Chapter Eight
Oron
We ventured into the outskirts of town: abandoned cities and neighborhoods that didn’t look anywhere near as glorious as Bolmore was, even in their glory days.
Eventually, we all came upon a heap of scrap that was gathered in the middle of the rundown neighborhood like an old burial ground. It looked like someone had gathered together every piece of junk they could find and meant to light it on fire but died or fled before they had the chance.
Or, perhaps they were getting ready to build a fortress or a security fence, but we killed them before construction had started.
Either way, a large mech sat toppled over in the middle of the pile, and Jareth hurried us over, waving his long arms excitedly.
I brought Lele in my arms and set her down gingerly on the scrap heap.
Taking a step back, it looked like that’s exactly where she belonged. And for the life of me, I couldn’t think of why Jareth had come into contact with this strange robo-woman to begin with.
I hoisted Reina up into the sideways cockpit with me and she immediately busied herself in the exact location she needed a part from, pulling at wires and then gingerly unfurling their coppery wires.
She had definitely done this before.
Reina had become incredibly chummy with the Yaclion. She spoke to him nearly the whole way over. More than she did with me.
I feared I would always just be the one who took her away: stole her.
“I can’t help but notice you’re not speaking to me, even though I agreed to accompany you on this ridiculous, dangerous trip of yours,” I teased into Reina’s ear, breathing in her scent.
“Hey, he’s your little friend, not mine,” she said, not looking at me.
I drew my brows together in confusion and offered, “Doesn’t seem that way to me.”
“What are you doing here anyway?” she laughed, shaking her head.
“You’re my charge,” I said evenly. “I want to take care of you.”
“So would you say that we’re…” she paused, twirling her finger and pursing her lips in an exaggerated fashion before meeting my eyes and declaring, “friends?”
I smiled and lowered a brow to her. “Friends... Alright, sure.”
“Is that right?” Reina rolled her eyes and set a small, flat plate into my palm and said. “Well, here’s a tip, Bucko—”
“Bucko?” I repeated through a stifled laugh.
“—A lesson in friendship, if you will. Friends don’t kidnap friends or force them into relationships with creepy Vithohn leaders. K?”
My eyes widened incredulously, and I scratched the back of my head bashfully. “Going to be hard to go back and redo it,” I offered with a smile.
Reina laughed at that, begrudgingly, and batted me away.
“Reina, I…” I swallowed a gulp of spit and lightly grazed my teeth against my bottom lip before forcing out, “I hope you can find happiness here.”
She blinked at the statement and then held my gaze. My heart lilted at her sudden smile.
“I’m happy to be here, with you,” she said.
That was it. I couldn’t hold back any longer. I looked down at her pointed lips and leaned in, using my index finger to guide her chin close to my mouth. I wondered if she would pull away from me: if the hungry attraction I felt for her was one-sided. But she didn’t.
Reina leaned in so close, I could almost feel her skin on mine, and then Jareth…. Stupid Jareth, called out: “Did you find it?” before our lips had the opportunity to meet.
Reina sprung back, the two of us parting like shrapnel at his sudden voice, and she peeked her head out of the fallen mech.
“Here,” I heard her say to Jareth, and she disappeared from my sightline.
I bit my lip in frustration, scraping my teeth fiercely against my flesh and tightening my palm. I waited a few minutes, hoping she would come back, and then stubbornly got out of the mech to meet the two of them at the bottom of the scrap heap.
By the time I reached the bottom, Lele was already activated and sitting up, her intricately long braids and tan skin looking less robotic now that she’d been given the breath of life.
Jareth waddled over to her: the long fin that ran down the center of his scalp wobbling from side to side with each step. His red eyes beamed as he assessed the woman.
He walked around her several times, touching various wires. Lele must have been familiar with him because she didn’t smack him or ask him to talk to her like I would have.
Blinking in rapid succession, Jareth seemed satisfied.
“Hello, old friend,” he said, looking up at the robot.
“Who is this?” Lele said, referring to Reina and me in tandem. “The new couple?”
“Yes,” Jareth nodded, already doddering ahead of us.
“No!” Reina said with some humor in her voice, immediately correcting the little man.
“No, no, no,” I said, nervously eyeing the robot. “We’re not…” I looked at Reina and swallowed awkwardly. I noticed a distinct blush wash over her face, and then I looked back at Lele, offering a lame shrug. “No.”
“If you like, I can avert my eyes and pretend this hasn’t made you uncomfortable,” Lele said, practically toneless, but with a smile still affixed to her face.
Jareth turned around, probably just noticing that we weren’t following him and began walking back, swaying his long arms back and forth as he approached us once more. “It’s good to have you back,” he said to Lele.
“How did you guys meet?” Reina asked.
“We met…” Lele began and then abruptly paused. She held a hand to the side of her delicate face. Her eyes flicked rapidly back and forth, and she looked down at Jareth once more. “Seven years ago,” she finished.
