Chapter 16 #2
The Most Eligible Bachelor in Everden and Forcing the Bond were two things I wished I could take back. It had to be uncomfortable for him to have me pressed to his side, yet another eighteen-year-old girl obsessed with him. A groupie, as Vyra had said.
And in a way I was.
Didn’t want to be. But I was. Ever since the Blessing.
“Why did you steal it?” he asked.
“I didn’t mean to,” I said.
“Not the part I’m concerned about.”
I wanted to die at the questioning look he gave me. I didn’t take Forcing the Bond because I wanted to seal the Counterpart bond with him. I took it because it was the one Counterpart text in Briary’s that wasn’t written by Helen.
“I don’t want to bond,” I said. “The text I really wanted was Countering Your Counterpart. But then I saw . . .” I looked down at my lap. “This was the next best option,” I mumbled.
Leland’s thumb twitched against mine, prompting me to look at him. After a breath, he said, “The bond won’t seal if you don’t trust me. It’s why I’ve been lying to you. And judging by the way you were willing to let yourself disappear rather than touch me, it’s working out the way I planned.”
“There were multiple reasons I didn’t want to touch you.”
“Yeah? Why don’t you tell me them?”
“You’re with Vyra.” Why that was the first thing I went with, I didn’t know.
“I’m not with Vyra.”
“You had her lip gloss on your mouth.” I glanced across his body, at his left hand propped on the arm of the couch. “Her initial’s on your ring finger.”
“This?” Leland lifted the finger, bending it at the knuckle suggestively. He flexed his finger in and out. In and out. In and —
I reached over and put my hand on top of his, a motion that would’ve flattened it if I had a solid body. “Stop doing that. You’re giving my circulatory system ideas.”
He laughed, softly, then gazed at me for several moments with intense eye contact.
“Tattoo’s not for Vyra. Vyra,” he said, taking his time with her name, “knows we’re not in a relationship.
We only — doesn’t matter. It’s not going to last past August.” Again, that mouth twitch.
“Should you be this jealous when you ‘don’t like me right now’? ”
“I’m not.” I blew out a breath and waved at my form.
“Other parts of me have other ideas.” I really did want to be anywhere but in this closed-off alley with him, thigh-to-thigh and holding hands, even if it only felt like air to him.
“It’s the withdrawals. I get this possessive feeling and start burning.
Then when I burn for too long, I become . . .” I indicated my vague form again.
Leland stiffened. “You’ve done this before?”
“Once.” I didn’t realize the first time it happened, but now I understood.
The disembodied feeling I’d gotten when Jaxan told me Leland was at the brothel.
That was this. I’d briefly bled into the ether.
“Last night, Jaxan told me where you were.” I winced, remembering the unbearable heat and the urge to scream myself to mist. “I was home alone when it happened. No one saw.”
A saddened look passed through his eyes.
He was unnaturally still, and his chest was visibly tight.
I thought he was going to explain where he was last night, or tell me it wasn’t true, that he wasn’t at a brothel.
But by the time he dipped his head to study my form, whatever I’d glimpsed in his eyes was gone.
“I wish I had been there,” he said. His words rang true, but it also sounded like he regretted saying them. “I would have helped you deal with him.”
I shook my head dismissively. “It’s fine.” I glanced at my stomach, realizing I’d lost some of my color and was blinking like I was going to burn out again. “It wasn’t this bad.”
To escape the warmth erupting behind my rib cage at the knowledge of how closely he was paying attention to me, I stared at the wall sconces.
The flames seemed to rise higher and dance with a new vigor.
And just to feel like I had some power, I imagined it was my stare making them dance, that I was controlling them.
“Is it?” asked Leland. “Is it really fine?” He’d taken a breath before the word “fine” like he didn’t believe me.
I shrugged at him and shifted on the couch. “Are you asking because that sounded like a lie? Or are you in training to be my therapist?”
“Neither.” His eyebrows lowered in a puzzled expression. “I’m the last person who should be counseling you, and nothing you’ve ever said has sounded like a lie.”
“Yeah, well, that’s because I always tell the truth. I haven’t lied in eight months. I thought about it, once, when I was trying to figure out if you were my Counterpart, but I couldn’t make myself do it.”
“Will you?”
“Will I what?”
“Lie to me.”
“No.” I shook my head. I started to pull my hand away, too, but then I remembered I needed to hold on to him in order to come back from the ether. “What’s the point? Aren’t our gifts supposed to cancel out?”
