Page 70 of Iridian

Until night twelve.

Chapter 18

Rosabel La Rouge

Strange how I could tell whether Taland was in bed with me, his body next to mine, most times through sleep. Like, even when I was unconscious, my body knew his and craved his heat, and my instincts knew when it wasn’t there.

On night twelve, I felt it clearly, like I’d kicked my blanket off while asleep and now I was freezing. The feeling was so powerful that it actually woke me up.

The blanket wasn’t the problem, though. It was there, covering half my body, but the heat I’d been missing was Taland’s because he wasn’t in bed with me.

He’s probably in the bathroom,I thought, forcing my eyes closed again, hugging the blanket to my chest as I waited. The digital clock on the nightstand said it was a quarter past midnight, so we’d only slept two hours ago after quite possibly the best sex of my life. We’d been going at it for four hours nonstop, and that’s why every muscle in my body was slightly aching in the best possible way.

I focused on those memories. On the way his hands felt on my body, his lips on mine, the way he filled me when he was inside me all the way. The way he bent me over and spun me around and had his way with me while he pleased me—that’s what I focused on for a little while.

Except when I opened my eyes again, thinking a minute had passed, the clock insisted that it had been eleven, and Taland was still not back.

That bad feeling in my gut took over me in an instant.

I jumped off the bed, calling his name, and I went straight for the bathroom—empty. The kitchen and the living room, and the other bedroom we never used—they were all empty.

He was not inside the safe house at all.

I stopped in the middle of the hallway, took a deep breath, tried to stop my thoughts from racing so fast. They insisted that something was wrong, that somebody had found us, that our time here was as good as over. Worse yet—they insisted that Taland was gone, taken away from me again, and this time I was never going to find him.

Maybe that’s why I screamed at the top of my lungs, “TALAND!”

Not caring if someone was close or if they could hear me—I just screamed out his name with my everything.

I got no response.

I wore an oversized men’s shirt and some loose pajama bottoms, but I didn’t bother to change. The wood of the porch was smooth against my bare feet when I went outside, biting my tongue to keep the tears back. The sky was dark, but I couldn’t see if there were stars on its canvas because of the roof that extended over the porch. Even so, I cursed it—cursed the sky because I seemed to be moving in a circle, a never-ending fucking circle where I only got days of happiness before my whole world was taken from me again.

It wasn’t fair, damn it. It wasn’t fucking fair, but I wasn’t going to quit. I was going to fight back. Just to spite the universe, I was going to go back to the real world and find Taland again, and this time it would be over for good. This time, we’d hide somewhere where even the sky couldn’t see us.

Except…

Nobody had taken Taland away from the safe house. I didn’t need to go back to the real world to find him at all. I heard his voice the moment I stepped down the stairs of the porch and my bare feet connected with the slightly wet soil.

It had rained. The smell of the leaves and the wetness of the ground said so. The sky was indeed clear and a million stars winked at me from above as if to encourage me. That voice I heard was Taland’s—I’d know it anywhere in the world. And he was talking in a foreign language again, though this time not Portuguese. This time, I was almost a hundred percent sure it was French.

I ran.

The cold, wet dirt beneath my feet could have been trying to slow me down, but then again maybe it was just that I couldn’t breathe very well, not until I ran almost to the back of the house, following the sound of his voice.

Until I saw them.

Five soldiers of the Delaetus Army were standing in a half circle around four trees that were just slightly grouped together, a bit farther away from the rest.

Kneeling in front of the third tree was Taland, spewing those French words relentlessly, a knife in his hands as he engraved something on the bark. Judging by the fact that the first two trees had lines and words engraved on every inch of them, I’d say he had been here a while.

I meant to call out his name but all that left my lips was a whisper. I was breathing too heavily and I had tears in my eyes,but it was okay now because the sky hadn’t fallen yet. Taland was right there and whatever he was doing, we’d figure it out. Together, we could figure anything out and start from scratch if we had to.

This time when I ran, I knew exactly where I was going. This time when I ran, I thought for sure he would hear my footfalls and he would turn, snap out of it the way he’d done at the pool and in the bathroom—he’d for sure come to his senses right away.

Except he didn’t. I made it all the way to him and called out his name, and kneeled next to him as he continued to cut the wood with that kitchen knife, but he didn’t even turn his head toward me.

He just kept hissing those French words, white eyes on the tree, every muscle on his body strained, and I could see because all he had on was his pajama bottoms. He was barefoot, too, his torso naked so I could count every protruding vein around his neck, even though not much light reached us here from the moon and the safe house at our back.

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