Page 21 of Sustaining
I blink the heaviness from my eyes and try one more time, shoving all my force into the power that’s strumming through my veins. My jaw clenches. I push into the dark veil that’s blanketing my visions; I shove at it, forcing my mind to follow the trail of light that’s cutting into my thoughts.
And then I see her. The stranger looks as wild as the vines hanging in the trees behind her. Her blonde hair is knotted, tangled with dirt all around her face. Strands of silver can barely be seen in the paleness of her messy locks, but the lines around her eyes crease even more when she smiles. My brows tense as I watch her sing a song quietly, tossing out chunks of bloody meat. The meat falls over the edge of a cliff. Blood bleeds out over the surface of the sea, the white waves staining a crimson color. Something strange slinks beneath the surface, but my mind’s eye doesn’t linger on the winding shadow.
Stay out of my life, mage. I feel you here. Stay out!I flinch at her shouting, and then the image is ripped away from me.
Her image flickers away until darkness is all that I see once again. I blink up into the brightness of the room. The warm blankets are heavy against my chest, and I settle down lower into the feel of them.
All that effort for ten seconds of information. And for what? For some lunatic woman to scream at me.
Fuck.
How did she know? How could she sense me watching her? She…pushed me out. Like…a mage would.
Maybe I should ask the one other hiding mage in this village.
I grimace at the thought of trying to get my mother to talk about the one topic she avoids like the plague.
Arlow?
My eyes flash open despite knowing I won’t see the shifter who whispered through my thoughts.
Kain?I say his name with just as much uncertainty as he’d said mine, mostly just to toy with him.
I didn’t know if you’d be awake yet.
A beat passes, my eyes barely keeping open.
I’m the early riser type.A yawn parts my lips and slips into my internal thoughts, and I can almost feel his suspicion.
Why do I always feel like you’re mocking me?
Why do you make it so easy to mock you?
You like it, so I guess I just make myself an easy target for your own cruel amusement.
Oh, that’s a lie, and we both know it. Your ego would never allow yourself to be an easy anything.
His laughter rumbles through my mind like a physical touch along my skin. My eyes close, and I sink into the bed even farther because his voice is a delicious, calming sound that affects me more than he’ll ever know.
I miss your teasing, I guess. I miss your antics even. I miss you, Arlow.
Pain aches through my chest. I open my eyes slowly, hating how alone I am despite how connected I feel to him right now. We’re intimately bound together on the deepest level possible, and yet I can’t feel his body against mine.
I’ve never felt his body against mine actually.
And I’ve never been aware of that more than I am right now.
Where are you? Are you almost here?
My tongue slides across my lower lip, and I’m vividly imagining just how I’ll jump him the moment I see him. In my head it’s like a sea of purple and pink wild flowers around us in a romantic, slightly rough, slightly more rough than romantic, sexfest in a field somewhere that I’ve never actually been to before, but now I’m just ruining the moment with semantics, and nobody has time for that.
Are you listening to me? Arlow?
Yeah. Yeah, I’m here.
I’ll be home tonight if it doesn’t rain again. We need to talk, but everything’s under control. Don’t worry about anything.
Everything’s under control. Everything’s always under control when Kain is around. The world is straight forward and black and white in his head. And yet he reached out to me…for no particular reason.
