30. The End of an Alliance #4
My magic wavers.
“Do what?”
“Hurt me. I can feel, through the bond, how much you want to.”
“Really,” I say, my skin writhing. I wish I could rip it right off me.
He’s motionless. “Show me what you can do without me.”
I shouldn’t entertain this.
I know that.
But the magic is taking over. My back is arching. My hands are behind me, flat against the tub. The bubbles around me are dissipating, like even they can’t stand to be near me. The short distance between us seems to shrink further. I can see every droplet of water on his smooth, tanned skin.
I keep my eyes open. Watch, as he closes his. His neck jerks. His nostrils flare.
He doesn’t look like he’s in pain. He looks…
I stop abruptly, the magic plummeting.
He opens his eyes. The sight of them makes me flinch.
“You will need to do better than that, Ara. That was a sting compared to what they used to do to me.”
“But, last night…” I say, remembering how he’d cried out.
His fingers twitch, flicking water. “You cannot compare what you can do alone to what our power can do when it is combined.”
I let myself contemplate that.
“Do me,” I find myself saying.
His mouth quirks. “You can’t mean that.”
“I do,” I insist. “I want to get stronger. I…”
I want to know what I’m up against.
“All right,” he murmurs.
His expression hardens. His muscles tighten. They seem even more pronounced.
I wait.
I feel nothing, at first. Then a prickling sensation.
Before, all at once, like a dial was turned – I feel it wholly.
I’m recoiling. Grinding my teeth. My whole body is flat against the tub now. My veins are on fire, my lungs are tight, constricting. It’s like my soul is being split from me.
I last only a few seconds before I can’t take any more.
“Stop,” I rasp.
He doesn’t move. The power holds. Intensifies.
“Drake, stop!”
He seems to shake himself. He blinks. Looks away.
And I’m free. Gasping.
And then I’m wrapping my arms around myself, steadying my breath.
Shame. I feel shame.
“I thought I was stronger than that.”
“You are. You just weren’t tortured the way I was. They gave you the childhood little girls dream about.”
I gape at him. “The childhood little girls dream about? I was injected with your blood, over and over again, for years,” I say, with venom.
I’ve uncrossed my arms, and now they’re flailing.
“Was made to try to hurt prisoners by our mothers. Was starved when I disappointed them. My childhood was just one endless training schedule of how to be a queen. Your queen!” I actually laugh.
Because it's so ridiculous. “I don’t think I’ve ever had a single thought in my head that wasn’t put there by someone else first! ”
I’m so utterly miserable I could start crying again.
I don’t.
Wading to get closer to him, I say, hushed, “You have no idea.”
“Wrong,” he states, stepping forward himself. He bends his head over mine. “I’m the only person who has any idea.”
I glare up at him, unblinking and breathing hard. Waves of emotions crash out of me, into him. I don’t know if he can feel them. He’s dark and immoveable, like the rocks on a shoreline.
And then, under it all – my loathing for him and my shame and my misery and my fear – I feel something else.
My blood rushes to my face.
My toes lift.
I find my voice. Hook it out of my throat. “What are you doing?”
“Trying something.”
My heart pounds. “Stop it. Right now.”
“Why?” he asks, lowering his voice. “What are you feeling?”
“You know what I’m feeling. You’re making me feel it.”
He smiles. “I am making you feel it, but I promise you, I do not know what it is.” He adds, playfully, “Not with certainty, anyway.”
My body shifts. I squeeze my legs tighter together. I’m burning from the effort of not burning.
For him.
“You’re lying.” I accuse him. “You know I’m with someone. You know I loathe you now. This is… You…”
I can’t even find the words. I’m so disgusted by him. So livid.
He is calm as the night sky.
The night sky, which is his favourite colour.
It’s also, often, the colour of his eyes.
Insanity. This is insanity.
He releases me. The emotion subsides, as if sinking into the water, and I dive over to the step within the bath.
“Ara,” his voice says.
Climbing out, I spit, “Never speak to me again. This alliance is over.”
“Alliance?” he asks, with what sounds like a sneer. “I thought we were calling it a friendship.”
“You ruined it.”
I throw my clothes on, not caring that my body’s still wet and my clothes are sticking to me. This stupid place, with no towels.
“Ara,” he says again, softer this time.
Ignore him. Just ignore him.
I manage a single step across the tiles before his voice comes again and makes me stop. It’s dark, slippery, like a spill of oil. “Whatever you were feeling, you were already feeling it. I just asked you to feel it more.”
The word rips out of me. “Liar.”
I keep walking. I’ve never left a place so fast in my life.
Never hated a person as much, either.
If I could go back in time and stop myself from resuscitating him, and meeting him, on my beach I would.
A thousand times over.
Sisters, I would.