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Chapter 5
Cal woke up, disoriented and groggy. One idea kept playing in her head, and it had something to do with a kiss. She touched her lips, still feeling his breath upon them. His breath?
Pursing her lips in confusion, she focused on her thoughts. Had she been about to get kissed? Wait...his lips had been only a fraction away from hers and then nothing—nothing but this unease and lingering thrill. Who was he? Relian...elf...prince.
She’d been ready to kiss...an elf prince? So much was wrong with that question that it took a few minutes to sink in. Then everything flooded back.
Shooting up in bed, she looked wildly about her. But there was no Relian, no mist. She was back in her bedroom, back in her bed, as if she’d never left.
Cal removed shaking fingers from her lips and clenched her hands together. The dream—it’d seemed so real. A surprising pang of regret hit. Did she want it to be real? Heaven help her, part of her did. Maybe it was the portion that wanted undeniable proof she was sane. Yes, that had to be it. But if he did truly exist, that opened up a whole other can of contention. He’d taken up enough of her time, her life. She was no fairytale damsel. Though he was a prince, he wasn’t charming. He already failed that description on more than one account—he’d been downright cold to her, and he wasn't human.
When she glanced down, the air in her lungs stilled. Something peculiar encircled her left wrist. The item was beautiful in its simplicity—a bracelet of black hair woven with silver threads that glided in and out of the dark strands.
Her mind swirled with questions. How did the bracelet get there, and what did it mean? She had no answers other than an upsetting intuition. The mist. Though she couldn’t pin down the exact significance of the bracelet, somehow its very presence was important. How she sensed this, she didn’t know.
The thump of the bedroom door against the doorstop cracked the silence, and she jumped. Maggie stalked into the room. Her usually boisterous friend looked decidedly unhappy with that frown marring her face.
“About time you got up, girl. You’re going to be late to Music Theory if you don’t hurry up. But I guess that’s what you get for staying out half the night without telling anyone where you were.” To punctuate the mini-rant, Maggie threw her backpack on the bed.
Puzzlement and alarm shot through Cal. “I wasn’t here most of the night?” So she’d really disappeared? How long had she been asleep in that mist before meeting Relian?
Maggie glanced at her in disbelief but then apparently noted her genuine confusion. “What’s wrong with you, Cal? You’ve been acting strange lately, at least more than usual.” She said the last sentence softly, lightening the impact of her words.
“I’m just tired. You know I haven’t been sleeping well. I become quite eccentric when I’m sleep-deprived if you remember.” Maybe some humor would dissolve the tension that’d sprung up in the room.
Even though Maggie was concerned about her wellbeing, Cal couldn’t tell her the truth, not when she didn’t know it herself. Maggie would think she’d taken a dive into the loony bin.
Thankfully, her friend went along with her game for right now. “Then you must’ve been lacking sleep from the moment we met because you’ve always been an oddball.”
“Thanks, you really understand how to make an emotionally distressed person feel better. I think you need some sensitivity training.”
Maggie gave a soft snort of laughter. “I aim to please, that I do. Why would I want sensitivity training? What I do, I do for free. I don’t even charge you a fee. You can’t get that kind of service anywhere else. Besides, that sort of training would steal all the funness right out of me.”
“Funness? Is that even a real word?”
Maggie shrugged her shoulders. “Probably not. Again, another specialty I excel at.”
“Too bad it’s not something actually useful.”
“Come on, you slug, out of bed.” With these words, Maggie came over and tugged her to her feet. As she did so, Maggie stared at the intricately braided bracelet before touching it lightly. “Where did this come from? You didn’t have it on yesterday.”
Cal cursed inwardly. She’d been hoping no one would notice, but apparently, luck wasn’t on her side. While her mind fumbled for a reasonable excuse, she muttered numbly, “Someone gave it to me.”
“Who?” Maggie watched her closely.
Cal shied away, desperately trying to think of something, anything, that would be plausible and come out coherently. She bent down and picked up the bed covers. “Look, I’m sorry, but I have to get ready for class. Maybe we can talk about this later?” Hopefully never. However, this was highly unlikely because her friend was like a tenacious pit bull.
Maggie gave her a look that said she recognized what she was doing. Thank God, the professor of the class wasn’t known for his leniency, so she had the perfect excuse to postpone any further talk.
Her pace frantic, she threw on a fresh set of clothes. This drew raised brows from Maggie. But who cared right now about the privacy Cal usually insisted on? She grabbed her books and flung them into her bag. If nothing else, this nervous energy would get her from their apartment, which was right off-campus, to her class on time
“Bye, see you later.” Before Maggie could respond in kind, Cal was already down the hall and racing away.
When Cal had finished her last class, she shuffled down the corridor. The ferocious frown on her face caused people to shy away, but she didn’t care. Let them look. The only thing she wanted to do was sleep, but she had to catch up on some studying first.
As it stood, she had enough time for some reviewing and lunch. She scowled at her shoes as her stomach rumbled, demanding lunch as her breakfast had been non-existent.
Her afternoon class would come next, followed by rehearsal that evening. Since she was a music education major, she constantly participated in some rehearsal, production, or field experience, it seemed. It proved to be very time-consuming, and her few non-major classes took up a large chunk of her very limited time. Thank heavens, she didn’t have to worry about working at the boutique for a couple of days.
