on the floor of the dirt room, an impressive ten-by-ten-foot space for such a special guest as Kelter.
Aside from the four light stones in the corners, the only other brightness comes from a large entryway leading to a passage I haven’t been able to explore, not with Fable’s frequent march back and forth.
The hide-covered walls of the room curve into the ceiling where water gathers and drops down occasionally on my back or scalp in icy splatters.
Kelter brought me here this morning after the unfortunate introduction to Zandrite, let me sleep half the day then disappeared.
And even after everything, my heart itched for his return without explanation, as if it might not keep beating without him.
An actual physical threat. He should be the one fearing his life after what he’s done.
“I couldn’t find any bars for you. They don’t eat those in the Underbroke. Zandrite makes all the Half Links eat raw meat like him,” he says.
It’s not much of a greeting, but my entire body relaxes with his arrival when it should be running. Food is the last thing on my mind. I push on my temples and look up at him, searching for words.
He examines me. “You grew.”
“What?”
“I’ve only been gone a couple of hours, and you’re at least a half inch taller,” he says.
I grip my knees, squeezing my thumbs against the corduroy ridges. “That’s ridiculous. Why did you come here, Kelt? Tell me what’s going on. I came to bring you home, not get stripped in front of a nasty fur-man and thrown in a cave.”
He stares down at my bloody shirt and gray pants dusted with dirt, toenails near black with filth. “What did you expect when Eli told you I was at the Underbroke? Didn’t he tell you that I need you here with me?”
“No. I’m here because I thought you needed a friend after what happened with him.”
“There’s so much you don’t know.” He drops down in front of me, knees spread, and takes my cheeks into his hands.
He’s warm, and his touch reaches right through me, quelling the cold. Something awful wakes up inside me. Something like longing, like desire.
But not for him.
He only stirs it up. But slathered on top of that awkwardness is the need to protect, to defend.
To keep him. Like how I came to believe we’d be friends no matter what, but stronger.
So much stronger. It powers through my veins.
Even worse than that, an urge comes on full strength, like every minute I spent waiting for Eli’s touch, a hundred times over.
I gasp at the rush, the tightening of my breasts, the full body flush. Suddenly Eli seems so far away. I try to hide the storm inside me. “Then tell me, Kelter. Tell me everything.”
“I’m not ready.” He rubs his thumbs over what must be the rosiest of cheeks and moves his hands to my shoulders, considering me. Maybe he can tell I’m imploding.
I wince at the pressure on my wounds and push him away. “You sucked dripping blood from raw meat. What else could you possibly be hiding from me that’s worse than that?” I shiver. From the cold. And the memory.
He looks over his shoulder at the cave entrance. “To the back wall. Go.”
I scoot back until my spine hits dead animal skin. Kelter nearly sits on top of me with how close he gets.
“I know how you’re feeling right now. I promise it will be okay,” he says.
“You have no idea what I’m feeling. Start talking.”
He controls his response with a twist of his neck, a deep breath through his nose. “I came to Sonnet for a cure.”
“A cure for what?”
“My cravings.”
I reach for him, a hand on each shoulder. He trembles at my touch and bends his head to the side, capturing my hand against his cheek. Goosebumps ripple over my exposed skin.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
Tears roll down his cheeks, and he glides his hands over my arms, caressing the bumps. “Let me hold you. Let me warm you up, Ever. Let me do it differently this time. All of it.”
And it could be that itch in my heart or the throbbing need to be touched or that fractured look on his face, or maybe the cold in my bones that makes a tiny part of me want to say yes.
But I don’t. Not with all he’s done. Not with Eli tugging at my heart.
Not with every other part of me shrieking no.
I’m pulled to Kelter like never before, but still, I’d rather be wrapped up in my own darkness than in his arms, as familiar as they once were.
I swallow shards of glass with the no that leaves my mouth. And I cry. Quiet sobs while he rubs my back.
And I hate how the touch comforts me, like it always has. But even worse is the warmth that travels down my spine and around to my core. Because it’s Kelter. And I don’t want him like that. My body is out of control, my emotions in no better shape.
“Are you Emerson?” I ask, giving in to the nagging question on top of everything else. “Did you kill a little girl?”
He lifts my head and looks into my eyes with all those colors in his, gently clasping my neck with two hands.
I suck in a shallow breath. Maybe I should fear this man.
“Yes.”
I hold back the thousand questions trying to burst from me.
“But I need you to know I’m still me. I always will be,” he says. “None of this changes who I am.”
I nod.
Kelter lowers his shoulders, his guard. “She wasn’t just some girl.
Her name was Allora, and she bit her nails when she got mad and cut holes in the knees of all her jumpsuits so they’d give her new ones.
And she had a birthmark on the back of her hand that she rubbed while she listened in class.
And her eyes were the kind of blue that made them the only thing I remember about her face.
” He forces himself to continue with a slow breath.
“It started with small creatures. I’d suck their blood after killing them.
It kept me under control for years. But it all changed. ”
He can’t stop there. “Keep going.”
He sighs, heavy lashes pulling his gaze down.
“I was swimming in the lake with the other kids, and Allora climbed on my back. I still remember her laugh, how her hair stuck to my skin. How close I felt to her when I sank down onto my knees. Until her head was underwater. How I held her legs around me. How she tried to get away. I remember the scratches she left on my neck. The way she pulled my hair. How the other kids played, oblivious to the life I was taking. The bubbles that popped against my shoulder when she let her last breath go. I killed her. And I’d never felt so alive, so close to anyone before. ”
I’m so alive after dying—my own thought, so many times over. Is it all that different from his?
