Chapter Eleven
Oron
I stared up at the lights from the tower. Reina was up there, giving her body to someone after she’d all but begged me to save her from that fate.
My insides twisted, uncomfortable and burning hot as I imagined them together. I had worked hard to get where I was: to get my home back, to be accepted by the Vithohn. To be reinstated as a Voth.
And I still felt so empty without her.
I stared up at the light from the tower from the courtyard below. I’d made my way into the building four times now before turning back on my heel, thinking better of it.
I wanted to stop it, but I knew I didn’t have the right.
Sylas was my Voth. And while I had already violated his trust, I knew I didn’t have the right to. He would care for her. He would give her things that I couldn’t.
I walked back to my corridor down in the alley by Tavarog’s apartment. I stared at my front door and felt a chill in the air. It was something unsettling that I’d never felt before.
“Hey,” came Tavarog’s greeting, nodding toward my newly freed spire. “Looks good on you, Voth.”
“I know you’re saying that to mock me,” I said lowly with a smirk on my lips, “but I’ll take it.”
“No, no, I’m serious,” he said slowly, raising a drink to me.
I gave him a wave of polite decline.
“Something’s off,” I said, shivering under the breeze. I leaned back against the outside of my door, staring up at the sliver of dark sky that was visible between the buildings.
“What do you mean?” he asked, and then looked in the direction of the tower. “Ah.”
“What?” I asked.
“Her,” he said with a nod. “Reina.”
“What about her?”
“Well,” he said, his tone going high-pitched on the word, as though the rest of his thought was self-explanatory. “Sylas is back, isn’t he?”
“No,” I said, pursing my lips. I waved my hand at him and quickly corrected, “Yes, he is. But that’s not what I meant. I mean… something feels different here. You’re the Excerott, right?”
“Yeah,” he said, drawing a curious brow downward. He took a quick slug from his drink and wiped his mouth eagerly. “But that’s an outdated method, don’t you think?”
“We should be having Excerott’s Onoxulate throughout the city. Find out if there are any shapeshifters among us,” I said, shivering at the thoughts.
Tavarog shifted uncomfortably. “Oh no,” he said, rolling his shoulders and then leaning back against the wall. “They’ve got you, too, huh? You’re a believer in all this suddenly?”
“Don’t you feel the pull?” I asked, genuinely surprised. “I feel them so close, it’s making me feel sick.”
“You’re worried about Reina,” he said with a laugh.
“I’m not.”
I was, but that wasn’t the point.
“If Sylas thinks there is enough of a threat that he needs to call the entire Vithohn army to Bolmore, then yeah, we have a problem. And Jareth said—”
“—You’re going off the word of Jareth?” Tavarog laughed so hard he almost started choking. He didn’t share my opinion on Jareth’s brilliance, obviously.
“Why are you fighting this?” I said, laughing, and then suddenly serious. “What are you afraid of?”
Tavarog stared into his glass and went sullen, swirling the liquid in the cup before taking a final slurp.
He let the silence take over us for a long while before extended his arm down so that his glass hung at his side. “What if I’m one of them?” he said.
The question hung in the air, grabbing the awkward tension and playing with it.
“Well,” he raised his brows dismissively and began walking back toward his door. “I’m going back in for another.”
My eyes followed as Tavarog walked back to his door, frozen where I stood, and watched as his hand hit his doorknob, leaving a familiar trace of black goo behind him.
I swallowed, hard, and made my way back out into the city. Far, far away from our complex.
If Tavarog was one of them, I thought, I just barely made it out alive.
Wandering the streets, I saw another familiar face: Reina’s. She was running down the alleyway back toward the science district—toward Jareth, I knew.
“Reina!” I yelled, and she immediately turned around, her eyes beaming and full of tears as I ran up to her.
She collapsed in my arms, in a heap of worn out breaths and emotion.
“What are you doing?” I asked, nervous.
She heaved in a hardened breath and tried to steady herself, putting both of her palms flat against my chest.
Once she caught her breath, she looked up at me, stoic and immovable as she announced, “I’m leaving,” as though she gave given up.
“You’re leaving?” I said, my brows falling into a deep frown. “After all of this?”
“After you stole me?” she asked, still breathless. She was feisty and not up for a verbal sparring match, I could tell. “Yeah. Actually.”
“Reina. If you leave…” My mind stopped there.
What would I do if she left? I couldn’t leave with her, not now. “What are you doing?” I asked, incensed. “Why are you doing this? Why?”
