Vanish

Chapter 8

Days pass quietly, like pages turning in a book, one after the other. As my life sinks into a routine, the loneliness bears deep, gnawing at me. Dusk settles as I walk home from work. The mist rides thick and the fading sunlight struggles to penetrate the opaque air, breaking through in patches here and there, staving off the night.

I hear him before I spot him. Cassian materializes in the mist before me, his tread soft on the path. We both stop and face each other. He lives on the other side of the township. I can guess the reason he’s this far south. I know where he’s coming from, where he’s been. The same place he’s been spending most of his time.

“Cassian,” I greet, twisting my fingers until they ache, rubbing at the flesh, as though the blood were still there from all the fish I cleaned today.

“Jacinda. How are you?” He asks this like we’re polite acquaintances. And I guess we are in a way. We’ve become that. Since he decided to focus on my sister. Suddenly I loathe the sight of him. I feel used, lied to. He never wanted me. Never really liked me for me.

The mist strokes my face as I glare up at Cassian, something inside me unraveling, like ribbons on a package coming undone.

Cassian stares down at me, his arms behind his back. Like Severin or another elder glowering down at me, and I guess he’s on his way to being one of them.

My skin prickles with resentment. I hate it when he reminds me of them — of his father. It’s a bitter pill after he almost convinced me he was different. I wanted to believe him. The words he told me in Chaparral when he was trying to get me to come home with him echo in my head.

There’s something in you… you’re the only thing real for me there, the only thing remotely interesting.

Lies to get me to trust him. Or he changed his mind. Either way, I don’t interest him anymore. Not as Tamra does.

Finally, when I don’t answer, he says, “You’ve got to stop this.”

“Stop what?”

He dips his head, looks at me through shadowed eyes. “Stop making it so damn hard on yourself. Pining for some—”

“I don’t want to hear this.” I shake my head. “Not that you really care, but I’ve let it go.” It’s easier saying it. Even though we both know I mean Will.

“Then why do I still see him in your eyes?”

A hiss of pain escapes me.

I lash out with one knotted fist against his dense-muscled chest, taking out every frustration, every pain on him.

He doesn’t move. I hit him again. Still nothing. He takes it. Stares at me from the impenetrable black of his eyes. With a strangled cry, I hit him again and again. Landing blows anywhere I can reach. My vision blurs, and I realize I’m crying.

This only infuriates me more. Breaking down in front of Cassian, losing control, succumbing to weakness as he stands witness…

“Jacinda,” he says, then again, louder, because I don’t stop, can’t stop the flurry of my fists on the solid wall of him. “Enough!”

He stops me. I guess he always could have, but now he actually does it. He hauls me close, not so much a hug as a body lock, both arms wrapped around me.

It’s disconcerting, our bodies so close, pressed tightly together. Our breaths fall in a fast, matching rhythm.

I pull back my head, look into his face. See him as I never have.

He’s no longer looking at me. It feels like he’s looking inside me, his gaze probing. Accepting me for me. A closeness I haven’t felt with anyone since I arrived here sweeps through me. And it’s a promise of an end to my numbing loneliness. If I let it happen. Let this happen.

I panic again. Because it’s Cassian.

A sob strangles in my throat and spills raggedly from my lips. I close my eyes in a long and miserable blink and pull myself together again. Wrenching from his warm embrace, I barrel past him.

He grabs my arm as I pass and swings me around like we’re doing a dance move.

I glare at that hand on my arm. “Let me go.”

He’s quiet for a moment, his chest rising and falling with breath. “What’s this really about? Why are you running from me?”

I say nothing at first, the only noise the crashing of my ragged breath. Then, I burst. “You lied to me!”

He cuts the murky air with one of his big, crushing hands. “When have I lied to you?”

I continue as if I don’t hear him. And I don’t. Not really. It’s finally gotten to me — how quickly he dropped me once Tamra manifested. “I wasn’t special to you. You just saw the fire-breather. Like everyone else. It was never me.” And now it’s Tamra. Only it’s not her either. She’s only one thing to him, and everyone else — the pride’s precious shader.

Now I know. Now I see him for what he is.

