Faethfully Yours: Unbound

Chapter Six

Minutes, or maybe hours later, I peeled myself off of the floor and managed a bath. It was pointless. I still felt dirty. I couldn’t settle down in the water. Just feeling-- seeing it reminded me of the gentleness of Kheelan's lips, of his hands… of him.

As clean as I could get, I got out of the bath and opted for a towel, though another perfectly good robe hung behind the door. Seeing the bloodied one crumpled in a corner, breathing felt more like stab wounds sprinkled with salt. Bending down, I took the stained silk in my hands and sparked a flame in my palms. I knew I wasn’t supposed to use my powers, but after what I’d done, I deserved to have Xanthus skin me alive.

The robe curled in the fire until a pile of ash gathered at my knees. Maybe, just maybe if I erased the evidence, then the kiss never happened? Yes. I repeated that mantra over and over, it being the only thing keeping me on the edge of sanity. It never happened… it never happened.

A trunk of dresses was left in the common area. I chose a black one to match the weather, but mostly my mood. A look in the mirror confirmed my beliefs. I looked like death. The front was rather revealing, so I plucked a white scarf from the lot when an embroidered jacket caught my attention. It wasn’t for me, but for Kheelan. Kheelan, who at that moment was with Aeval, kissing her the way he did me, making love to her the way I wrongly and wistfully wished…

I swallowed and suddenly felt used. Being in that apartment was slowly killing me, the prospect of Kheelan coming back too dangerous for us both.

The hallways were empty save for the two guards posted outside of Aeval’s door. They glared at me coolly, and the clothes on my body seemed to disappear. Insanely enough, through their stares, I strained my ears, wanting to hear something coming from behind the large wooden doors. It was masochistic, I know, but maybe it would help me hate Kheelan  if I heard her scream his name. I didn't hear anything except for my deadened knocks on Elena’s door.

After the clicks of a few locks, Elena finally opened, her brow arched.

“I look like hell, I know,” I said, staggering past her and pacing to the middle of her room. Elena closed the door behind her, and simply leaned against the wall, watching me.

Unable to stand still, I walked in looped circles and broken squares. “I need to talk… I need to talk to someone and I have no one else, and it feels like I’m going crazy, and you’re all I have left and…” 

I froze.

On a table, in front of the open windows were the contents of the duffel bag spread out-- Ivan’s things.

Suddenly, it got a little harder to breathe and the world blurred.

Elena sighed and walked to the couch, sitting on the arm rest. “Please don’t get all sentimental. It’s hard enough looking through all these notes to then deal with your tears. Besides, you’re going to help me, and I can’t have you sobbing at every other word. It’s quite annoying actually. You do cry a lot. How Ivan put up with it…” She shook her head and held one of the books up to me.

I hesitated.

“It’s just a book, you know. It won’t bite,” she said teasingly, opening the cover and shutting it closed with a snap as if teeth clamping down at the air.  I ignored her, instead sitting in the shadows at a chair beside the window. From the corner of my eyes, I watched her brows furrow suspiciously, as if trying to pin point exactly what was wrong with me.

I grew hot, and tense, and cleared my throat to fill the awkward silence as guilt induced sweat began collecting at my pores. “Did you find anything?”

After a moment of silent dissection and inquisition, Elena hauled in a long breath and flicked through the pages. Stopping at one, she marked it with her finger and held it out to me. “Ivan started translating the books in this journal. There was nothing explicit about a map, but there was a lot of back history about the Shattering.”