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“I’m in love with you.”
I let the words die between us. Sai remained spellbound, his ebony tunic still damp and clinging to his form. He was in love with me? That… that couldn’t be true. “Why did you shove me away?”
“Because I was scared.”
My heart thundered like it picked up on his fear, shared it. “Of what?”
“Of how you make me feel.”
I’d felt afraid of that with him from the moment we’d met. I remembered standing in the dark woods with him and feeling drawn to him like a magnet tugged me. We hadn’t known each other at all, so it hadn’t made sense. “Which is?”
“Like I’m drowning, and I want nothing more than to cling tighter and let the waters take me.”
I swallowed, and heat crept over my cheeks. I shouldn’t have asked him. This was not my place to know this information. I should have been brave and asked when he was aware if I wanted to know. Shame burned through me. I felt physically fine and needed to release him. Then I’d apologize and admit what I’d asked. That was going to be an uncomfortable conversation, but I had to—
“Hello.”
I jumped, and my fingertips scraped against the rough rock floor.
A girl with long black hair that hung over her shoulders and rested on her pale gown stepped forward. Shit. I’d thought this temple was empty, but there were still people in it? She had to be an elemental like me. Sai had acted like elementals didn’t exist anymore but maybe they hid in the temples no one else had access to.
I stood. “Hi. I’m sorry. We didn’t know anyone else was in here.”
“As the water wills,” she whispered, and it sounded almost croaky. She remained in the shadows. I focused on my slowing heartbeat. This girl, who looked younger than me from what I could make out of her from the dark corner she stood in, was probably even more terrified. We’d walked into her space.
“Again, I’m sorry. If we’d known anyone was here, we would have announced ourselves or…” I wasn’t sure what.
The girl took another step forward but didn’t answer me.
Something didn’t feel right, and Sai wasn’t offering anything. He sat still hazy-eyed and spell-bound. Crap. The girl kept walking towards us, causing my heart to pick up in a staccato beat again. She’d startled me so much that I forgot to release him.
“You won’t remember our conversation,” I sang to him as guilt pooled deeper into me for asking such intimate questions when he had no ability to deny answering them.
He blinked and jumped to his feet. “You look better.”
“There’s another elemental here.” I nodded towards the girl who’d nearly reached the end of the dark corridor. Sai gaped then jerked me behind him, wrenching my arm, and I cried out. “Ow.”
He released me but pulled the dagger off his hip and continued backing us away from the girl.
“Sai, what are you doing?”
“That’s not an elemental,” he said. “It’s a bhoot.”
“A what?”
“Look at her feet.”
She walked into a pool of blue light then. Her feet were turned backwards. It wasn’t like they were wrenched, but like they’d been created that way. “What’s a bhoot?”
“A ghost…” He gave his head a frustrated shake. “Someone with an unrequited desire. Nothing good.”
The girl who couldn’t be older than eighteen stepped into the ray of dim light and raised her face. Her eyes were ebony from corner to corner and her nose flared. “I don’t wish you harm, elemental.”
“Stay the fuck back, spirit,” Sai said. “May Yama have your soul.”
The girl opened her mouth to reveal sharp, black, rotting teeth and she howled so that it echoed around the chamber.
“Give him to me,” she said.