“I’ve only ever been honest with you.” His nostrils flare, ridges popping up on the bridge of his nose, rising in and out with the surge of his temper. I should back down at the sight, but then I’ve never been one to do what I should.

“Right,” I spit out.

He’s shaking now, his eyes more purple than black. “You want to hear some truth, Jacinda? How about this? I can’t stand the sight of you. Not when you’re moping around here like someone who needs to be on a suicide watch… all for a guy who’s probably already forgotten about you and moved on to the next hunt.”

My fingers curl into fists, cutting into my palms. I want to say so much right then — mostly that Will hasn’t forgotten me. But I shouldn’t argue this point. I should hope it’s true. I’ve vowed to let Will go, but a desperate hunger for him still twists through me — a viper writhing through my body, working its poison.

I don’t have Will. I have nothing. Nothing but a frantic need to grab on to something, anything to keep me afloat in the desert of my existence.

Instead, I say, “And me dead would just break you up, wouldn’t it?”

He stares at me so starkly, incredulous. “You think I’d want you dead?” His eyes are wide and searching. They make me start to doubt myself, that maybe he does care about me. I begin to shake as confusing thoughts and feelings whirl through me. “What do you want from me, Jacinda?”

I glance at his hand still on my arm. My skin swims with heat, especially where he touches me.

“Let me go.” He stands so close, towering over me, making me feel small when I’m not. “I have to go,” I say louder. And I do. I have to go. Now.

In answer, his skin blurs, his darker draki flesh flashing in and out beneath his human skin, reminding me of what he is. What I am. And I can’t help remembering how everyone always thought we were perfectly matched. Now they think that about him and Tamra.

His lip curls back from his teeth, the white startling against his olive-hued skin. “Why? So you can be alone? Is that what you prefer? Gutting fish in the day and then crying into your pillow at night? That’s what you want? Has it occurred to you that I haven’t pulled away from you as much as you’ve pushed me away? You’re nothing but a selfish, scared little girl who’d rather lick her wounds than live.”

His words strike deep, arrowing directly for the heart. Too close to the truth. You’re nothing but a selfish, scared little girl….

My vision shifts, grows crisper, and I know I’m staring out at him through vertical pupils. Steam eats up my throat, burns through my mouth and nostrils.

I stagger back a step. He doesn’t move this time. He lets me go.

Turning, I sprint through damp air until my lungs burn and feel ready to burst from my too-tight chest. I revel in it — a pleasure that borders on pain, a welcome distraction. Even as I slow my pace, I vow to keep going, keep walking until I’ve regained composure. Until I no longer feel Cassian’s arms around me. Until I no longer hear his words. Selfish, scared little girl. Selfish, scared little girl.

Damn him for getting in my head. For maybe being right.

The red-gold beams of fading dusk filter down through the mist. The fiery light touches my skin in flashes, gilding me here and there, reminding me of how I look in full manifest — of what I am. What I will always be. The desert hadn’t killed it. Nothing can.

I feel certain of that now. My draki will never fade. Maybe it’s all I know anymore.

I survived my mother’s attempt to kill off my draki. I survived the desert, hunters all around me with their hungry gazes, the fear so thick I could taste it in my mouth. After all that, I know my draki is here to stay. I don’t have to worry about losing that part of myself anymore. I should be happy. Relieved.

Except I’m not. My eyes sting and I blink them rapidly.

Inhaling deeply, I move. My chest rises, fills with the aroma of sweet, arable earth. I’m sustained here. Even if my soul yearns for more. For Will.

Anger surges through me. I’m crazy to yearn for a boy lost to me forever. Why can’t I move on and find what happiness I can with the pride?

Then I see it sketched against the hazy twilight. The dilapidated tower stretches up through the fog like an ancient, twisting tree covered in thick, wiry vines. It’s not as tall as the other three watchtowers strategically positioned throughout the township, but it’s the oldest, the first, built back when the idea of existing without a shader seemed impossible, a reality for which we needn’t prepare.

Time changed that attitude. As Nidia aged and no other shader manifested, fear set in that the next generation of draki would be without a shader. The other towers were built then, stronger — taller than before — in preparation for the days to come when we would have to rely on ourselves to safeguard the township.

