Watercolour Smile (30 page)

“Asleep?” My arms had begun to tremble again, and I finally loosened my hold on his neck. He drew back further, narrowing his eyes.

“Yeah, asleep. It’s late. You went to bed hours ago.”

“I… hours ago?”

He sat up, pulling me to my knees again. “What’s wrong with you?” His narrowed gaze dipped to my knees. “Why are you shaking?”

“T-the strain… a note… the messenger…”

“Strain? Messenger?” he questioned, standing and straightening imaginary wrinkles from his clothing. “What the
hell
are you talking about?”

He walked away from me, leaving me kneeling on the carpet, and he sat on the edge of his bed, resting his elbows on his knees so that he could stare down at me. As I watched him, I could feel my mouth slowly inching open, incredulity mixing with the already turbulent roil of sentiment that grappled for dominance over me. There was something chillingly abnormal in his expression and it took a moment more for me to pinpoint what it was. The special reflection of brilliance that I always saw in his eyes, the churning of emotion beneath a tempered sun… was gone. Noah was…

“I…” I stammered, pulling to my feet. “I’m going to bed.”

He nodded, reaching over to turn off his bedside lamp. “Yeah, okay. Try not to wake me up next time you go sleepwalking.”

I rushed for the door in the sudden sweep of darkness, my hand stilling on the handle. “Wake you up?” My voice wavered. “You weren’t asleep, Noah. You were standing right on the other side of the door. There.” I pointed to a spot on the carpet, right in front of me—though he couldn’t see the movement in the darkness.

“No,” he countered on a yawn. I waited for him to elaborate, but he didn’t, and a moment later his breathing evened out with sleep.

I closed the door and leaned back against it, my mind reeling. Something was wrong with Noah. He couldn’t remember me straining, and he was acting as though we weren’t bonded anymore.

Strings can be severed. Bonds can be broken. Would you like to know how painful it is?

I ran to Cabe’s door without another moment’s hesitation, already expecting the worst as I threw it open, casting a wedge of light from the hallway to spill into his room. He was in his bed, sound asleep. I approached him warily, and then reached out to gently shake his shoulder. He sat up immediately, waking far quicker than was normal for a regular person—though Cabe had never really been regular in any way.

“Seraph?” he was shocked, and he rubbed at his eyes, refocussing on me, squinting, rubbing his eyes again. “What are you doing in my room?”

“I was straining,” I blurted, desperation edging my voice. “We went swimming, you don’t remember?”

“Straining? Swimming?” He seemed confused for a moment, and then he fell back to his pillow and laughed. “Oh, I get it. You’re trying to get me back for something—well, I hate to break it to you, but I can’t even remember what I did to piss you off in the first place, so your revenge plan isn’t going to teach me any lessons.” He stretched, folding his arms behind his head, and half lowered his eyes. The expression felt oddly deliberate, despite how casual it looked. “Or was there a more
urgent
reason for you to be waking me up in the middle of the night? Your boyfriend might not be too happy about that, you know… But I won’t tell if you wont.” He winked at me, lazily, like he wasn’t particularly bothered by how his words might sound to me.

“Boyfriend?”

Cabe raised his brows. “Oh? It’s like that? I was only messing around… but…” he reached forward, snagged the front of my shirt, and in an instant, I was sprawled over his stomach. “I’m sure you’re aware of my rules, babe,”
Babe
?
Rules
? “One night…” He nuzzled the side of my face, his breath warm against my ear, and then he started to whisper.

I had heard Cabe swear. I had heard him flirt. I had heard him frustrated, angry, and scared.

This…

I had never heard
this
.

My face was stained red, and with each whispered word, the colour only saturated deeper. It wasn’t because I hadn’t heard these kinds of words before, it wasn’t even that people hadn’t attempted to talk me into their beds before—since I
had
worked at a nightclub for over a year. It had more to do with the fact that Cabe’s words were leaving no doubt in my mind that he didn’t particularly care about their effect. I was less than his Atmá, less than his friend, less than the girl who used to sit on his desk and flirt with him in Seattle. I jerked out of his arms, my hand cracking across his face before I had a chance to catch my reaction. His head rocked to the side, and I scrambled for the door, looking back over my shoulder just as he collected himself. He laughed, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand as I trembled with confusion and rage.

The scratching feeling was back, skittering uneasily over the raised hairs on my arms, stirring against the strain and wrestling for power over my actions.
Go to him
, the bond urged.
Run from him
, the itching in my legs seemed to entreat.
You need him. You need to get away from him. You could love him. You don’t want him.
 

The bond was still there. He just didn’t seem to… know about it.

“Not the reaction I usually get.” His smile stretched, chasing away any evidence that the slap had affected him. “But suit yourself. You know where I am if you change your mind—”

I ended his sentence by snapping the door shut, and then I sprinted for the stairs, tripping on the landing due to the now-violent shudder of my strain. I quickly gathered myself, swallowing back a looming sob, and made for the other side of the house. I checked Tariq’s room, mainly to assure myself that the messenger hadn’t kidnapped him or hurt him in any way, and then I sped to Silas’s room. I pushed the door open as the looming despair threatened to force me to my knees.

I should have let it, since I ended up on the floor again anyway.

Something caught me the second I passed through the doorway, sending me spiralling toward the carpet, and then a body landed over mine with all the weight and force of a person-sized slab of concrete. Hands wound around my neck, fingers stretching, squeezing, and a pained groan grated against my throat.

“Angel?” Silas whispered, disbelieving. He shifted, and the weight that had been threatening to grind my bones into dust lifted until he was supporting himself on his arms.

“If you proposition me right now I swear I’ll hurt you.” There were tears racing down my cheeks, and I screwed my eyes shut, unable to watch the change take over him.

