Chapter 41 #2
She grabs the front of his shirt and pulls him in closer. He presses her to the counter, his hips and thighs against hers in a long line. His hands are still wet from washing the glasses as he touches the back of her neck, slides his fingers into her hair.
He’s not used to this, just focusing on how he feels as he touches someone.
With Fenn, he was unsure of himself; he read Fenn’s reactions to make sure that everything he did was wanted.
With Rava, he let what she felt crowd out everything else, because it made everything easier to bear.
But here, with Elegy, he can pay attention to himself and what he wants, what he needs—-because it feels like a need, the way he aches for her, the way every touch of her hands prompts the shock of desire.
He relaxes into her, slowing down so he can savor the taste of whiskey on her tongue, the warmth of her body against his.
Hela clears her throat.
Elegy pulls away from the kiss first, her hand coming up to cover her mouth. Theren stays right where he is, catching his breath.
“I guess that answers a question I had,” Hela says. “I’m afraid I have another one, though, before we call it a night.”
“Sorry,” Elegy says tersely, and she slides out from between Theren and the counter. It takes Theren a second to move, for the sake of . . . decency.
“What else?” Elegy says to Hela.
“I kept waiting for a good time for this, but turns out, there’s no good time for a weird plant.” Hela goes over to the desk at the back of the trailer and plucks the burlap from the object it covers, revealing a plant. “Touch one of the leaves, would you?”
It’s unlike anything he’s ever seen, veins of bright color striping each of its leaves, dense as a fern but firm as a prayer plant.
Hela carries it over to the table and sets it down; as it enters the light of the kitchen, it starts to curl into itself.
Hela turns off the overhead light, and it stops, its leaves spreading wide again.
He could swear that it’s stretching toward him, and he stretches back, without thinking, running a fingertip down one of its leaves. The plant shudders a little, then creaks as something unfurls from its center.
A stalk sprouts from the middle of the plant.
It’s like watching a time--lapse video of growth, everything rapidly extending, shifting—-then the end of the stalk bulges, swells—-a flower bud appears and then bursts open.
It’s big and stiff, like an orchid, but it’s symmetrical as a daisy, eight petals with a small, dark green labellum in the center.
“ ‘To find the one who makes it bloom,’ ” Hela says. “ ‘Seek the traitor’s son.’ ”
And then he’s in another place entirely.
When he opens his eyes, he’s standing on soft earth, surrounded by growing things.
The glowing plant is at his feet, bigger and lusher than the one in Hela and Elegy’s kitchen, but hanging overhead are the coin--shaped leaves of a tree that otherwise reminds him of a willow, and beside him is a sharp, spiky bush that reminds him of a thistle. Yet these aren’t plants he knows.
A dark shape catches his eye and he reacts immediately, bracing himself for an attack that doesn’t come.
Instead, the shape materializes into a woman.
She wears a shift dress, black and simple, and her bare arms glow in moonlight that he soon realizes isn’t moonlight.
It comes from a line of light above them that splits the dark sky in half.
The woman, though. She moves toward him and that light stretches across her face, and he knows her like he knows his own reflection. Her nose, narrow at the bridge, is his nose. Her mouth, which gives her a look of resignation, is his mouth.
“Who are you?” he says, and it comes out almost as a gasp, in Talusar.
He can’t feel her reaction to him, and he clings to that fact, because it means they aren’t actually sharing the same space; wherever this is, he hasn’t been transported there in truth, only in his mind. He wonders if this is how it feels to step through a veil.
But though he can’t tell what she’s feeling, he can see that she’s as startled as he is; she wasn’t expecting this, wasn’t expecting him.
“It worked,” she says. “She found you.”
“Who,” he repeats, more firmly this time, “are you.”
“My name is Akara.” Her voice is low and a little raspy, like she’s recently strained it. “And you’re Theren.”
The way she says “Theren” is strange to him—-instead of the th, it almost sounds like she’s pronouncing an s. But it’s still unmistakably his name. She knows his name.
“That’s not an answer,” he says, louder this time, frustrated.
“You know who I am. You can see it. Can’t you?”
And he can—-he doesn’t know if she’s a sister, or a cousin, or some other relative. But he knows that she’s family.
“I can’t tell you all the things you want to know,” she says to him. “But I can tell you to come and find us. Come and find us, and do it soon.”
He can feel the pull back to the trailer, can feel this strange place, this strange woman, disappearing. He tries to hold on to the sight of her, his family, as long as he can, but it’s like trying to hold water in his fingers.
She’s gone, and he’s back in the kitchen, his breaths fast and shallow.