A whole damn mountain crams its way into my throat.
I force it down over and over, swallow after swallow, sharpening into precipices and cliffs.
Until I can breathe again, as painful as it is.
Until I can speak. And maybe I shouldn’t ignore the murder he just described, but I do.
I turn to what I know, to fury. “Who the fuck chooses Kelter as a fake name?”
He laughs, and it fades into a warm, freckle-framed smile. “Me, I guess.”
Feet shuffle outside the cave entrance. Fable sticks his head inside, a gut-grinding grin on his face and grimy hair that must repel water at this point.
Kelt smashes his body into me, knocking me to the floor and crushing me beneath him. “Can’t you see I’m busy?” He thrusts his hips against my balled-up figure, blocking me from Fable’s sight and letting him believe exactly as he intends.
But with all the feelings I’m fighting, this doesn’t help.
Kelter slams into me again, grunting and groaning, louder and louder until Fable leaves, satisfied with how he takes me.
And I can finally speak. “Get off me.”
He helps me sit up. “Sorry, are you okay? He was sent to watch us. I don’t want him to think he can take you away. Zandrite’s messed-up. He forces the Half Links to be with him whenever he wants.”
“Why would they choose this life?”
“It’s not fatal if your link dies, but it can feel like it. And it never gets better.”
I make squiggles in the dirt, avoiding his face. “Did he force you to be with him? Is that why he gave you a throne?”
“No. I’m an exception.”
“Why?”
Kelt puffs up his cheeks and lets the air whistle out slowly. “I guess he took a liking to me. That’s all.”
I sit with his obvious lie for a minute, letting it fester then setting it aside. “Why’d you do it, Kelt? Tell me why you killed her.”
He rolls his head back, staring at the dirt ceiling. “I have a physical need to connect. I was born with it, I guess. It’s in my blood, and it’s all I know. It builds up inside me until I’m rabid and can only be calmed with certain things.”
“Like what?”
“Like drinking blood, another life literally inside me. But I hate it.”
I pull his chin down and look straight into his eyes, letting him know it’s safe to tell me more.
“And taking a life,” he adds.
“How does that create a connection?”
He seals his lips, resisting for the longest time before speaking. “How much more intimate can you get with someone than being there for their last breath? For causing it?”
“Well you could fuck them!” I say, pissed at his words, at the thought. And how much sense it makes to me.
“Yeah. That’s the third option.”
“But I’ve known you for over a year, Kelt.
We spent every day together. I never saw you sleeping around in Caldera.
Or killing anyone. And I’m pretty damn sure you weren’t drinking blood either.
” But even as I say it, my mind returns to the blood I wiped from his face while the Centress kept us as prisoners, how it seemed to have no source, no injury or cut.
Just talking about all this makes my urges stronger, nearly unbearable. I push him away with a hand on his chest, but his heat floods my fingers, traveling up my arm and into every inch of me.
“I’m still your Kelt. I haven’t changed.
That’s why you never suspected anything.
It comes out when I don’t have what I need to control it.
And I swear, I never imagined I’d be capable of killing again, even though that’s the only thing that takes away the cravings for a helpful amount of time.
” His eyes are desperate, his words frantic.
“All of this was shut down for years while I was outside Sonnet’s magic—at least at first. That’s why I was sent to Caldera, so my cravings wouldn’t take over anymore.
My mother got the Centress to agree. They’d already tried desensitizing me to death by killing animals and older adults in front of me every night.
You know, so I wouldn’t crave it so much. But it didn’t work.”
Oh Kelt. Compassion crushes me. Confusion rattles me. And finally…” Then why would you want to come back? What’s worth deceiving me for a year and handing me off to a kidnapper?” I can’t hide the anger, nor do I want to. “I mean your brother!”
He rests his thumb on my lower lip, as if affection were appropriate. “I don’t want to be like this. My mother told me I could come back when it was time to link, that it was the ultimate connection and would cure me.”
“You came back to Sonnet to link,” I whisper. All of this so he could be cured of his cravings. He’ll get his happily ever after. No wonder he was willing to throw our friendship away, if it was even real. “But why come to the Underbroke? Why Zandrite? How did you know about this place?”
“Adult Vaile are aware it exists. They all swear they won’t sink to this level until their link dies, and they’re suffering. But as a kid I didn’t know, and no one told me. I found it in Eli’s memories of past lives. He’s spent a lot of time here.”
I narrow my eyes, thinking of the arena, the Trophies. “Why would he come here?”
“That’s for him to tell you.”
“Fine. Why are you here?”
He bites his lip. “I came to see if Zandrite would separate Eli and me.”
“Why would he do that for you?”
“I thought it was worth a chance.”
“Look at what you’ve done, Kelt! He thinks you’ll share me with him.”
“I only let him believe that.”
I shove him again. “How could you be so stupid? He’s a god—if you believe in that shit. How are you going to simply not give him what he wants?”
“I didn’t know he was going to act like this, but I have hope that it’ll work out.”
“Fuck hope. And fuck you. I’m not even yours to share.”
“I’d never do that. Sharing you with Eli is already enough.” He hugs me tight and kisses my forehead.
I punch him in the throat.