I wondered what Silas would act like, without the bond.

“Angel.” He repeated the word on a quieter exhalation, not altogether gently but certainly a vast improvement on what I had been expecting. “You’re still straining.”

My answering sob was rough, my relief as painful as it was palpable. I reached for him, wrapping my arms around his waist in a hesitant embrace. “You didn’t forget.”

“Forget? What did those two do to you?” 

I tightened my arms as he started to rise, and his eyes seared into me, his brows twitching down to draw his face into a tempestuous warning.

“N-nothing,” I said. “They just don’t remember. The messenger left another note. When I got out of the shower, nobody was there, and I went to look for them. They can’t remember. Cabe thinks I have a boyfriend… they don’t remember the strain… or the bond.”

It took a moment for Silas to process what I had told him, and then he was standing, hooking an arm beneath my knees and bunching me against his chest. He walked straight to Quillan’s room and shouldered the door open.

“Wake up,” Silas ordered sharply, causing Quillan to stir. “Do you know what this girl is?”

Quillan struggled to sit up, pushing his hair away from his eyes. “What?” he grumbled. “Of-of course.”

Silas ate up the distance to the bed in several impatient strides, and then I was tumbling into Quillan’s lap. “Don’t let her out of your sight,” he said to Quillan. “The messenger has been in the house.” He placed something onto the nightstand and turned away from us.

“What—” Quillan began, but Silas was gone, the door clicking shut behind him.

Quillan looked down at me. His eyes widened, blinking away the sleep and confusion. “You’re crying,” he said. I scrubbed at my face, and he hesitantly wound an arm around my shoulders, pulling me into his chest. “You’re still straining, too.”

I sagged against him, falling into silence now that Silas was in action. The urgency had drained out of me, but looming anguish remained. Noah and Cabe had both treated me the same way they treated other girls from school. They didn’t remember… Cabe even thought I had a boyfriend.

The messenger had done this to them.

I had gotten too close to them, and he had been watching.

The more he saw the less he spoke,

The less he spoke, the more he heard
…

He was everywhere.

I glanced at the object that Silas had left behind and gasped, spotting the dull metal barrel of a gun.

“He could have shot me!” I rasped.

Quillan released a heavy breath, setting me slightly away from him so that he could pull away the blanket that separated us. He situated me back in his lap and then tugged the blanket up around my shoulders, one of his hands catching lightly at my waist and the other pressing my head to his chest. His heart was a reassuring, steady rhythm against the throbbing of hysteria that threatened my pulse.

“I told you never to sneak up on Silas, didn’t I? Now tell me what happened.”

I recounted everything that had happened, and recited the messenger’s last note, my eyes on the handgun the whole time. He didn’t say anything in return, merely held me. Eventually the strain retracted its painful claws from my body.

I waited for Quillan’s breathing to even out with sleep, but it didn’t. I tilted my head back to see him. He glanced down immediately, his eyes focussed and alert, lit with a familiar smoulder that seemed to crackle angrily. His hand moved from my hair to my cheek, brushing at the wetness beneath my eyes. I was shocked at the evidence of my continued tears, but did nothing to curb them.

“Are you hurt?” he asked. “You feel so painful… I can’t tell if you’re injured or not.”

At some point, I had released all control over the barrier that blanketed my emotions from them. I wanted to bang my head against the wall, but I settled for Quillan’s chest. He grunted.

“I’m so sorry,” I said, grasping at the unravelling remnants of my self-control to pull the pieces back together.

He shook his head. “Don’t bother,” he muttered, even as I began to draw my barrier back into place. Despite his protest, I felt some of the tension drain out of him after the task was complete, though his touch shifted to my chin, lifting my face. “Did any of them
hurt
you?”

“No.”

His eyes flitted over my face. “You’re acting traumatised.”

Instead of answering, I pulled my chin from his grip and hid my face against the softness of his shirt again, almost immediately soothed by the returning thump of his heartbeat. “I need…”

“I know.” He sighed, pulling the blankets tighter around me. “Sleep, Seph. I’ll keep you safe tonight.”

For the first time in weeks, I woke up with a heavy heart. It lagged in lazy thumps against the cocoon of my ribcage—a barrier that suddenly felt too meagre for the immensity of my emotion. I could hear the rumble of Quillan’s voice, and I seemed to be rolled into a bundle of blankets beside him. I blinked my eyes open, finding my face inches from Quillan’s thigh. He was already dressed for school; his pale blue tie knotted and his wavy hair combed back from his face. There were dark smudges beneath his eyes, and his eyelashes were sticking together, forming spikes that threatened to warm my heart with their uncharacteristic unkemptness. He must have splashed his face with water, because his collar was also slightly damp and the sleeves of his dress shirt were rolled up to the elbows.

I pulled myself up slightly and startled, because Silas had been sitting beside the bed, watching me the entire time that I had been watching Quillan.

“You’re awake,” he said plainly.

He was looking much more composed than Quillan, though I doubted that it was due to any effort on Silas’s part—I suspected that there wasn’t a single aspect of his appearance that would dare to defy him by being out-of-place. His hair had begun to grow out of its latest cut, and the dark strands had been swept to the side in a tumble of waves to just below his left ear—leaving the right side looking disproportionally short, though the ragged affect suited him. He had also neglected to shave, but the spreading shadow only heightened his deliberate mystery, lending him an air that was somehow wild and cultivated at the same time. He was wearing the same clothes as the day before, which didn’t entirely surprise me, as it seemed that Quillan had also been awake all night.

Quillan shifted, bending over in order to see my face. “How are you feeling?” He was cautious, and I double-checked that I wasn’t leaking any of my emotion to them.