Watercolour Smile (41 page)

“Good to hear.” Dominic was downright jovial, once again. “And as a sign of goodwill, I will consider setting the girl free.
After
I conduct a few more tests.”

“I cannot allow it. She is the saner of the four, the stronger of the four… I’ll not let you destroy her. I need all of them, and not a person less—but especially
her
. I’ll give you five days to release her, and then I’m seizing every single one of your properties until I sniff her out. You’ve gone too far this time, Dominic.”

Weston stormed out of the house and I fell back to the stairs, cradling my head in my hands. There were still scars littering my skin, and they burned into my vision, distracting my attention from the information whirling around in my brain. I pulled my hands away, staring at the scars.

Would they ever go away
?

They were no longer pink, but rather a pale, pale white. They shone in a translucent web, cutting a faded pattern across my skin. I pulled up the paper gown I had been dressed in, baring my thighs. The pattern continued. The scars were everywhere, as though I had been torn into a million pieces, pieces that had been carefully fit back together to form the giant puzzle that had become my person.

Suddenly, the door behind me swung open, and I startled, looking over my shoulder. The hunger must have faded my senses and dulled my concentration, for I hadn’t even heard anyone approach the door, and I now cringed at the sudden light, throwing my hands over my eyes. The door swung shut, and I moved my hands, my eyes adjusting to Cabe’s outline.

“W-what…” My throat was sore and dry. I desperately needed water. And food.

“Here.” He moved to the step that I sat on, pressing a cold bottle into my hands. “I’m sorry.” He seemed to visibly swallow. “I didn’t realise they weren’t feeding you.”

I ignored him. All my attention was for the bottle of water in my hands. I fumbled with the lid, my weak fingers shaking. The cap bounced off the stone steps and I tipped the bottle to my mouth, choking down a large mouthful of the heavenly liquid. Most of it spilled down my chin and soaked into the top of my paper dress, but I didn’t care. Cabe took the bottle from me after only a second, holding it away.

“Little bits at a time,” he said.

I really looked at him then, at the strain between his glazed eyes, at the tight-lipped frown on his face. His hair was messy, his clothes wrinkled.

“It’s okay,” I said, patting his arm.

His eyes narrowed, and I heard the crinkling of the plastic bottle as his hands tightened into fists. His eyes flicked over my face, trailing the droplets of water that clung to my chin before dropping to my legs. I had forgotten about my exposed thighs, and I quickly pulled the hem of my dress down, but his gaze only narrowed further, becoming absorbed in something unseen.

“Why are you comforting me?” he ground out, blinking those unseeing eyes.

“You’re upset. You look like you haven’t slept.”

“
You’re
the one locked in a cellar.”

He stood up and the bottle of water tumbled down the stairs, landing beside the cap and spreading a cold, wet puddle over the concrete. He reached down and pulled me up, his grip surprisingly gentle. He escorted me down the stairs and set me on the edge of the cot, kneeling in front of me.

“Tell me,” he breathed the words, “why I haven’t been able to sleep. I have nightmares, dreams, I… I keep thinking about you. That’s not normal. You’re not normal. What you did was horrible, and I
saw
you do it, but I still can’t stop thinking about you. Not just about the accident, but other things too.”

He suddenly averted his attention, like he was ashamed of what he had said, but he just as quickly returned his gaze to me; it collided with mine stubbornly, as though daring me to be the person he believed me to be. My fingers were trembling as I reached for the side of his face, brushing against the surprising roughness of his skin. It might have been weakness, but there was also a nervous fluttering in my stomach at having him so close to me. It was a strange medley of nausea, nerves, and unwilling craving. Once again, I cursed our supernatural connection, because it was beginning to cloud my judgement. His eyes became tormented, lit with a smoky indecision that made me want to comfort him. Only I couldn’t, because my skin was beginning to crawl with anxiety again.