“You’ve been gone a long time,” Jareth offered, splaying his hands out in apology.
“An associate of mine met a Vithohn and was taken back to his base. This is where Jareth was. When they left together—”
I didn’t hear much of what Lele said after that. Something about how her friend left without her: how she sought out Jareth to try and find them. But I was still lost in her first sentence.
“When they left together.”
My eyes darted to Reina, but she didn’t look back. My pace slowed, wondering what this meant for the Vithohn: for the humans. Had we been pairing off together for years now and Bolmore was painfully unaware of it?
“Tessoul felt the calling, too,” I heard Jareth say and when I looked over, Reina’s eyes went wide.
I didn’t want to tell her I hadn’t been listening when she looked at me, no doubt waiting for me to express equal shock and awe over whatever it was the Yaclion had said. So I faked an appalled expression, and Reina seemed satisfied.
Listening in for a few more minutes, I gathered that Jareth was speaking of the Kilari. The pull the Vithohn feel when they are around: that his friend had felt the pull and encountered the Kilari.
Which meant maybe Sylas wasn’t so paranoid to believe they were around after all.
“I have to tell you something,” Reina said later as we arrived back at the city. I had just taken her to her room in the immense tower, and she began pulling my hand into hers and shifting her body closer to mine.
My body reacted the way it normally did whenever she touched me, and I felt my spire slowly wander over to her body. I had to mentally scold myself for attempting to feel her, pressing my eyes shut and reminding myself what sort of position I was in.
I set my jaw and exhaled, watching as my spire retreated behind me as though it was a separate entity from the rest of my body.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“The Vithohn, from the well,” she said, nearly gasping for breath, suddenly nervous.
“Reina,” I said, squeezing her hand and looking back and forth from her gaze. I reached my hand up and brushed her hair back in an attempt to calm her. “What is it?”
“It wasn’t a Vithohn,” she spat out all at once, like she’d been building a physical dam in front of her mouth that had finally broken and spilled over. “It was this… well… it looked exactly like the things from the clearing that attacked us. I didn’t know enough then but… I think it may have been a Kilari.”
I swallowed a large gulp of air and felt my face go cold. “Impossible,” I said, shaking my head once. “I saw you kill it. It was a Vithohn.”
“No,” she drew out her vowels. “It just looked like one. It…” She shrugged. “It shape-shifted as soon as we tried to move it to the well. It was a Kilari.”
“Shape-shifters?” I repeated in horror.
I felt the color drain from my body and exhaled as slowly as I could. I knew the Kilari were around… but I wasn’t expecting them to take form as a Vithohn.
“Why are you telling me this?” I asked.
“Because I just realized… that what’s going on might be bigger than you or me.”
My throat felt small: my mouth sticky and honey-like. But, as I looked over at her, I felt a sense of peace wash over me. I watched her hand, still in mine, and then pulled her closer to me so that I could smell her breath.
It was in that moment I realized there were things I absolutely adored about Reina. First being her beautiful hips and her large, expressive eyes that looked persistently worried and expectant. They kept me on my feet.
Second, I loved that she trusted me enough to tell me this story about the Kilari.
My eyes gazed over the thin, deep-green button-up shirt she wore and trailed up to her long, beautiful neck.
“Thank you for telling me,” I said, unusually gracious.
She swallowed. “You’re welcome.”
And then I kissed her. A simple meeting of the lips. Just a ‘thank you,’ I told myself.
But it was the most electric thing I had ever experienced.
The high of the kiss kept my body humming and riled up for the rest of the week. While I was officially assigned to be her keeper, I spent much of the week away from her, though I’d watched as she’d come and gone from Jareth’s laboratory.
I noticed a group of Vithohn who would follow her back to her tower, and it infuriated me. They felt the same pull I did, no doubt. They wanted to touch her and spread her legs.
But they would never get to chance.
I put Lele on watch when I wasn’t able to be around: a strong mech who could handle her own against us, as much as I would never say it out loud.
In the meantime, I had the clasp removed from my tentacle, and I felt a renewed energy rush through my body. It made me feel that same aggression I had before being removed as a Voth.
I felt the pull of violence and struggled to control it: the weight of it heavier than I ever remembered. I could barely even think anymore: my mind always buried with my desire to fight and defend.
The pull of the Kilari became stronger then, too.
I began to wonder if what I had with Reina was real or not. Whether it was my weakened state that had made me susceptible to her.
A representative of Sylas came out from the black tower in the city center, and the crowd erupted with cheers: a roar heard in an echo across the entire metropolis.
He told me that Sylas would be back any day, but that I should be rewarded for my capture as soon as possible, especially considering the war.
