Chapter 19
The Truth
Alianna
Alianna awoke with a start, a strange sensation prickling across her body. She realised she was in Max’s hotel suite, in his bed next to him.
Something was wrong.
Max was writhing around in his sleep, cries of what sounded like pain escaping him.
“Max,” Alianna whispered into the dark, but he didn’t wake. “Max!”
Alianna reached for his hand beside her, and he was gripping the bedsheets so tightly in his fist that she wasn’t sure if he might rip them.
“Max, wake up,” she whispered, turning on her side and reaching for him to shake him gently.
Max was twisting and turning on the bed, his head moving side to side as he cried out.
Alianna could have sworn she felt a crackling across her skin and swept her hand down her arm, shooing away what she assumed was an insect in the dark.
“Max. Max, it’s alright. It’s Ali, Max. I’m here. Wake up.” Alianna offered soothing words to him in the dark, shaking him gently, but nothing could pull him out of the nightmare he was having.
Suddenly, she heard glass shatter on the other side of the room.
Leaping out of bed, she ran to the light switch, flicking it on. The room was illuminated.
Alianna gasped in disbelief.
The flowers which had been on the table on the far side of the room were now lying on their side, with traces of the vase they had been in littered on the floor around them. Tiny fragments of glass were now glinting in the light.
The flowers withered and bloomed before her eyes, over and over, as if stuck in a time loop of showing their life cycle so rapidly before her eyes. Withered. Dead. Alive. Vibrant. Withered. Dead. Alive. Vibrant.
The sound of wood splitting along one of the bedposts caught her eye, and she twisted towards Max, who had still not awoken from his vivid dreams.
Alianna’s breath caught in her throat, a look of horror on her face.
She watched Max, writhing on the bed, face pained, fists clenching the sheets, small cries escaping his mouth like he was desperate for help, like he was being tortured, tormented…
Except it was not Max at all.
The creature on the bed looked like Max. It had the same floppy black hair, the same chiselled jaw line, the same perfect, straight nose.
Yet his usual golden-olive skin was a strange silvery-grey.
His ears ended in points that poked through his hair.
And his teeth…
She took a step back towards the wall as his face contorted, top lip pulling back, revealing canine teeth that were too long.
Alianna felt herself begin to shake as the bedposts began to splinter around Max, the energy pulsing through the air getting more and more erratic. She stepped back until her body pressed against the wall, staring in terror at the man she had been sleeping next to.
“Max,” she whispered quietly, unsure if she spoke in disbelief, out of sheer fright, or another feeling that she couldn’t describe. Her voice was barely audible as she scanned the floor for her belongings, wondering how quickly she could get out of the door.
Shit. He’d ripped her swim clothes. She had only her dress from yesterday, and a dressing gown. It dawned on her that she was naked.
She either ran naked from this room, quickly threw something around her body, or stayed here with him.
As if he sensed the thoughts racing through her mind, Max’s eyes snapped open, an inhumane roar ripping from his mouth as he sat bolt upright in bed.
The flowers were no longer shifting between alive and withered – they remained somewhere in between, in a half-dead state. The crackling, buzzing electricity in the air went silent. The bedposts creaked, then remained still.
Max took one, two, three deep breaths in and out. Alianna blinked, and the Max she was staring at was the Max she had fallen asleep next to.
No pointed ears.
No elongated canine teeth.
His skin was warm in colour.
Max was sitting on the bed, panting, shaking, a look of anguish on his face.
It was then that he turned his head to Alianna. His eyes met hers in silent question.
Alianna tried to take another step backwards, but could only flatten herself further against the wall.
“What are you?” she managed to say, the words barely forming.
“Ali,” he muttered, swinging his legs off the bed and walking around it. He moved towards her, entirely naked, with a body like it had been cut from stone. Alianna put a hand out to ask him to stop.
“Stay there. Don’t come any closer,” she warned, trying her best to sound sure of herself. Max listened, his face grave. “What. Are. You?”
“Ali,” he started again. “This isn’t…this wasn’t supposed
to - ”
“What. Are. You?” The words came out louder this time, surer, as anger and fear simmered in Alianna’s bones. Max flared his nostrils once, frowning, his eyes dropping to the floor.
He let out a long sigh. “I….I would never hurt you, Ali. You must know that.”
Alianna didn’t speak. Didn’t offer any words of comfort, any words of solace, and waited for an answer to her question.
“My name….is not Max.”
Alianna wasn’t sure what she expected after seeing him on the bed like that. She half hoped she was in a dream herself, and that any moment now, she’d wake up. She’d be curled against him, and he would be breathing softly, his arms wrapped around her as they had been last night.
Alianna closed her eyes, squeezing them tightly. When she opened them, she felt her heart crack in two as he was still standing, naked before her, shame and sorrow emanating from his body.
“My name is Rionan,” he continued. Alianna’s eyes widened, and she wished she had clothes on. She wished she could have walked out of this stupid, god damn ruined suite without having to walk through Porthan without any proper clothing.
Max – Rionan – moved like he was going to take a step towards her, but he thought better of it. He stayed where he was, looking at her with pleading eyes. “I didn’t want this to happen. I never wanted you to find out in this way. Ali, please…”
“Please don’t make me ask again.” Her voice was cold, distant, and a look of devastation passed across Rionan’s face.
He sighed, and he closed his eyes. The air around him seemed to shimmer with yellow light, and when he opened his eyes again, the creature from the bed stared at her.
The same sorrow-filled expression.
The same floppy black hair.
The same intense blue eyes.
“My name is Rionan. I am Xanthian. I am Lord of the West of Xanthia,” he began.
Alianna felt like she was going to be sick.
“I come from a Realm separated from your own. When you found me on the beach that day, I had travelled here. I have come for a way to try to save my people from a terror that seeks to conquer our land.”
Alianna felt her legs give way beneath her as she slumped to the ground. He rushed forward to scoop her up.
“Don’t touch me,” she hissed, pushing herself back along the ground.
Rionan stepped away again, putting his hands up.
“Please be careful of the glass,” he pleaded. Alianna continued to stare at him, stomach churning.
Rionan went on. “My homelands – the lands that I am responsible for – were under attack from an opposing Xanthian Lord. He only needs to seize control of one more territory, and he will be unstoppable. He has done such horrible things. I came here to find a way to stop him. I was…brought here. But, I found you.”
Alianna felt last night’s pizza rising in her stomach, and she scanned the room, not quite sure what she was searching for. Her eyes snagged on a lamp, a dressing gown, and her mobile phone.
Slowly rising to her feet, she didn’t take her eyes off of Rionan as she stepped across the room to where the dressing gown lay. Picking it up, she wrapped it around herself, tying it at the waist. She pocketed her mobile phone and grabbed her bag from the sofa.
Alianna fled from the room, leaving Rionan standing with a shocked expression on his face and an aching feeling in his heart.