“I need to go home,” she said, exhausted. “Come with me, Oron. Please. Don’t make me stay here. Don’t make me stay.”
I kissed her, incapable of not kissing her.
“You can’t be here,” I said quietly, still holding her face close to mine before kissing her again.
The electricity between us was incredible. Undeniable. I grit my teeth at my weakness, reminding me of all I had gained by bringing Reina here.
“I don’t care anymore,” Reina said, touching my face with her hands and cupping my cheeks in them. “I can’t walk around like this. I can’t be away from my family, and I can’t let them die, and I especially can’t do it without you. I can’t walk around here pretending to be something I’m not.”
“We’re in a crisis,” I said, speaking of the Kilari. “You’re the only thing here that’s bringing peace—bringing hope to us.”
“I don’t care!” she screamed, her voice cracking with the effort before pushing away from me and making her way back down the road. “I don’t want anything to do with it!”
“You have to,” I demanded, marching up behind her. “You’re in this now. You and me.”
She turned around, whipping her hair behind her and giving me the most hateful eyes I had ever seen on her. “How can you say you and me and then try to hand me off to someone else?” She pushed me then, her yells turning into an all-out scream-sob. “Is being accepted into this… this bloodbath more important than how you feel about me? Or was this all just a lie?”
“A… lie?”
“Yeah. Like how you didn’t mean me any harm. Or that you felt something for the humans? Or how I was your chosen? Stop me any time now, because I could go on!”
“I never lied about any of that!” I screamed back, throwing my hands into the air through sheer frustration alone.
“Then how can you try and force me to be with someone else?”
“I’m not in a position to cross Sylas,” I said through a clenched jaw.
Of course it made me sick. Of course it did. Reina was mine. She was my chosen, and I had waited my whole life to find her—but what was I supposed to do? Kill Sylas? Have his army turn on me and Reina? Kill us both in retaliation?
For the first time, I saw Reina cry. Really cry. Tears streamed down her cheeks, and she shook her head. “You already did,” she said, sounding half disgusted and half disappointed.
“I know you’re scared,” she said, looking up at me. Her eyes flicked back and forth from mine before holding my stare. “I’m scared, too.”
“Reina,” I said, weakening. “No.”
“Oron. All I want is to be with you. And if it can’t be you, it won’t be anyone.”
Her tears subsided then, if only slightly, and I felt overcome by her.
“All I want is to be with you,” I said earnestly.
“Then leave with me,” she said.
“Reina,” I cautioned, studying her eyes to see whether or not she was being serious. She hadn’t spoken of her home for so long that I had started to fool myself into thinking maybe she was starting to feel happy here.
I looked over into the darkened halls of our Gothic city. I could feel my hot breath ghosting over Reina’s face and then back onto mine: our breath a hotbed of lust and desire, floating there between us like an unspoken promise.
She grabbed my face, pulling me into her lips and moving them seductively around mine. She moved my hands against her breasts and slid her palm down my front, feeling me.
I pushed her up against the stone wall behind us: the side of a Vithohn bar that was lit up with red and yellow lights that were flickering off and on.
Reina unfastened my pants and pulled up her dress, moving her underwear to the side and lifting a leg so that I could enter her.
My tongue slid down the side of her neck, and I grazed my teeth against her, biting down ever so slightly as I thrust into her, holding the weight of her small body with my hands.
I lifted her, pumping her up and down onto me and she moaned so loud that I had to take her down into the alley to hide us from anyone who might leave the bar.
My breaths left me in perfectly timed plumes of air, exhaling with each thrust. I looked up at her: shimmering eyes and wet blonde hair. And from the corner of my eye, I could see we weren’t alone; a drunken onlooker up outside the bar was peering in on us.
I thought he might walk by, chuckle to himself later about getting a peep show—but we were being watched. I could feel it. My eyes darted around the room, and sure enough, the stranger was there to ensure we couldn’t enjoy our private moment: our last moment before I gave her to the Voth. My leader.
A burning sensation ran through my body as I realized if he knew who we were he could easily report back to Sylas and have us both punished: killed.
The stranger caught my gaze and fell back into the shadows of our elaborate city with its winding tunnels and dark corridors.
Everything I had worked so hard for—gone.
“Stop, stop, stop,” I whispered to Reina, pulling out of her and still holding her up against the wall.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
She pressed her hands against the sides of my face and tried to pull me back down for a kiss.