“You wouldn’t believe me even if I told you,” I said. I stood then, letting my hand fall away. “Why did you com—” The words died on my tongue as a wave of dizziness hit me, pulling me down from my height as though a string had been tethered to the top of my head, and was being yanked from some point on the floor.

Cabe caught me, his hands beneath my arms. He made a surprised sound, moving to shift me back onto the cot, but I put a stop to that. Maybe I was straining again, or maybe I just needed to believe that we were still connected, even if I had to lie to myself. I slid my arms around his waist, my cheek falling against his chest. He stilled, and I was sure that he had even stopped breathing, because his chest was suddenly still. Beneath my ear, I could feel the heavy thudding of his heartbeat.

“What is this?” he whispered.

I didn’t move and neither did he. Eventually, he lowered me until my feet landed on the ground, and then he dropped his hands from beneath my arms. They caught once they reached my hips, and it seemed as though his hands gripped me through simple instinct. I could feel his shocked intake of breath against my hair. He pulled gently and I leaned forward, my chest suddenly pressed to his as I tightened my arms around his midsection. I could feel the tension that coiled in his body. The scratching feeling fluttered along my arms and I screwed my eyes shut, frustrated and angry that it was reminding me of how uncomfortable I usually felt in Cabe’s arms.

Maybe… maybe if I had formed the bond earlier, this would never have happened to him.

“Why…” he tried to speak again, but his voice came out raspy, the words choking off. The fingers of his hands flexed. “What the hell are you?” He sounded angry now.

He pushed me back and I fell onto the canvas-like material of the cot without a fight. He watched me as I pulled my knees to my chest, and then he sat beside me, put a hand on my shoulder and reached into his back pocket. I started struggling when I saw the syringe, but he was fast, and the needle was already retracting from my neck by the time I managed to force his arm away.

“Dominic left,” he said, catching the back of my head as I fell. “I can get you out of here, but I can’t have you blowing me up or messing with my head the way you did just now…”

His voice faded away as he lifted me from the mattress.

I had gone from a basement dungeon to a closet, and I wasn’t entirely sure that the closet was much better.

At least the basement dungeon had a toilet.

One perk, I supposed, was the basket of food that Cabe replenished every day, but that didn’t mask the fact that for four days, I hid in Cabe’s closet while he tried to ignore me.

I was almost certain that he was evading the issue—the issue being me. He had told me that the closet was only a temporary arrangement until he could convince Noah to let me stay in the house again, but he obviously wasn’t having any success, because I was still in the closet. On my first night I had gone looking for Silas or Quillan, but both were absent from the house. I couldn’t feel their presence, but I didn’t put much stock in my own sense of our connection. I was pretty sure that I was broken. My valcrick was broken. My heart was… no. My heart was hanging on. I was hanging on. Everything would be okay. I would figure out a way to win back Noah and Cabe without forming the bond.

If Cabe ever let me move out of his closet.

I refrained from approaching Tariq or Clarin, since Cabe had warned me that they thought I was on my first mission for the Klovoda. I had snuck into Tariq’s bedroom to watch him sleep for a few minutes, but Cabe didn’t need to know about that. It troubled me that they had believed the cover story so easily. Silas was constantly away on Klovoda business, but he never disappeared for so long as I had now been absent. Since Quillan and Silas still hadn’t returned to the house, I was pretty sure that they, at least, were suspicious.

I had tried to snatch Cabe’s phone, hoping to call one of them, but he was always ready for me. He slept with it clutched in his fist, and the one time I had tried to pry it free, he had woken up immediately.

“What are you doing?”
I remembered the suspicious look in his eye. It had sharpened, hardening his features—features that shouldn’t have been so alert for a person who had just woken up.

He had stared a hole through my head for several minutes, waiting for the excuse that I never gave him, before he ordered me back to my “room”.