The red Vithohn announced to the crowd that I was once again a Voth: a warrior of the highest order. The crowd resumed their cheers and cries. The noise was so powerful, I felt the stone shaking beneath me.
I knew Reina was watching from her tower. It was too dangerous to bring her down, with all the Vithohn around, lusting after her body. But I wanted to see her: to show her what I could do now that I was reinstated.
I entered the stateroom and was immediately taken aback by the immense black brick oval window that sat in the center of the spire. I’d seen this room from the ground before: the one with the scrawled writing on the outside listing all the fallen Vithohn from the war.
Reina looked up at me with a familiar need, and I sidestepped her, walking to the window’s ledge.
“I’m happy today,” she said as I looked out over the glowing city. You could see the roadways and the deep interconnecting squares—pockets of city—perfectly from up here.
“Good,” I said with a smile and turned to see her: my Reina looking anything but ginger for once. There was a smile that crept up the side of her face that I couldn’t put my finger on.
Then all the sudden, I felt a weakness in my body that was accompanied by a sick, white-hot pain. What was she feeling happy about? Being with Sylas today?
“I’m still pissed that you expect me to go be with that thing,” she said with some hostility.
It wasn’t about Sylas, then. Good.
“That thing,” I corrected slowly, not turning from the immense view of the city; I had missed it so much since being banished, “is my leader.”
She bit her lip, and I could hear her resolve as she said, “I won’t do it.”
I turned around then, taking in a heavy breath. I walked over to her and ran a hand across her cheek and cupped it. She fell into my touch, and I knew she wouldn’t argue with me.
There was a curiosity that welled up in me suddenly: a confusion as she shook her head to me, her eyes speaking of her protests.
Sylas loved her. He would care for her. She would never have to worry about being killed, hunted by the Vithohn, or being attacked by the Kilari. She would be safe.
I swallowed and felt the corners of my eyes crease as I looked down at the small girl in front of me. “But… he loves you.”
Reina laughed, stepping away from me and throwing her hands into the air. “He doesn’t love me, Oron. He doesn’t even know me!”
“He felt you,” I argued and then felt my own desire for her come forward as I watched the light hit her: the way he clothes flowed away from her small body. “He called out to you from the start. How can you deny that?”
“I don’t want him,” she said evenly and then walked back up to me, taking my hand into hers.
I nearly flinched. This wouldn’t go over well with Sylas. If there was ever a moment to convince her that she needed to be with him, this was it. Yet, I couldn’t muster up any more protests.
“So why are you so happy?” I said, calling back to the beginning of our discussion.
“Because…” she said lowly, placing my hands on her hips. My favorite place. “I figured something out today,” she said proudly. “You’re different from them.”
“The Vithohn?” I asked, and she nodded. I squeezed her hips and grew lost in the sight of her body. “Yeah, because I was banished,” I offered with a laugh.
“No.” She shook her head. “Everyone else is so, well, unhinged. But not you. You're put together. You have a silence inside you. A calm.”
“That’s called shame,” I laughed, and she continued to bring my hands farther up her body. “Disgrace.”
“No,” she said, moving my hands up to her breasts and pressing them against her. “It’s because you like me.”
I blinked rapidly, feeling a choke in my throat at the feel of her body: the soft mounds my hands encompassed. “What?” I stammered.
“You came to me when I was crying,” she said, bridging the gap between us even more.
“You were being loud,” I shrugged: toneless.
“You slept in my bed,” she dared, reaching a hand up and tracing the dots that lined my face.
I swallowed several times and heard her sticky breath go heavy. “You were… being loud.”
“You helped me find Lele’s parts,” she argued in a whisper, stepping up on the tips of her toes and counting on me to use my hands to balance her, which I did.
I smirked, leaning down to meet her face. “I was bored.”
“You protected me from the Kilari, from the Vithohn, and you physically look ill when Sylas gets close to me.”
“So?” I asked, and she reached up and grabbed my lips with hers, sending a flurry of passion through my body.
Our lips danced against each other, clumsily at first and then faster and more desperate. I knew if the kiss didn’t end soon, I wouldn’t be able to stop myself.
“You like me,” she said in between our kisses. “You told the Vithohn I was the only human when we both know you saw two more of us and you know I have a base to go back to.”
I snapped my fingers and laughed through our lips. “I knew you were lying to me,” I whispered triumphantly before dipping my tongue into her mouth. I felt hers swirl up against mine, tasting me hungrily and watching as her eyes rolled back.
The smell of her seemed to intensify, and I knew that she was mine—my chosen—my calling. I’d fought against it all this time, and now, with her body pressed against mine and her teeth biting my bottom lip, I couldn’t think of a good reason why.
“You like me,” she reiterated, pulling away from me with a wicked smile: more flirtatious and seductive than I’d ever seen before. “And that’s okay… because, while I can’t stand you,” she teased and began unbuttoning her shirt, “I want you just as badly.”