Shaxoa's Gift (37 page)

“What?” I gasped, the words lurching out of
me in unadulterated hope. She didn’t say I could break the bond,
but suppressing it sounded pretty good, too. “How? What do I have
to do? I’ll do anything, Quaile. Please just tell me what to
do!”

“I already told you how to suppress the bond,
Claire,” she said as if it should have been obvious to me. I shook
my head in confusion. I had no idea what she was talking about. “I
told you that you had to do this on your own. It’s the only way to
get any kind of relief from the bond. You have to make the choice.
You have to put the bond away yourself. No one else can do it for
you. There’s no easy way out. If you truly want to be with Uriah,
and not spend the rest of your life pining for Daniel, you have to
bury the desire to have him deep inside yourself.”

“Make a choice? I’ve already made my choice!”
I argued. “If I hadn’t chosen Uriah, I would be suffering like
this. I. Want. Uriah. Not Daniel. What more do I have to do?”

“You have to face Daniel and convince him
that you don’t love him.”

The idea of being anywhere near Daniel
started my entire body trembling. I couldn’t face him. Daniel’s
image danced in my eyes, the bond piercing me so thoroughly with
its jagged hooks that I didn’t think there was a single part of my
soul left unmarred. There was no way I would survive the pull if I
were face to face with him. “I…what? I don’t…I don’t have time for
that. I have to find Uriah,” I said weakly.

“I don’t think you’ll have to wait very long
for the opportunity,” Quaile said.

“What?”

“Haven’t you felt it, Claire? The bond has
been growing stronger all day, hasn’t it? I can feel it getting
worse as we sit here. Don’t tell me you can’t feel it too,” Quaile
said.

“But…” It had been growing stronger all day,
but that was just how the bond worked, wasn’t it? It grew stronger
every day. Today had been worse than usual, but I thought I was
just slipping faster than ever. My body convulsed as I realized
what Quaile was saying. “He’s on his way here. He’s coming.”

A harsh knock bounced off of Quaile’s front
door.

“I’d say he
is
here,” Quaile said.

31: Time to Find
Out

Quaile stood up to answer the door, but I
grabbed her wrist. “No, Quaile, don’t answer it!”

“Do you want to be with Uriah?” she
asked.

I sobbed, agony pouring out with every
teardrop. “More than anything.”

“Then I need to answer the door, and you have
to face him, Claire. It’s the only way.”

My eyes drifted back to the thermos. Maybe
she was wrong. Maybe it would work just like Uriah said it would.
Quaile’s knobby fingers wrapped around the thermos and placed it in
front of me. “The choice is yours, Claire. Drink it and risk losing
them both, or face Daniel and find out just how strong your love
for Uriah truly is.”

My hands closed around the thermos. Its cool
metal pressed up against my chest made promises I knew it couldn’t
keep. Uriah told me I was stronger than I thought I was all the
time. He told me I could do anything I wanted, that not my dad or
anyone else could stop me from making my life everything I wanted
it to be. It was time to find out whether or not he was right.

“Answer the door,” I whispered.

The sound of her feet shuffling across the
floor became the only sound in the world. I didn’t breathe or move.
I just waited. The door knob creaked as Quaile turned it. The quiet
pop of the door seal breaking as she pulled it open was louder than
a thunderclap. Aching, furious, deceptive desire rushed in like a
sandstorm, beating and blinding me in an instant. I could hear
words being exchanged distantly, but pain and desire lashing me
shut out everything else.

“Claire?”

His voice snapped my eyes open. The tortured
agony seeping out of him drew another gasping sob from my body. He
looked as terrible as I felt. I clutched the thermos even tighter,
refusing to let my hands reach out to him.

“Claire, I couldn’t stay away. I had to see
you again. I tried to tell you I was coming, but you hung up on
me.”

Every word was like a drug, breaking down my
defenses against the bond. He moved a step closer to me and my eyes
flew around wildly for some escape or help. They landed on Quaile
standing quietly in the corner. Her presence was a pillar of
strength. She radiated that arrogant pride that also made people
want to slap her, but for once I latched onto it. I trusted her
when she said this was the only way to have Uriah. She believed I
could do this. I had to believe it too.

