Stay (7 page)

“I will never love you! You are poison to me!” I screeched and shoved him back to no avail.

Seid trapped me in his arms again, eyes flashing the brightest of blues as he laughed. “Oh Orona, you knew what I was from the moment I first stole your lips!”

“You’re nothing but a monster!” I cried, despairing
, because I knew deep down Seid was right and chose then to forever hate him for it.

Cain’s warm breath on my face pulled me from the past. Our lips brushed in the most gentle of caresses. My name escaped the tip of his tongue. “Rona.”

Tears welled in my eyes as
I pushed him away. “No!” I pleaded, in a voice that was much too hoarse. Cain’s hold eased instantly and I stumbled back to cover my face with my hands in shame. Without turning round to face him, I pressed my fingers to my wet eyes and stared at my fingertips. Time froze for the first time in an age as I remembered what this wetness was.

Tears?

I wanted to sob, to laugh or do anything to make my confusion fade. My heart ached for Cain’s touch, the embrace of a man I barely knew. But he wasn’t just any man and it wasn’t just because he looked just like
him
. It was because this human had somehow reached inside of me, seen through my disguise and made me feel again. And as I hid my gaze behind a golden wall of hair, I wondered if my tears were truly for Cain or the demon who shared his face.

-allison

Chapter 6

Woven Together

Cain was different after I scorned him, wary. I watched him eat the food we prepared together and desperately wished I could join him. I ignored the leftovers he packaged, in a carton with my name scratched in permanent ink on the lid. He turned off the stereo afterwards and did not turn it on again.

I was grateful because the music
made me desperately want his dance.

Without cards or music, we sat silent together on his couch by lamplight an
d watched the snow fall. As he did not venture to say anything, I chose to wait. Instead I used my curse to see past the glass and storm and to the stars beyond. Too many nights I had spent memorizing their patterns, finding their permanence to be my only comfort, the one constant of my long existence.

Cain broke the thick silence so softly I might not have heard if I were merely human. “You need to eat sometime.
”

“Do
not fear. I have no need of it,” I replied, too eagerly, too quickly. I sighed with relief and a release of bated breath after. Without looking, I could still hear the frustration in his voice as he mumbled.

“You don’t make any sense
, you know. Must have lied when you said your English was good.”

Frustration rose up in me along with the anger I had lived with the better part of an age.
“If you had ears to listen, you would understand,” I said severely. I watched him pop his knuckles one by one and tried to ignore my inner flinch.

He took his time in answering.
“I’ve seen a lot of strange things and done even more things in my life I didn’t have a choice doing. It’s not like I’m the right person to judge you, but I’m pretty sure you’re hiding something, Orona.”

“I can
hide nothing from you, Cain,” I said truthfully, though I was unable to hold the bitterness from my voice. I was forbidden to lie and now that I was having my first real conversation in forever, I desperately wanted to.

His e
yes found mine in the darkness and made me look twice when they seemed to glow like the sunlit sea.

“Then why do you flinch every time I touch you?
” he demanded. “Is it because of
him
?”

I froze and clutched his tee shirt at my neck
. Even with his mother’s shawl around my shoulders, I felt naked and exposed.

Cain nodded
to himself, as though my reaction confirmed his suspicions and pressed on. “That’s what I figured… that son of a…” He paused, checking himself. He looked at me and leaned forward, elbow to knee, fingers dragging through hair too short to thread in harsh strokes. His frustration boiled over finally, bruising in its intensity. “I can’t believe your dad would sell you to any douchebag stupid enough to
hit
you!”

My heart quelled and for the first time
since I could remember, I sank against the cushions, exhausted. “It was long ago,” I admitted. “And it is not something I want to think on every day.”

“I
know it’s not my place to care. I mean, I barely know you,” he said and then held his hand to me in silent plea. “But you just—I don’t know—got under my skin from the second I saw you. I feel like I already know you, Rona.”

My heart leapt at the age-long forgotten nickname.
Seid was the only other person to call me that.

“I know it sounds crazy and I swear I’m not saying this to try and get in your pants, or because I’m pulling the ‘
we might die in this storm
’ card.”

We bo
th grinned because of his joke and some of the tension eased between us.

Cain
eased back onto the couch to better face me and this time, his smile was strange, haunted. “I’ve just been through hell most of my life and the thought of some a-hole taking advantage of you...” He shook his head, unable to articulate.

So I sighed and whispered,
“I know.”

Our eyes met and I was
taken aback by the fervor of his budding affection. Before my inhuman eyes, his aura shone all around him in brilliant gold and stretched with finger-like strands towards me. Transfixed, I felt the colors and light trapped within me grasp desperately for it in return.

Immediately after I had my first taste of the consequences of breaking Seid’s rules and I learned just how unprepared I was.

I screamed when the curse retaliated.

My
body was thrown off the couch by an invisible force and then lifted up only to slam against the hardwood floor.

“Rona!” Cain shouted and with reflexes better than mine
, he caught me before the impact was too severe.

A troubled silence followed and I frowned at the black splotches clouding my vision.

I heard him distantly exclaim, “Oh God!” as his hands brushed over my still body and he turned me over gently as he could.

I longed to
open my eyes but found this impossible as my life flashed in front of me.

