Chapter Twenty-Six
Tulya
Isat alone in my room, waiting for the medic, rubbing my itchy thighs together underneath the sheets.
Between the hives and the gnarled hand, I didn’t blame Donovan for retreating from me, but it felt more about him.
I’d wished for him to come back, maybe prayed a little, but he seemed distant.
A small tremor traveled my hand as I thought about his concern and words, but he didn’t hold my sore body, lie down next to me, or make any sweeping promises.
I had to consider if he saw his fiancée back home.
Had they exchanged rings? Did he say anything about me? Would he fight to be with me?
My mind was a train barreling through the night, errant ideas and thoughts steamrolling the ones I should have been focusing on.
Of course, no, Donovan is not fighting for me…
Closing my eyes, I wondered if he was still going to Hawaii, or if he had told anyone. I didn’t want him to give up his dream, but sometime in the thirty-six hours he was gone, I’d become convinced he could be mine. It was now obvious that I was wrong.
I must have dozed off, then I heard a commotion in the main room of the suite. Next came a knock and the medic appeared.
“Tuvy.” He said my name with a gruff tone. “Sit up,” he barked.
I used my non-mangled hand to push up on the bed and did as he asked, a fire raging in my fingers.
He approached swiftly, lifting my damaged appendages without asking, surveying the appearance with a raised eyebrow.
Donovan spoke up from behind the medic. “Don’t you speak with her first? Ask her how she feels? Say you knew this could happen?”
“Silence, Donovan. I’m here to take care of Tuvy. And looking at this hand, it will be a few days or weeks until this trauma passes. It’s time for you to go back and deal with Magnum. Go.” Abraham turned and looked at the only person protecting me.
“I will not be banished.” I gazed up and saw Donovan staring down at the medic.
“Go, or I will leave. You put Magnum in his place and he is very unhappy. Something must be resolved with the human. Now.”
“Donovan, please, do as he says. He will help me now.” I willed the lone tear forming to retreat but it didn’t listen.
In that tiny moment where it filled my eye and everything looked as if I was underwater, only the glint of Donovan’s Rolex caught my gaze. Focusing, I saw he was pulling up his sleeve and looking at the time.
“I will be back” were the last words he spoke before he turned to leave.
As emotion clogged my throat, I tried to focus on what Abraham was saying.
“Let’s take a look at your vitals…” He stuck a thermometer in my mouth while checking my pulse. “No fever, which is in line with you being a little sluggish. Your body isn’t fighting this as aggressively as it should be.”
I wanted to jest. You don’t say? But I kept my sarcastic thoughts to myself.
He picked up my crippled hand and turned it over to see my fingers curling in, and asked, “How long did you hold the feelings in without allowing them to dissipate?”
Tension built in my forehead. “A few minutes. There was a lot of commotion, and Valerie knew what was coming so she was prepared to fight me. Not physically, but with some emotional walls. I had to really send it—you know?”
It was only lingo a true Rubian would understand—sending powers. These things didn’t just happen, they often took a lot of mental fortitude.
A tremor stilled my thoughts, my whole body shaking with the force of it.
Abraham glared at me, watching my limp form shivering. “You didn’t send it all, did you?”
I focused on the ceiling and didn’t answer.
“Tuvy, look at me,” the only person who had the knowledge to help me blurted out.
My head shook side to side, but I refused to make eye contact.
His chilly blue eyes piercing me, he gritted his teeth and spoke. “What did you do? Tell me, Tulya.”
It was the secret I thought I’d never have to share, but when I fainted or went unconscious, my plan backfired. “It doesn’t matter,” I stated.
He stood and paced. “The hell it doesn’t. What did you do? You were told to make the transfer. Am I wrong?”
My skin turned clammy, and I was reminded of how it used to feel when Donovan was near—the ice-cold ripples that would run down my spine. I missed them.
“I was at risk, no matter what, and my mother still sent me to do the transfer. That’s why it doesn’t matter what I did or didn’t do. She didn’t say what could or might happen to me. Neither did you.” My voice came out hoarse, a combination of emotion and tiredness.
“We are not meant to use our capabilities on humans. That doesn’t mean we haven’t.
It doesn’t always go as planned, but when we force our powers to perform in a way they were not meant to—which you were already doing by holding them back for what should have been seconds, not minutes—it alerts something in our nervous system. ”
A fresh batch of tears began to roll down my cheeks.