“Daniel,” I said, quietly, testing my
strength. He stepped forward eagerly. I held the thermos out in
front of me like a shield. He paused, uncertain. I forced myself to
meet his eyes squarely. “Do you have any idea what is in this?”

He shook his head slowly. His finger
twitched. I could tell he was barely holding back the urge to grab
me.

“Uriah brought me this, Daniel. It’s a potion
that will sever the bond between us,” I said.

His eyes flared wide. “Claire, no! Please
don’t drink it. I’m begging you, Claire.”

Fire burst through my veins at his pleas. My
strength wavered. The desire to let him take me in his arms and
prove his love rippled through me like poison. “I’m not going to
drink it,” I gasped.

The attack lessened as Daniel’s eye lit up.
Mistaking my reasons for not drinking it, he rushed forward. I
scrambled out of the chair and banged into the kitchen counter
behind me. My reaction was enough to slow him, though he kept
stepping toward me slowly.

“I’m not going to drink it because this
potion will take more than the bond away from me, Daniel. It will
make it so I could never love anyone again. It will keep me from
caring about Uriah, and I can’t let that happen,” I said. “Do you
know why?”

“No,” he said, his eyes locked with mine.
Each step he took doubled the bond’s pull. I edged to the side in
an effort to get away from him.

“I can’t stop caring about Uriah, because if
I do, I won’t want to help him anymore. And if I don’t help him,
he’ll die.”

I counted on what he said about liking and
respecting Uriah being true. It was a good bet. Daniel stopped and
frowned at me. “What do you mean he’ll die?”

“The creature that attacked you when Uriah
was bringing you to me, Uriah is on his way to kill it, but he
can’t do it without my help. If I don’t follow him, he’ll try to
kill the Matwau and fail. He’ll die and it will be my fault,
Daniel.”

His face wrinkled in confusion. “But you said
you weren’t going to drink it.”

Reaching the kitchen sink, I unscrewed the
lid of the thermos. “I’m not.”

For a moment, I couldn’t make myself tip it.
The scents and magic within spilled out and wrapped around me. The
whispered promises of forgetting Daniel and spending the rest of my
life with Uriah tempted me to press the thermos to my lips. My head
swam under the onslaught. It was with trembling fingers I finally
tilted the thermos enough to watch its contents spill out, down the
drain, gone forever. The empty thermos clattered into the sink
after the last remnants of the potion.

Breaking the bond was up to me now. There was
no turning back, no easy way out. I faced Daniel again, who wore a
very confused expression. “I’m not coming with you, either,” I told
him. “I’d be doing the same thing to Uriah by giving into the bond,
Daniel. If I let myself love you, I’ll be giving up on Uriah. I’ll
be letting him die.”

“No,” Daniel argued, “we could help him
together, Claire. I wouldn’t ask you to abandon Uriah if he really
needed you.”

I shook my head harshly at him and the bond
that was trying to tell me together was better than alone. “I can
only help him if I let you go, Daniel. It’s the only way to save
his life.”

“But…but, I love you, Claire.”

“No you don’t, and I don’t love you. Not
really.” His mouth opened to argue some more, but I interrupted
him. “You’ve never been in love before, Daniel. I know, because if
you had, you would realize how fake the bond felt.”

“It doesn’t feel fake to me, Claire.”

“The first time Uriah and I really spoke, I
was in trouble and I needed help. I trusted him to save me more
than anyone else. I knew he would never let me down because I had
grown up watching him and getting to know what a kind and genuine
person he was. When we started dating, he changed me for the
better. He took all my weaknesses and turned them into strengths.
Any time I was scared, he was there to comfort me. No matter how
bad things got for me, Uriah could make everything better just by
being near me. I have never doubted, not even once, that Uriah
loves me,” I said. “Have you ever felt that way about another
person?”

His shoulders slumped, but the words seemed
to be a struggle for him to get out. “No, I haven’t,” he finally
managed to say.

“Do you feel that way about me?” I asked.

At first he looked eager to assure me that he
did, but his brow creased.

“Think about it, Daniel. What have I done
that deserves your love? Is there anything I’ve done that makes you
want to give up everything for me? You can’t even say that you
don’t doubt my love, because I’m telling you right now that I don’t
love you like you think I do. I love Uriah, and I always will.”