“What are you doing here?” I asked the beautiful stranger. This was my escape, my secret retreat, and I was unhappy to find another man in my way. Had I not suffered enough from their kind?

His smile was dazzling
, revealing two rows of perfect white teeth. The sun was blinding behind him as he laughed and answered, “Waiting for you, Orona.”

My eyes locked to his
and I felt something inside of me pull rapidly towards him, a twisting, living twine that was quickly braiding together. On second glance, I noticed how his bronze skin glowed like the setting sun, how long his black hair, now flying loose and free in the wind behind him, was. He was beautiful and I wanted him like I’d never wanted anything in my life.

~

I rushed to our place, our secret cave, where nothing and no one could ever find us. Here I would always be safe because it was in his domain. He was waiting for me, as he always did.

Today the storms brewed and crashed against the nearby rocks
, a violent tempest. Cries of panic echoed from the docks and alerted me to the effect my mood was having on my true love. It had frightened me at first, how the winds and the seas reflected his moods.

When we kissed, the skies had never appeared more heavenly, nor the seas a more brilliant shade of sapphire blue. Now in his fear and fury, the seas churned and tossed about, rocking against the shoreline with increasingly higher gusts of water.

He crushed me into his chest, so I forgot his madness and my tears covered us both. When he cried the rains escaped the dark clouds above.

“I’ll kill them all, Orona,” he said with a shudder. “
I wish you would let me destroy him for what he’s done to you.”

I pressed a hand to his chest and pleaded
, not for the first time. “Please don’t hurt them. They don’t mean to be cruel. They are my family now, Seid!”

“No!” Thunder
and lightning struck in a cataclysmic boom that shook the rocks at our feet. He held me tighter, braced my face with his hands and breathed into me, so I couldn’t escape him. “I am your family, Rona.”

A hoarse voice was screaming my name in the distance. Gradually it grew in volume, calling me back to the present, and I filled my limbs, again more myself.

“Rona?” Cain’s voice hitched as he spoke over me. “
Oh God, please don’t let her die. I swear I won’t go back to it again this time…
never
again if you’ll just…” He murmured more prayers in my ear, rocked with me in his chest. Wetness covered my cheeks, but this time it was not from my eyes.

“I’m sorry
, baby.” The hands that caressed my back trembled and he choked on his own words. “Whatever I did, I’m so sorry! I always push too hard. They always told me I pushed too hard. I knew you were different—not like the rest—so I hoped you’d be able to handle what they couldn’t understand. Christ,” he murmured bitterly to himself, “she’s gonna think you’re crazier than you already are. Why didn’t I get my prescription sooner?”

Moaning
, because the words stuck too tightly to my mouth, I managed a weak reply, “I thought
I
was the crazy one.”

Cain
froze above me and then laughed. He brushed my damp hair off my face and behind my ear. His eyes reflected a blue so deep they seemed to glow violet.

“No
, babe, that would be me. You can thank my PTSD for that.”

I had no idea what PTS
D stood for, yet for some foolish reason, my soul ached to comfort his. Had I not just seen what Seid was willing to do when I broke one of his precious rules? I had already lost count as to the exact number.

Even with the aftereffects of the curse’s attack on my body, I pressed a shaky
palm to rest against his heart and said, “It was my fault. I forgot my mission and myself. If I had obeyed last night, when we met, then none of this would have to happen.”

And you would have never known what it was like to feel either, would you? Only through your connection to them can you drink of human emotion,
I added to myself, darkly.

His eyes flashed dangerously and he replied, almost as if he had heard my thoughts,
“Forget regrets, Rona. Life’s too short to hate yourself.”

My nerves felt electrified,
overshot with a lightning force. I knew exactly how it felt to be pierced by the bone-melting power of a lightning bolt, first hand, after all. But Seid’s unspoken message was clear to me now. I had allowed myself to become too close to him. I shifted at the realization, in desperate need to be out of his arms and far, far away from this place.

The warmth and relief I had seen shining in his eyes faded and he stood.
“Is there anything I can get you?” His forehead creased as he wrapped his fingers over the top of his head.

“No. I am well.”
My voice trembled, betraying me. I took to staring at anything and everything else but the way his brow furrowed and his hair fell into his eyes just then. I wanted to push the hair aside and smooth that brow with a kiss, anything to keep the look of dejection from his face.

“I know I acted like a jerk earlier. I shouldn’t have trie
d to kiss you, but it just felt,” he said and paused as he struggled for the word, “right.”

I pretended I didn’t see the flare and flash of determination steel his blue gaze, or how they lingered longest on my mouth.

“I swear I won’t try to touch you again, unless…”

Unless I want him to,
I thought, finishing his unspoken words in my head. I understood. And if we weren’t in danger of creating a bond of our own, a wild, terribly beautiful one, I would have kissed more than his brow then.

-tammy
 

Chapter 7

Finding Lissa

Now I knew for certain I wasn’t only risking my existence by staying here
. By letting him close to me, I was risking Cain’s life.

I stole out from between the
covers of the couch bed while he slept. I shook out my folded cloak and slipped it on, wrapping it tightly around my chest. My gaze found the wall before I could stop myself. My immortal eyes could easily see through the thin wall separating me from Cain’s sprawled-out form. He slept so peacefully, with his tattooed biceps thrown over his head and his fingers clenching the pillowcase.