Page 17 of These Eternal Bones
Disagreeable.
Unreasonable, even.
I want to say no and have someonelistento it.
“FUCK!!! FUCK!!! FUCK!!!” I scream until my voice cuts out from the power of it. It’s hoarse when I begin again. I scream at my mothers and sisters for letting this go on, for not seeing him for what he was. I scream at the woods for being so fucking dense, for nearly killing me. I scream at the fox for saving me, at Elric for simply existing. For being so kind, so helpful, because I cannot understandwhy,and the weight hanging above my shoulders has only been lifted to be replaced by another. I scream because I was born in New Eden, because I was born to bleed and breed, and because I do not know how to read or write even a single word. That I cannot do the job he asked of me, that I am too ashamed to admit it. I scream for those I left behind because they cannot afford to. For every atonement and unwillingbride, dressed in white and washed in oils that smell of cinnamon. I scream.
He’s nowhere in sight as I burst from the cottage, leaving a tornado of destruction, snot, and tears in my wake. The only sign of the length of my fit is the blackened sky. He’s not here, but I canfeelhim, those intense eyes that have filled my dreams and been a silent companion to me for mere weeks, but I might as well have known them for all my life. I feelhim, a shadow moving in my peripheral vision, as I watch my bare, calloused feet eat up the muted grass. The tanned skin tinged with my blood. A ragged breath leaves my raw throat as I hit the water, wading out deeper than I’ve dared before. I can feel it bubbling inside me. I can feel him reaching, touching in that invasive way that he can.
I’m surrounded.
I’m suffocating.
Trapped.
I plunge myself underneath the frigid water, my hands gripping rock and displacing sediment that clouds my vision as I root myself there, unbreathing. A thousand thoughts, whispers of doubt, and self-hatred croon in my mind. Fear and uncertainty. Excitement and pungent anticipation. The darkness swirls around me, swathing and final. I stay like that long after my lungs let out a pang of agony. I stay, unmoving, unblinking,unbeinguntil I’m sure I can no longer, and still Isit. I sit until the screaming inside me quiets, my vision blotting. My fingers digging deeper into the rocks. My mind, for the first time in possibly ever, lightens. Like the water can suppress even the worst of me. It can take it all away.
Everything.
My lungs spasm in my chest, aching as I squeeze my eyes shut tightly as they force my first breath, pulling frigid water into my lungs as something disrupts it around me. As not two butmultiplethingsbandacross my flesh. My eyes snap open, meeting a tailored suit jacket as I’m jerked from the depths. It’s his voice that rises above my guttural coughing. My body desperately expelling water. A single word hits me, a name, one he’s given me. A pretty one, although I don’t know its meaning.
“Syringa.”
But it’s so much more than that. It’s the worry, the pain, the knowing underneath, like somehow someway, this being beyond my comprehension…understands this gnawing ache, the one I’ve always felt. The pull that needed more, the urge to run until I found it. The need that made it impossible for me to find myself content where they did. He hauls me to his chest; I can feel bands wrapping and writhing over my chilled flesh. They move like snakes, tightening around my limbs and securing me alongside his firm arms. My heart stills as I clear my eyes, my hacking easing as he walks us out of the creek. His face is decorated with those black veins, his dark eyes blown wide in panic.
He’s scared.
For me.
“Are you mad?” He seethes. “You nearly drowned!” His voice is lethal, demonic, a chest deep growl that should terrify me, but my heart flutters instead. A flurry of wings tickling the insides of my stomach.
Those binds tighten on me almost painfully, forcing my eyes away from his consuming gaze, my hair dripping into my face as I finally spot them. My throat is raw as I whimper. The impossibly dark shade of crimson appears nearly black as the…tendrils writhe and tighten against me. Petting and….testing. Some creature from the depths of the swimming hole has attached to me. A scream builds in my throat until Elric speaks, his voice barely above a growled whisper. “I will release them in a moment, just…Molly, by the Gods, what were you thinking?”
He will release them? These… things belong to him?
It makes sense once I’m able to track the writhing sentient tentacles back to his base, although I can’t see where they originate clearly. The disgust I felt seconds ago dissipates quickly, adding to the maelstrom of emotions battering within me. He doesn’t break his stride, nor do his eyes leave me as my body lets out a tremble, my teeth chattering as the wind picks up and night sets in on us. Water droplets look like moon-lit crystals as they trail down his face. Where each puff of my breath leaves a billowing cloud between us, his does not. His black hair plastered to his neck. Despite the aching in my lungs with the urge to cough, my breath whispers out of me as I stare at the man clutching me to his chest so tightly it feels as though he’s trying to meld us together. For a moment, I wonder if he could be Lucifer, not the devil, but the angel–the one I always secretly felt seemed so terribly…misunderstood. It’s odd how expressive his eyes can be despite the lack of detail in them. Pits, truly, especially out here in the dark, but when they turn to me, the swirling panic, the anger…again softens. Just for me. Like he can’t help it.
What a silly thought.
It’s only once I realize where he’s heading that I snap out of my daze, remembering the state I’ve left his cottage in. How I’d thrown his generosity back at him.
I open my mouth to protest, to beg, to apologize, but my words lodge in my throat. One of his…limbsclimbs the length of my neck, slithering around it only to stop near the corner of my trembling lips. It pushes gently, urging my face toward him. Suddenly, meeting his eyes feels like an elephantine task. “I cannot warm you out here. I am not built for such things, syringa.”
His anger, like most everything about him,shouldhorrify me as he stomps into the warm cottage, the wood stove cracking with fire. I wait; my breath holds for that anger to burst free from the lithe creature. For him to rage and demand repayment for what I’ve done to his home. He barely glances at the mess, at the blood.
I wonder how much truth there was to those stories, if he meant what he said earlier about the woman being a meal source. I wonder if he is tempted by it…if he would lap it from the–
He halts, his chest heaving, although I feel no heart to race despite being pushed against him. It’s me who breaks the tense silence first, my stomach fluttering because he’s…beautiful. Dripping wet and undone. This version of him is so familiar it sets off an ache deep in my chest. He looks so…far away. Yes, quite maddened indeed, still that thought fills me with none of the expected apprehension. His tendrils tighten so much that each breath feels like a task to drag through my burning lungs, but I don’t complain. I can’t recall the last time I was held, and it felt…safe. The frigid cold be damned. “I cannot read.”
That snaps him back to me, back to his trashed building, breathing out a word in a language I don’t understand before he catches himself. “What?”
“I fear I would be terrible at sorting paperwork.”
He shakes his head, his midnight-colored hair falling into his eyes as the pressure, the restraints from his tendrils, finally…reluctantly begin to unwind from me. “I will teach you.”
“Stop it.”
“Kurutsu ta onna,” he curses, finally setting me on my feet but only barely loosening his grip on me as one of his tendrils plucks a thick blanket from the bed, handing it off to him. “If you don’t wish to learn, there are other tasks you could help me with.”