He didn’t say anything. I could feel the bond
pulsating around him, pushing him not to listen to me. It was doing
the same to me, but I was surer than ever that I could defeat
this.

“One day, Daniel, you’ll meet someone who
does for you what Uriah has done for me. She’ll make you excited
just to wake up in the morning. Every choice you make will be for
her happiness. She’ll change you in wonderful ways you can’t even
imagine right now. This girl will be the reason for your existence.
You will crave to be near her, not because something is telling you
that you should, but because you’ll know you could never be truly
happy without her by your side. You’ll kiss her and your world will
stop just so you can make the moment last a little longer. You’ll
never doubt she loves you, and she’ll never walk away from you.
That’s the kind of love you want, Daniel. Not this. You shouldn’t
have to try to convince me to love you. You deserve better than
that.”

“You really believe that?” Daniel asked with
tears in his eyes.

“Yes, I do.”

“How can you be so sure I’ll find someone
like that?” he asked.

“Because I’ve already found that in Uriah. I
know you will too, Daniel, but you have to let go of me first,” I
said.

Closing the distance between us, Daniel
stopped just short of touching me. The bond battered against me,
trying to find a way in, but there was doubt in Daniel’s heart now,
too. It was losing its hold on us. Daniel’s doubt, though, was a
tenuous thing. He looked up at me through tortured eyes. “I don’t
know if I can let you go, Claire.”

The whispered urge to touch him fluttered
through my heart, but it didn’t come from the bond. It came from a
different source entirely, one I listened to. My fingers closed
around his and I stopped looking at Daniel. Images popped in and
out of my mind. A dozen, a hundred, a lifetime full of memories yet
to be made. When they left me, I saw Daniel again, watching me with
a pensive expression.

Tears ran down my cheeks as I said, “Let me
go, Daniel. She’s waiting for you. She’s waiting to make you
happier than you could ever be with me.”

“Who’s waiting?” he asked eagerly.

“Go home.”

“But…”

I smiled at him warmly. “You’re going to have
to trust me, Daniel.”

There was no sound in the little mud brick
house. Daniel’s fingers tightened around mine, loosened,
retightened. His eyes stared at nothing as his mind tumbled through
everything I had just said to him. The room was filled with the
bond’s manipulative power, but my heart begged Daniel to listen to
me. Daniel’s eyes closed and he leaned closer to me. My panic
spiked as his mouth drew close to my ear.

“The funny thing about this bond,” Daniel
said, “is that even while it’s trying to push us together, it
connects me to you in a way that lets me know you aren’t lying. No
matter how much I want it right now, no matter how good it feels to
be this close to you, you’re never going to love me like you love
him.”

He pulled back just far enough that I could
see his face again. It obviously hurt him greatly to admit that,
but his pain was tempered with hope that this wouldn’t be his only
chance at love.

“I’m sorry, Daniel,” I said quietly.

“Me too.” His lips turned up at the corners.
“Can I just do one thing? To be sure?”

“What?” I asked.

Rather than answer, he leaned in and pressed
his lips against mine. The bond staggered us as its power coursed
through our bodies. The intensity that should have brought on waves
of lust and desire sickened me with its force. One last ditch
effort to control our lives, it shoved its will into every pore. It
was a relief when Daniel finally pulled back. His forehead rested
against mine, his expression looking only slightly apologetic, and
largely pleased with himself. I recognized the look. It usually
accompanied Cole saying something like, “Well, I had to try.”

“Are you sure?” Daniel asked quietly. “Are
you sure she’s waiting for me?”

“Yes,” I whispered in answer to both
questions.

Daniel’s arms wrapped around me tightly. I
hugged him back. “Goodbye, Claire.”

His arms slid from around my body and watched
him silently as he walked to the door. He paused there, looking
back one final time. The bond persisted right up until he closed
the door and sealed his decision. My knee buckled and dropped me to
the floor as the pull to abandon Uriah suddenly receded. It felt
like I had just swallowed a secret addiction. It nestled somewhere
deep inside of me, ready to be called back up if I ever wanted it,
but silent until that time when weakness would make me give in
again. I wasn’t free by any means, but I cried and laughed and
watched my tears splash against the hardwood floor.