“Don’t you see what you’ve done?” I said lowly.
I waited for her to extend her legs and then set her gently down on the ground. An intense rain began to pour from out of nowhere: creating puddles beneath us almost immediately.
“Look at the effect you’ve had on me already. My mind has never felt clearer. Reina, all the Vithohn want is to have you here.”
Her nostrils flared: her face nervous. “Find Sylas someone else,” she enunciated. “Someone willing.”
Part of me was relieved to hear her say that. To say that she didn’t desire him. The other part of me spiraled into a full-blown panic.
“I must remember my place,” I said: shifting uncomfortably.
Reina looked up at me with a face full of betrayal and then slapped me. The physical force of it didn’t hurt, but her expression cut me to my core.
“Haven’t we been over this?” she yelled. “How can you hand me off to him like I’m something to trade around?”
“Oh, come on! Do you think I like this?” I screamed, shaking her by the shoulders and nearly spitting into her face with the intensity of my words. “Do you think I like this? Imagining you with him? Don’t you think I want to leave with you? But I must remember my place, Reina. You were never mine to begin with!”
A fierce silence hung between us: the rain pelting down harder and seeming to drag her face down with its cold.
“I was banished,” I said.
“Oh, boo-hoo!” she yelled, pushing me back. “Get over yourself! You want to display some twisted loyalty to Sylas in order to get your powers back? Fine! You want to have your people respect you as a Voth? More than you want to be with me?”
“Of course not,” I said, raising a hand to her. “I owe them a lot. That’s all.”
“So what is it?” she demanded. “What’s this big guilt you feel? What exactly did you do to make them hate you so much? To banish one of their strongest men?”
I set my jaw, staring down at her in silence, trying to shield my eyes from the rain and watching as she stood, immovable, letting the water wash down her eyelashes and spill across her cheeks.
“No answer, huh?” she said, tapping her foot and crossing her arms. “What’s wrong? Too ashamed to say?” She scoffed. “I guess I was mistaken, thinking that we were actually sharing our lives with one another. But you know what? I must have been pretty damn stupid because the truth is that I don’t know the first thing about you.”
She stared at me expectantly and then shook her head when I refused to answer: to reveal myself to her. She breathed heavily through her nose and looked away from me.
“All I know is that if you felt even a shred of what I feel for you, then you could never do this.”
“Felt?” I repeated.
I was furious then: holding back with all my strength not to smash my fists against the brick wall.
“I’ll run, Oron,” she said as though she was swearing. “I’ll run the minute he goes to sleep. And if they drag me back, I’ll keep running. Every chance I get. The only way I will ever stop is if I’m free or they kill me. One or the other. But I am not staying here, Oron.”
I stared at her in a blind rage: frustrated, broken, and infuriated. I grabbed her by the waist and threw her over my shoulder.
I began marching her back to Sylas’ tower.
‘You are staying, like it or not,” I wanted to say to her.
In truth, I didn’t know if her speech made me love her even more or if it broke my heart. At least if she were here, I could still see her.
Reina kicked and screamed against me, crying. I felt a deep pressure on my chest as though it could crack and smash apart with the tiniest breath.
I inhaled, hoping to make the feeling go away.
I knew that I was disappointing her: breaking her heart. I began to wonder what it was about Bolmore that made me loyal to it.
The longer we walked, the louder her cries became, the more willing I was to abandon my life here.
But something kept me going forward: walking Reina back to Sylas like a loyal dog.
Her safety. If we left, Sylas would come after us with a vengeance. And if he did that, I couldn’t be certain that I could protect her.
I set her down in front of Sylas’ door: gripping her wrist in case she took off, as she liked to do.
We stood in front of the door, and suddenly I felt as though my whole body were floating.
I felt my heart pump up, beating so loudly I wondered if our voyeur from back at the bar would be able to hear my nerves. I wondered if he could sense the sickness filling my stomach as I stared at the door in front of me.
Reina stood behind me, waiting for me to open the door. But I couldn’t do it.
I was a coward, in every way possible. I was too afraid to leave with her: too afraid to betray my Voth, but terrified that if I brought her back she might love another.
Now I had to make a choice.
I turned and looked at Reina: looked into her eyes.
She looked up at me, and I realized she already knew my decision: it was why she’d stopped struggling when I brought her here: why she stopped crying.
I had been on a mission to find her, and then I realized the one I had been searching for wasn’t for Sylas.
“Let’s go,” I said.
She was mine.