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I hadn’t. So, I chose to deflect. “You know what your problem is, Kalen,” I let my eyes harden into the chilly expression he had often given me, doing my best to intimidate him. “You think everything is your choice. That all the world’s problems land on those disgustingly big shoulders of yours, but guess what?” I puffed out my chest, and Kalen waited as I struggled to find something clever to say. I wasn’t the best at quippy one-liners, so I settled for the next best thing: bratty insults. “To put it simply, you are just not that important.”
I didn’t think I meant the words as I said them. He was important—to me, especially. Although I hated to admit it, his presence in my life had become an anchor. I had no one but him. On nights when my dreams tore me apart and my bed was a little too comfortable, I thought of the rough man who always straddled the line between compassion and selfishness when it came to me. I’d think of the smell of mint on his breath in the mornings, and no longer would I ache for the scent of crushed leaves in my grove. I’d replay his snarky and mocking tones in my head, and the buzzing hum of the Mother would quiet. Knowing I would see him under the light of a new day, that I wouldn’t be alone with only the Wane and the Bright...it all kept me centered. But even if I didn’t believe myself, Kalen needed to hear it all the same. For how concerned he was with choice, hehad never asked me for mine.
“You know, you’re right,” he said finally, chewing his lip. I lifted my gaze from the floor, surprised. “I am not that important. But you are.” Standing, Kalen squared his shoulders and straightened out his ratty clothes.
A sign I was in for it.
“Yet, you can’t seem to get it through that obscenely thick head ofyoursthat listening to me might keep you safe. In fact, it might just keep you alive long enough to figure out who you really are.” He cocked his head to the side. “Or is that what you are afraid of?”
I stepped back slowly as he advanced on me, hitting my head a little harder than was pleasant against the wall. But Kalen did not stop, his breath hot on my face as he closed the space between our chests.
“You don’t want to know what’s in those other stones because the first vision scared you. And now you’re more than willing to sacrifice yourself in a petty attack on the Well rather than face the Shadow Sage and fight her for your honor.”
He was right about one thing and completely wrong about the other. The vision of the first stone had terrified me, so much so that every time I closed my eyes, I saw the face of a young Astralite begging for my mercy. My heart would race, craving the feeling of power, and in turn, my guts would churn with guilt. Every time I looked up at the night sky, I saw the black, shimmering liquid of his blood running down my arms. And no matter how hard I scrubbed my arms when I bathed—underneath the suds of the water so Rebekah couldn’t see—the feeling of it never went away.
But as tormented as I was, the anxiety I felt didn’t make me want to die. It was quite the opposite. It made me want to outlive the dangerous girl that I was, that Iam. If I could face the trials Kalen had laid out for me, if I could find my stoneswithout taking life and enjoying the rush of it, I could prove that seventy years of my life in isolation had meant something. It was a simple-minded hope, I knew that now. All that I was now was all I had ever been and all I would ever be. Kalen had known the truth of it when he pulled me from the Binding, and it was the only reason he had saved me at all.
I looked up from where I had been staring at the hook of his jaw, counting the pulses in the vein that was hammering away angrily.
“How did my first stone end up in your possession, Kalen?” I asked. He looked at me curiously, distracted from his point for just a moment, but long enough for me to lead him further from it. “The Sages seemed surprised that the first part of my soul came to me through you. So tell me, how did you come to have it?”
Kalen rolled his eyes as if the question was a ridiculous one. “Does that even matter right now?”
“How could it not?” I screeched, lifting myself from the wall and ushering him back towards the console until he knocked into it. I stopped walking, keeping the shag covering the center of the floor as a neutral zone. “It matters, Kalen. You speak of what terrifies me? Trusting you. How can I possibly do that when you seem to have all the answers but will not tell me anything of importance? You interrogate my motives and for what, exactly? Control over the only person who can get you what you want?”
Even though his back was already against the wall, Kalen staggered. His head shook back and forth in a stupor. “You think I am using you to secure my throne?”
I always questioned Kalen’s motives, but from the moment we met, I hadn’t imagined him as a power-hungry quasi-god. Staring at him now, and the cruel way his gaze captured mine, that is exactly what I saw in him. So, I said, “I think that thecrown on your head might fit better if you controlled every ounce of Light that came along with it.”
Kalen froze, stunned. I thought I probably looked the same. I felt as if I’d stumbled upon the answer I didn’t even know I was searching for. Why was Kalen bothering to rescue the Light at all? He hadn’t belonged to the faction, and though he defended it nobly tonight, I had a feeling Kalen never did anything that didn’t serve him. That feeling was only magnified by Gabriel’s grand revelation that Kalen was a Yielded mortal. Because his power had been given at his human death, it did not belong to him alone. Someone else served as his master, and whoever held the source of the faction’s power could choose how to use it, how to divvy it up, and to whom.
We stayed silent for a moment, neither of us sure what to say. Then Kalen rubbed his neck, his face looking…hurt. He ducked his head, groaning tortuously at the tile below us.
“Did you ever…” he started, looking up once at the door behind me, then redirecting his gaze towards the vaulted ceilings. Anywhere but me it seemed. “Did it ever occur to you, that perhaps I am angry because I care whether you live or die? That, maybe, I don’t want to lose you again. Not just because the Light would be lost forever, but also because you...”
“Because I what?”
“Mean something to me, dammit!” His eyes finally met mine, wide and desperate, almost as if he couldn’t believe he’d spoken those words. I felt the air changing yet again.“That you mean something to this faction,” he continued, his voice unsteady. “That if the ground fell out from beneath the rest of this gods-damned world, and left only room for you to stay standing, I’d go into the darkness, Gwyn. Gladly.”
“Why?”
It was always the question I had for him.
Kalen walked back over to me, not as close as before.Not closeenough, I thought before I could control myself. At my sides, my fingers trembled slightly, like I was afraid. But I was not. And that was the problem, wasn’t it? After everything that had been said, I should have been afraid of the man towering above me with unknown intentions and a habit of provoking me beyond measure. I should have been terrified of my hand drifting towards his chest.
“Don’t,” his words met his clenched jaw.I froze. “Don’t ask me why.”
“What is it you’re not saying, Kalen?”
“I can’t,” he said, the lines in his mouth becoming tortured. “I cannot.”
“You cannot what? I don’t understand!” The question died on my tongue. And then every thought deteriorated in my mind when he brushed away a strand of my hair matted against my forehead. The world narrowed to the pad of his thumb sweeping down my arm, coming to rest against my palm. His fingers closed around my wrist, still hanging midair.
I may have been new to this world, naive in almost everything, but I knew what Kalen was doing. I knew this moment was only a distraction, a way to keep me from the thing I wanted from him most: answers. But I couldn’t find a way back, not when I needed him. For no reason other than the fact he’d been the first person I ever thought about besides myself. The first voice I ever heard other than my own. The person I wanted to look toward and find there waiting for me.
We leaned into each other, and I gave up my constant pushing against that force that always tugged me to him, not knowing what would come next. His free hand drew up under the base of my neck, our lips one brush away from knowing each other, and—
“Agh,” Kalen doubled over at the waist, in pain. He dropped my hand, clutching the space on his side where I’d begun toembrace him.