I stop at the base and look up. Watchtowers are always camouflaged with vines and bramble, the better to blend them with the natural landscape, but this one looks more natural than the others. And I love that. Love the wildness of it as it returns to nature. It hasn’t been used in years, since before I was born, but I remember this forgotten tower well, my childhood haunt.

I lay my hand on a weathered rung and begin to climb. An animal, startled by my intrusion, scurries up the twisted beams as I ascend.

I push through the congestion of leaves. Wiry branches poke me, grab my hair like sharp fingers as I climb higher and higher. Rotting wood creaks beneath me. I reach the top and drop onto my back on the moss-speckled wood with a sigh.

I splay a hand over my stomach, feel myself breathe in and out, my lungs expanding. And it all comes back to me. My love for this place. A place I can safely exist. Where I can be me. Away from prying eyes.

A canopy of green covers me. I spot the sky drifting overhead through gaps in the wood and foliage. Sitting up, I cross my legs and stare out at the vast, pulsing green world spread below. The pride is there. The green-tiled roofs peep out through Nidia’s mist.

Mist curls between the houses and buildings, covering the fields, crawling over the township’s walls and spreading across the land like a living thing, settling thickly into the valleys and over the lesser hills and mountains in a foamy white. Only the tallest treetops poke through the mantle of fog.

“Thought I’d find you here.”

I shrink into myself, pulling my knees close to my chest as Cassian’s dark head emerges, followed by the rest of him. He lowers down beside me, the wood groaning in protest.

“This is probably a deathtrap, you know. It should have been torn down a long time ago.”

“It would be sacrilege. There are too many memories attached to it,” I say. “No one can do it.”

He reaches down and strokes a moss-lined board. “Yeah. That’s the truth. Wonder how many first kisses were stolen up here.”

Something tightens a little inside me at this. My first kiss wasn’t here. It was with Will. Out there. My gaze drifts to the vast world spread out below me, so different from the desert where my heart found Will. It probably should have been here. It probably would have been here if I hadn’t left.

I inhale cool, damp air through my nostrils. “Why did you follow me?”

Cassian’s voice rumbles on air as dense as the drape of night closing around us, sealing us in. “Did you think I wouldn’t?”

I say nothing. He stares at me with his impenetrable gaze. Rain starts to fall in earnest then, the patter amplifying the stretch of silence between us. The water finds its way through the holes and cracks in the canopy above us and drops coldly upon my hair. I don’t mind. I’ve never minded the cold.

Cassian angles his head, water sitting on the sleek, dark strands like beads of crystal. “You really think I wouldn’t care if you were dead?”

I pull back, remembering that I had accused him of not caring what happened to me.

“I’ve been avoiding you because I’m just so damn annoyed….” He shakes his head, sloshing water. The strands brush his shoulders rhythmically. “I don’t want you risking yourself again. The human world… Will. It’s too dangerous.” Cassian takes my hand. I feel his heartbeat through the simple touch, the thud of his life meeting with mine. “You dead… it would break me.” His voice whips sharply over the drum of rainfall. “Everything I ever said to you was the truth. My feelings haven’t changed for you, Jacinda. Even if you do drive me crazy, here, in the pride… you’re still that single bright light for me.”

I don’t know who moved first.

Maybe it was both of us. Or maybe I just don’t want to accept that it might have been me. Might have been my head inching forward, my wet face lifting up to his. My heart beating so loud it thundered like a drum in my chest.

His lips are soft at the first brush. One of us trembles. Me or him. Both of us? I don’t know, don’t care.

It’s a feathery kiss, lips brushing, grazing, tasting, almost as if we are afraid of startling each other. And we are.

Even as exhilarated as I feel in this moment, I’m not totally unaware of what’s happening — of the strangeness of me kissing Cassian. It’s terrifying to do this thing that has been unthinkable for so long. But I guess buried underneath it all, tension has always been a humming wire stretched tightly between us. Tonight I let go of my end and the wire snaps free. Before Will, I had wondered about Cassian and me, wondered about us — together. I had thought maybe. Even if I never admitted it to myself, never could because of Tamra. Because I was told that we would be together someday and not asked.

