?She turns away but I grab again and fury flashes.
?“You lied to me,” I growl. Angry about. . . everything. But I had opened myself up last night, I had begged, and she looked right at me andlied. “How did you hide our fate?”
?“I did not lie,” she states, ripping her arm way again. “None of you have seen my soul, so therefore none of you can with one hundred percent certainty say I’myourfated. And I did not hideourfate, I simply just did not see your soul then. Fate can be finicky like that. Showing what it will when it wants to.”
?She whips her head around and starts heading towards Darian. His smug expression is toned down, but it doesn’t prevent any of us from feeling like we want to pummel him into the ground. I can tell –feel– he’s not fated to her, just as I can feel Varian, Callahan, and Castiel are. After we cement the tie we’ll all be bonded through spirit and soul.
?But Darian is not hers. She should not be going with him. Yet there is nothing I can do about it. There is nothing I can do and I force myself to hate her for it.
Thirteen
Mavyn – Novam 15
Darian leads me through the halls of the school silently. I don’t know how or when he input his contacts into my tablet but after I had sat back down from coming back from the sun death realm he told me we were training now.
?I would rather fall to the floor right now and take a nap instead, but this is a need for me. Needing to become immune to the pain from being touched. It’s a weakness I refuse to have.
?When we get to the eastern side he leads me out and we begin crossing the field. We pass the gazebo and wishing well and I curse both of them. My swim into the cursing well was for nothing. I wasn’t even given the option to make a curse.
?Fucking fate.
?We make it across the street and he walks straight into his house. Leaving me to continue following after him. There’s not many people out and about since most of them have some sort of class, but there are a few. All of them staring at me.
?He still hasn’t said anything and stays silent as he leads me up to where I remember his room is. Opening the door to it, I walk back into the office space I was in last night. His desk before the windows and all the bookshelves full.
?The door shuts and locks and trepidation begins to warm my sternum. Not that I’m afraid of the angel, but I also don’t know if I’m ready for this training again. The sun devil was quick this time but brutal. I can feel the ache in my body and bones. He tried using fire on me again.
?Lingering twitches of it hiss along my nerve endings and I’m also starving now. I need sleep, food, and blood. A dryness in my throat that nothing else will be able to quench.
?“Strip.”
?A single word that he doesn’t even demand. He simply says it so casually – aknowingthat he doesn’t have to demand because I will oblige. An entitlement I would contradict, but I’m too tired. My hunger has never made me violent, only sleepy.
?I start sliding off my blazer and drape it over the back of one of his lounge chairs. Toeing off my shoes beside it as I begin unbuttoning my shirt. I don’t even have it in me to care about where he is or what he’s doing out of my line of sight. I have a feeling I’m going to pass out in a moment anyway.
?My shirt comes off exposing my simple white t-shirt bra and my skirt falls to the ground exposing simple white panties. Despite living in a brothel house I’ve never spiced up my underwear. Not that I haven’t tried on a piece or two from timeto time, but I never understood wearing something so fancy that was only going to be hidden. I especially didn’t understand the girls wearing the garments – which are expensive for no real reason – just to have them ripped off by their clients.
?Using my foot, I lift my skirt up to drape it with my shirt and blazer, and then I start sliding my thigh highs off.
?The architecture of Breath House seems frigid, but inside Darian’s rooms it’s warm. Cozy – almost – if my body didn’t already ache and the achiness making my scars itch even more.
?The full length mirror is adjacent to where I’m standing by the chair so I shift and turn my body to stare at myself. Darian isn’t in the room anymore but the door to his bedroom is open so I assume he went in there. I’m by myself, nearly naked, in his rooms. The exposure prickles my skin.
?Not that I care about him seeing my body – I’ve lived in a brothel for the last five years. I also don’t care about him seeing my scars, I’ve realized. He didn’t seem to react that much when he saw the few of them last night. He had a few of his own scars now that I remember it. Thin pale scars from some sort of blade. They were too controlled and precise to be whips or another type of weapon.
?I wonder how today’s little training session is going to go. If he’s going to surprise attack me or creep up from behind like last time. There isn’t an exact science to this training. He basically touches me and I endure. That’s the extent of it and it’s up to me to be able to overcome the pain.
?Not that there is a way to overcome pain. Not unless you fry all the nerves in your body until you can’t feel anything ever again. That has been a wish before too. To not feel – never feel –anything ever again because what is the point in feeling anything and everything else if it all leads back to pain.
?But that’s cynical. I’d be knocked upside the head by Ms. Elaycia and probably Nana too. Speaking of. . . she’s the reason I’m in this whole mess. Well, the reason I’m still in it. I could be home right now, not having to worry about wars with rebels who want to destroy and rebuild the world or males who can’t have me. Male’s I don’t deserve.
?I glare at my reflection in the mirror and turn away. I turn towards the bookshelves and eye the spines. Most of them don’t have any titles I can read. This is most definitely not Cordellia’s library with her paperbacks and raunchy covers of naked men. I haven’t read any of them because I’ve never cared to, but it’s another one of those things I miss.
?Turning away from the books, I start tip toeing towards the open doorway. It’s been a few minutes already and Darian hasn’t come back. I’d rather get all this over with because I still have other classes today and I highly doubt I’ll have enough time to recover if we don’t start now.
?Hell, even now might be too late. Maybe I can start classes tom –
?I don’t even finish that thought. I can’t start them tomorrow because that’s how procrastination works. I know. . . I’ve done it before. I’ll push something off because I don’t want to do it and I’ll keep pushing it until it never gets done. Usually it’s something stupid like going grocery shopping for real food instead of just ordering takeout.
