Chapter 3 The Border #2
“Yes you did! But that doesn’t mean I have to watch her suffer. The least I can do is give her a damned painkiller. Now let me go before I scratch your face off.”
The threat sailed over Calix’s head. He didn’t release me. He stared into my eyes for a second, his square jaw set, his arms locked around my ribcage. I had spent so long desperate for him to hold me like this, and now I only wanted him to let me go.
Then he said, as though this were the greatest conciliation on earth, “I’ll gather the herbs for you.”
Now I did break free. I whirled away and threw up my hands. “That’s not what I’m asking for. I just want you to —”
I bit my tongue before I could finish the sentence.
Calix said throatily behind me, “You want me to what?”
I want you to love me, I didn’t say.
After a minute of excruciating silence, I turned and looked at him. He was watching me with hollow eyes, his hands dangling at his sides.
Something in my chest softened reluctantly. I wasn’t being fair to him. He was only worried about me.
I still didn’t answer his question.
But I stepped back a pace to let him gather the herbs.
Calix paled a little when I did. He squared his shoulders, though, and faced the underworld.
He stood a long time at the edge of the lush field.
I crossed my arms, watching him scan the terrain.
What was he looking for? Why didn’t he get a move on?
There was the looming, raging mountain. It was late enough that the mountain’s shadow nearly reached Calix’s beautiful face.
The stars would be out soon. The unrolling grass beckoned.
Deep beneath it were those roiling tunnels full of monsters, but you’d never know it from here.
There wasn’t even a cave mouth or a pit.
He looked like he was… cataloguing information.
“Are you looking for the entrance to the underworld?” I asked.
He jumped guiltily.
“You can save your energy. I’ve explored enough for both of us and never found it. Look, this isn’t the library at the diplomats’ college. You don’t have to research anything first. You can just cross. That’s what I do.”
“You do not,” he said. “Not while I’m here.”
“I’d like to see you stop me.”
“I did stop you.”
And then Calix, to my astonishment and fury, turned away from the border.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” I demanded.
“It’s not worth the danger. Like you said, you can’t even see where the godlings come out of the ground. They could be anywhere. I’ll rush-order you painkillers from Corcagia. I’ll pay for it myself, using the stipend the college gave me for my capstone. Okay?”
“Uh, no, not okay. If you won’t gather the herbs, I will.”
Calix seized my wrist. Again, heat bubbled under my skin against his flesh. Gods, I was so weak. I knew I would threaten to cross the border a thousand times if it meant he’d keep touching me like this.
Except, I wasn’t just threatening.
“I said no,” Calix repeated dangerously.
“Oh, fuck off. I told you: They’re not going to kidnap me.”
“They’d better not. If they did, I’d have to come and get you.”
Warmth rose behind my cheeks. “Please, Calix. There’s nothing to worry about. We all know there’s a reason they haven’t taken me, even though I keep coming back here.”
“Oh? And why’s that?”
I didn’t know if it was Calix’s nearness, or my anger, or the fact that I really believed it, but for the first time I voiced the thought I’d been thinking every time I’d gone to the underworld and returned un-kidnapped: “It’s obvious, isn’t it? It’s because they’re going to take Josie.”
Calix stilled. “Why would you say that?”
“Because they always take someone beautiful. Josie’s the best-looking girl around.”
“Do you seriously think that?”
“And,” I continued doggedly, “half the time they take healers. The last three girls who were stolen were healers or midwives.”
“Josie’s not a healer.”
“She wants to be. The only reason she’s not a nurse right now is because her parents wanted her to get married instead of going to college. And she’s the only person who’s better at taking care of my mom than I am.”
“Josie is going to college,” Calix said to me, slowly.
My heart dropped. “What?”
“At the beginning of the next academic year. Her family is moving to Corcagia this weekend. To get her out of Limer before the next kidnapping. They’ve rented an apartment.”
For a second I couldn’t breathe. “So you’ll both be there together? Without me?”
“It’s not like that.”
“When was she going to tell me?”
“Persephone.”
“Where am I supposed to get another job?”
He sighed. “Josie’s trying to talk her parents into keeping you on, to keep the house in good shape for when they get back. They’re planning to come back after… after someone gets taken. Once they know Josie’s safe.”
I couldn’t wrap my head around this. I didn’t even like Josie, but… “She takes such good care of my mom.”
“Persephone, you’re taking care of your mom.”
“Great! Go get me those edenica herbs, in that case!”
Calix’s face shuttered.
And I realized, through the haze of my anger, that he wasn’t going to be able to do it.
He was too scared.
A thread of pity shot through the rock foundation of my anger.
I mean, could I really blame him? We’d all been raised to be afraid of the underworld and the godlings.
In the capitol city — where most people had never even seen Tourmaline Sea or the shadow of the Primordial Mountain, let alone the eerie mist that hovered over the underworld’s territory, or the lone girl who’d crawled back, gibbering, from the godlings’ clutches — the fear was probably even worse, the underworld even more frightening and strange.
So over the last few months, Calix’s terror of the godlings had probably hardened.
While mine, somehow, had lessened. Not only because I’d been tromping around on underworld territory and no one had taken me yet, but because a much uglier monster — my mother’s demise — had stretched its mouth open.
Its teeth needle-sharp. Its jaws slavering.
I was just waiting for those jaws to close.
I took mercy on Calix. “Fine,” I said. “Forget the herbs.” And: “I guess I’d better say goodbye to Josie.”
“Don’t be angry at her.”
“I’m not angry,” I said, exhausted. It wasn’t a lie, not really. I was too resigned to be angry.
I only wondered who the godlings would take, if Josie was so far away.