I pushed out of the closet, checking the time on Cabe’s watch. It flashed 12:54am. I spent a moment touching the device, mourning the loss of my own watch—or Quillan’s watch. I hadn’t seen it since the accident. I hadn’t seen the jewellery that Cabe and Noah had given me, either. My eyes trailed from the watch to my own hand, still stretched out in contemplative mourning. The scars were as prominent as ever; only, it was not in the visual sense. You could see them if you looked closely enough. They criss-crossed in a faded patchwork pattern over every inch of my skin, climbing beneath and ridding me of all purity.
That
was what really made them so conspicuous. The way they branded me; the way they cut through my hesitant memories to lay claim to my bruised heart. Even if they faded further, my heart would never stop bleeding.

I had killed.

Again
.

I shook myself into the present, casting a quick glance over Cabe’s prone form before slipping out of the room. I had been dying to use the bathroom for hours. I first checked to make sure the hallway was clear, and then I ran silently to the bathroom and shut myself inside.

I took longer than I usually would have, washing my face over and over, hoping to erase the scars that now marred my skin. My features were oddly intact, just as all of my fingers and toes were still connected, but my skin… I turned my head in the light above the mirror, watching as the little silvery lines glimmered over my cheekbones. Scars.
Everywhere
. They were less prominent on my face, and I wondered if the skin there healed differently to the skin elsewhere. Either that, or I had thrown my arms up to protect my face at some point. I pulled my arms up now, tucking my fists beneath my chin to examine the skin. The scars along the backs of my forearms were much worse. They seemed to tell a different story to the rest of the scars, but I knew that it wasn’t the worst story to tell.

The worst was my stomach.

On some parts of my body, the faded white lines could almost be invisible; on others, the lines were vicious—painted by a malicious artist with chaos on his mind. On my stomach, however, I could almost believe that the skin was not real skin, but some kind of silky, silver fabric, conjured by the healing valcrick to hold my organs inside. The scars were not visible on my stomach. My stomach
was
a scar.

I dropped my shirt, realising that I had zoned out staring at my injuries again when the door flew open behind me.

I prepared myself for the worst. For Kingsling, or the messenger, or Tabby, or…

“Silas?”

He was frozen, blinking as though he could barley believe his eyes. I blinked back at him, frowning, because I hadn’t felt him enter the house. Even now, I had to concentrate to really feel that he was standing before me. His eyes had that wild look that I associated with one of his freak-outs, and I assumed that was why he wasn’t moving. I took a step toward him, but someone was already pushing past him. Quillan landed a breath away from me, bending until his face was on my level.

“Where have you been?” he was whispering, his voice tinged with urgency, fear, and relief.

I gaped, because I hadn’t felt him enter the room either. He pulled me into his arms, but the hug almost immediately turned assessing. He grunted, setting me down. His arms landed around my waist.
Measuring
.

“Why have you lost so much weight?”

I became stiff, suddenly terrified of how they would react to my scars. They hadn’t noticed yet. I pulled away, but it was too late. Silas was already beside me, his hand on mine. He pulled until my knuckle brushed against his chest. They both stared.

I should have started speaking, but instead the silence reigned, brewing up conclusions in their minds.

Silas took a step back, letting my arm fall.

“Seph?” Quillan sounded afraid.

I kept my eyes on Silas, because he was still stepping backwards, and he was almost at the door.

“I was in an accident.” I found my voice and spoke rapidly, hoping that the information would halt Silas’s progress. His eyes had turned black as tar, the tightness in his mouth stretching out over his jaw. I tried to hold his dead stare without flinching away, but fear was pricking at the back of my neck, forcing a wobble into my voice. “At least I think it was an accident. Noah thinks I did it on purpose. Maybe I did. He says I tortured them. Maybe I did. I don’t know. Jayden came—I stole his car. Noah and Cabe tricked me… or, actually, I suppose I tricked myself. I thought I could trust them, but the messenger owns them now. The messenger or the hypnotist—I mean Jayden. Jayden is the hypnotist. But you probably already knew that, right?” My voice had risen in a panic, and I worked to lower it, forcing the disjointed sentences out of my mouth as fast as I could.