“No one told me any of this.” I knew what I chose to do was putting myself in jeopardy, but I hadn’t even been made aware of the overall risk.
“Like I mentioned, there was a lot of commotion with Cinder and Valerie and Blake being inside…and I had to make certain it was all going to plan.” I tried to find my voice.
It was apparent that if I didn’t stand up for myself, no one would.
He ran an aged hand through his salt-and-pepper hair and gave me another look of death. “But what did you do?”
I ran my healthy fingers over the ones atrophying and stared at them.
Without making eye contact with Abraham, I spoke.
“After capturing Cinder’s feelings, I held on to them, channeling my energy to send them to Valerie.
Then I began to transfer them. Slowly, a little bit at a time.
Truthfully, I was shocked how much control I had over the whole process. ”
“We have tremendous faculties. You especially haven’t even begun to understand your capabilities. The Rubians are a species not to be messed with.”
Here I was, lying like a pile of bones, and Abraham was waxing poetic.
“I felt my knees go a little weak, but it was the force of the exchange. I’m used to taking on the pain and immediately allowing it to dissipate.”
“I know what you are used to. I’m still waiting for what happened. It was more than the transfer.” He leaned against the wall across from me and waited like he said he would.
“I thought about Blake, and how much she relied on Valerie. You see, Valerie isn’t just a human.
Despite the way everyone keeps calling her the human, Valerie is a person, a mom to a Rubian child, and this has to be an extremely hard time for Blake and her.
I couldn’t give her all the pain; she didn’t deserve it.
So, I decided to hold on to some and then allow it to dissipate later, seeing as how I had so much control… when I held it in.”
“But.” He said the one tiny word with gritted teeth.
“You went unconscious because holding on to the pain yourself wasn’t the task at hand and you short-circuited your own damn powers by trying to control them in a way they were not meant to be controlled.
Lord, Tuvy, you really messed up. Do you understand that when you passed out, those emotions funneled in and out of your veins?
You stopped the natural process in the transfer, but then when you didn’t send it all to the human…
Christ! This is why the tremors started up and the hand is shriveling. ”
“I didn’t know it would all go down like that. You have to believe me.” There was no denying that panic had set in. Would I get better? Would I ever be the same?
Yet I had to defend myself against what I had done. Valerie might be angry with all of us, including me, but she was Blake’s mom, and cared. More than my own mother, for sure.
“If you had done what you were told to do, I wouldn’t have to be here. And I’m going to promise you one thing, Tuvy. You will be the one to explain to your mother what you actually did. Not me. And not because I agree or disagree, but Ezza is Ezza.”
Sucking back fresh tears, my intact hand running over my handicapped one, I stared at Abraham. “If you haven’t noticed, my mother isn’t here.”
He stepped forward, each footfall filled with malice. “No, she is dealing with Valerie, who you have somehow become attached to—”
“Whether we like it or not, we will have a lifetime of Valerie. No matter how much we want to deny it, she is Blake’s mom.”
“Listen, I’ve said all I will say. The serum will help with the hives.
But as for your hand and the tremors—those may be irreversible.
There is a higher power to what we can do when it comes to blatantly defying orders.
You take on pain and let it go. Whether it’s sending it to someone else or allowing it to scatter, you did neither fully. Your body is punishing you.”
He set the serum on the nightstand, turned on his heel, and left without another word.
With Donovan gone, Marley rightfully back with her daughter, and my friends prohibited from coming, I did my best to slide over to the nightstand and pick up the serum.
Staring at the label on the bottle, I read the instructions.
TAKE TWICE A DAY FOR FIVE DAYS TO INHIBIT HIVES FROM INAPPROPRIATE INTERACTIONS WITH A HUMAN.
It included a dropper to pull the correct dosage, and without waiting, I popped a dose full in my mouth and closed my eyes, allowing myself to feel the cool liquid travel down my throat.
I knew soon I would have to get up and pee and get a drink, maybe order some food.
I had to start thinking about myself. As Abraham said, my hand might not heal, and the tremors might not cease.
I was alone on a figurative island, and by the time I was allowed to return home, Donovan would likely be on an actual island.
Like I told Prim weeks ago, I was meant to be alone…and I sure was.