Page 88 of Catatonic


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I nodded. "I'm better now, Little Cat."

"Why … What?" she started, but I already knew what she wanted to say.

"I was trapped in a nightmare with my previous master. He was akari and used to beat me rather savagely in my cage after a match. Especially if I lost." I took a deep breath as I looked at my lap. "I don't know what happened, but one second, I was fighting him, and the next, I was here." I swallowed and looked at him. "I thought you were my master, and I am so very sorry for the pain I have caused you. I would never—"

"You don't need to apologize." His gruff voice sent shivers down my spine, and I saw Clawdia shudder in response too.

What is happening?

"Baelen, are you okay?" Clawdia asked. He gave a short, sharp laugh and nodded but said nothing. "There was a reaction. When we touched you." He nodded. "That was normal? Expected?" She blushed again, and he turned to look at her. His body slid along the marble floors to sit up properly.

He paused, looking at the space above us for the right words. When he spoke, it was slow and hesitant, and I watched with rapt attention as his lips formed the words, "It wasn't completely expected … nor a total surprise."

When he didn't say anymore, Clawdia frowned, a cute line in her brow appearing. "Are you going to explain what it was?"

He sighed and mumbled, "Do you want to know, Sunlight? Because if I tell you, there is no unknowing. You will only be able to go forward with the knowledge, and it will undoubtedly add more chaos to your already chaotic life."

His ominous declaration sat frozen in the air until Clawdia broke eye contact with him and looked at me. "What do you think, Zaide? Do you want to know or just pretend we didn't feel anything and start lessons?"

It wasn't a difficult decision.

I crossed my arms and channeled Daithi. "It sounds like he thinks we are too cowardly to want the truth and too incapable of dealing with it."

Baelen raised an eyebrow, and I was certain I saw a flash of amusement in his eyes, but again, he said nothing.

"Is it that you don't want to tell us?" Clawdia asked.

He sighed again and rubbed his face.

"You aren't very talkative," I commented, suddenly very interested in him as a person.

I expected the son of gods to be loud and brash and pompous. Instead, this man was quietly powerful, intentional, and calm. With my attraction to his body also came the want to know him. Everything about him. His silence only made the anticipation for his careful words greater.

Clawdia chuckled. "He can be when he gets going. I think he's shy."

Baelen spluttered. "Shy?"

She shrugged. "I know how I felt when I touched you. I don't want to imagine how you felt with the two of us."

There was something in the phrasing of those words that triggered something in my mind. A past conversation. But it slipped away like I was grasping at air.

"I'm not being shy. I don't know how to feel or how you will feel when I explain and so I'm … hesitant."

Clawdia nodded her understanding and started slowly, "I feel … stronger. Connected to you both. I feel like I was broken until I found Zaide, but now, we have all been pieced together and filled in with gold like Japanese pottery. I'm worried about what this will mean for everyone. But I can't deny that it feels … right. Or that I'm curious to know why. If it is … what I think it might be."

"You think you know?" I asked, wondering how she knew and I didn't.

My mind was still a little rattled from the previous dreams and attacking Baelen, desiring him, so perhaps I wasn't thinking as clearly as I should have been to figure out his secret.

"We are soul mates," Baelen blurted, surprising both of us.

"Oh," I said as my mind restarted itself.

Clawdia smiled brightly. "There. That wasn't so hard, was it? Are we so repulsive?"

"You knew?" I asked.

"I guessed," she replied with a small, smug smile.

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