Yet, even knowing all this, I don’t stop. Don’t pull away and run.

The gentle play of his rain-wet lips on mine is sweet, exciting. I lean into him, taste mint on his mouth. My heart warms, softens to have this intimacy, this connection to another soul again.

Until the kiss changes.

The pressure increases ever so slightly. The intensity deepens into something that I feel in my bones, in the sudden snap of my flesh and hot rush of my blood. His lips grow more demanding, hard and soft at the same time, devouring my mouth.

I moan and he quickly pulls back, brushing my face with his fingers. “Is this okay—”

Nodding, I pull him back to me, needing this too much right now. I can’t feel anything but an easing of the ache that’s been gnawing away inside me since leaving Chaparral.

He embraces his hunger.

Strange animal sounds come from him. Or is that me?

Vibrations rumble from my chest, climb up my contracting windpipe. I wedge my arms between us and turn my palms into his chest, craving touch, the sensation of another. I unfurl my fingers so my palms lie flat on his chest. His heart thuds steady and strong.

His hand drags up my back, buries in my wet hair, catching in the thick snarls, but I don’t care. I revel in it, in the knowledge of another’s desire for me — for Cassian’s desire.

His palm cups the back of my skull, cradling my head.

His lips slide from my mouth to my slippery jaw. His teeth nip there and I can’t stop myself. I sigh, feel the pull in my flesh, the snap of my skin and know that I’m no longer entirely human. He’s brought the draki to life in me. Just like Will did.

The thought makes me jerk, suck in a watery breath. I break away, gasping icy air into my smoldering lungs, stare into his eyes, the deepest purple, the pupils thin, dark vertical slits.

Horrified, I brush a hand over my burning mouth before dragging fingers against my skin, feeling its tight, smooth texture and confirming that I’ve halfway manifested. Because of him.

His own skin flashes in and out, dark glittering charcoal. “Jacinda.” I drop my gaze to his mouth, to the lips I tasted with my own. They’re a deep shade of pink, swollen and bruised-looking from kissing. Nausea swells inside me. No, no, no, no…

I shake my head savagely and mutter to myself. Wrong. What am I doing? How could I do this to Tamra?

The answer comes to me. I kissed him, seized him, because I could. Because I’m lonely. Because he’s here, wanting me, accepting me. He’s here. And Will’s not.

That’s all there is to it. He’s not what I really want. Not who I want.

“Jacinda,” he whispers.

“I have to go,” I say quickly, shoving wet hair back from my face. “Mom will wonder where I am.” This isn’t true, but I say it anyway.

“Jacinda,” he tries again.

“No,” I say, my voice sharp. “This isn’t going to happen, Cassian. This isn’t fair to—” I stop myself.

“To Tamra,” he supplies.

“And you,” I return. “You deserve someone who can give you everything. Tamra can do that.”

“You can, too,” he returns with such conviction that a small shiver runs through me. “C’mon. You’re getting cold,” he replies, misreading my shiver for a chill. Taking my hand, he guides me to the ladder and lets me descend first.

On the ground, he squints through rain up into the sky. “No flying tonight.”

“Yeah.”

“Tamra’s looking forward to flying with you. She’s disappointed you haven’t come out with her yet.”

“I know.”

“Next time? Will you come?”

“Yeah,” I say, meaning it.

Nothing has changed. I have to adjust back into pride life. I have to forget Will. I have to forget about kissing Cassian. I’ll forget and adjust, and everything will be all right.

We walk through the rain to my house. Cassian follows me up to my door. “See you tomorrow.” His voice is husky as he stares down at me, his eyes different, softer almost. My stomach knots as he turns away.

“Cassian.” I skip down the steps and back into the rain, determined that he understand we’re only friends. We can never be more than that.

Holding a hand over my eyes, I look up at him. “Thanks. I’m glad we’re… friends.” I say the word friends deliberately, letting the emphasis get my point across.

His mouth curves with a slow smile. “I’ve never wanted to be your friend, Jacinda.”

My heart stutters in my chest. Standing in the pouring rain, I watch him walk away.