“They are, but we don’t know how yet. It could mean you can’t lie to me. Or it could mean you can, and I can’t detect when you do.”
In the low light of the alley, he looked deeply tan, and his eyes blazed with even more magnetism than usual. My heart rate accelerated, probably because I was remembering my last lie, going to a “friend’s house,” then turning around and falling asleep at Gray’s.
“I don’t lie,” I said with a lump in my throat.
“One lie, then we’ll be even.”
“I would have to tell multiple lies for us to be even.”
Leland’s mouth quirked in amusement that he quickly pressed his lips together to hide. I narrowed my eyes at him. I didn’t want to do it, but if his gift neutralized mine, then at least no one’s fate would change.
“I . . .” If he was going to make me lie, I was going to make him wait for it. “Loved seeing you with Vyra today.”
I gasped as a shock zapped me between the ribs, causing me to reflexively clutch my upper abdomen, where I pressed my hand into the cavity where the electric jolt had hit. It must have been the same sensation Leland had said “didn’t feel good,” the one he got whenever I heard him lying.
“You did?” he egged on.
“Mm. Couldn’t be happier about it.” I coughed at the strange feeling in my chest, all the while giving him a scrutinizing look, because out of all the times he’d lied to me, not once had he shown any signs of having a physical reaction to it.
It would be like getting stung by a bee and not flinching.
As I patted my chest, I asked, “Is there a trick? Something you do that makes you feel the zap less?”
“If you want my honest answer” — he stared deep into my eyes — “yes.” His gaze dropped to my arm curled around my abs. “Put your hand back on mine when you’re ready.”
I let my hand fall on his, which was still resting on his leg, thinking this had something to do with the trick he’d mentioned. But by the time I realized it didn’t, Leland had changed the subject before I could bring it up again.
“You can’t lie to me,” he stated, “which means we still don’t know how your gift neutralizes mine.”
“I can hear when you lie,” I offered.
“Yeah, but it doesn’t stop me from truth-telling. It’s more like a” — he laughed, not happily — “like the Goddess is pushing us to trust each other.”
“Is that how the bond seals?”
He looked surprised for a second, then said, “You don’t know about Counterparts . . .”
I shook my head. “Not a lot.” I could have told him about the children’s book, but with Forcing the Bond sitting on the arm of the couch beside him, I worried if I told him much more, he really would think I was obsessed with bonding.
I didn’t think he realized it, but he was running his thumb back and forth over my wrist in a manner of stressed fidgeting.
“Trust is the first part of it,” he said. “There are two ends of the bond that will seal separately. My end. And yours. They don’t have to seal at the same time, and probably won’t. It will happen when we trust each other to fulfill our deepest needs.”
Our deepest needs?
Currently, my deepest need was Leland. For him to give himself to me, for me to stop burning at the thought of sharing him.
“Were you planning to give me your blood?” I asked. “Because, if not, I think we’re safe from it sealing.”
“I know you think that’s what you want,” he laughed. “But it’s usually deeper. A need a witch doesn’t realize they’ve been longing for, because they’ve already adapted their life around not having it. The need to stop burning for me is just magic.”
I felt a twitch in my chest, a movement big enough to make me question what he’d said. Leland showed no signs of having lied about anything and continued talking.
“Our magic, joined together, makes us whole. I’m yours. Or part of you, magically speaking. That’s why you’re burning for me. I’m dealing with it too.”
“You are?”
“Somewhat. Mine’s not as painful, because I can spellcast. Your blood has no spellcasting magic yet. You need me like water. I need you like a warm piece of bread, only it’s the third time they refilled the breadbasket . . .”
And you don’t want me.
“I want you,” he said, “but I’m too full.”
Full.
Not available.
I shouldn’t have cared, and maybe it wasn’t even the real me who did. But it would’ve been nice, less humiliating, to hear we were on the same page, both struggling with the Counterpart bond in the same ways. Only we weren’t. We weren’t. I needed to accept that.
I still hadn’t solidified, though I had stopped blinking for a battery change, and no longer felt like I was turning to mist. I was a shadow version of myself, something you’d expect to find standing in your doorway after coming out of a dream. Not me. But, for the time being, not leaving.
“How did you know about etherizing?” I asked. “Is it an Allwitch thing?” To my knowledge, it wasn’t. But maybe he knew something I didn’t.