He steps up beside me and watches the people across the street. I watch them too, only because he seems more interested in them than normal. I soon realize who they are. It’s the group of people he had been walking with earlier. I see the short blond-haired girl he had held hands with come out last, and for a split second, I hope she doesn’t see me talking to him alone like this in the dark. I don’t want or need any jealous girlfriend trouble. But then I see Malachi walk out of the restaurant behind her, taking her hand into his. She laughs and reaches up touching his face and nuzzles her head underneath his chin.
I look back and forth between Malachi and…Malachi standing next to me.
“What—How—?”
He smiles at me. “I have to go,” he says, “but it was a pleasure meeting you, Adria Dawson. Tell Genevieve I said hi, will you? Oh, and…that I still love her.”
I’m too speechless to say anything back to him, my mouth parted halfway. I can’t believe he’s here and there….
Malachi walks across the cobblestones toward the people shuffling down the sidewalk. I see his form slide into his duplicate form like a spirit taking over the body of its host and no one sees it but me. He looks back at me once, his aquamarine eyes glinting in the darkness, and then the group slips into the shadows and out of sight.
I sit down on the curb, my legs bent upward. I put my head in my hands and close my eyes, letting the sobs rock me until suddenly I hear a familiar voice yelling out my name.
“Adria! Baby, where have you been?” I look up, only now realizing that it’s nighttime as if I’ve been snapped from a dream. Between trying to understand how that’s possible and seeing Isaac’s agonized face staring across at me as he approaches, I can’t do anything but look through him.
In seconds he’s crouching in front of me, both of his hands bracing the sides of my head. “Love, are you okay? Adria—baby, look at me.” I lift my eyes to see his face is tormented by worry. “Adria….” He crushes his lips against my forehead.
When he pulls away, I look at him and tell the truth for the first time: “No, Isaac, I’m not okay.”
~~~
Back at the beach house, Isaac agreed to let me think for a little while before I tell him what happened. He almost wouldn’t let me sit outside by myself, afraid that something else might happen to me. But I needed this and after Nathan convinced him, Isaac let me go.
I sit outside alone on the tree swing near the house, my favorite beige knit sweater pulled around my body to keep the cooler night air from making me uncomfortable. The wind has calmed since earlier in the day, but I can hear the leaves dancing in the tree above me and the soothing sound of ocean waves gently lapping at the shore out ahead.
Most of the lights in the house are on, letting a faint orange glow spill out of the windows. I hear my friends inside talking, but their voices aren’t raised so I can’t make out what they’re saying. But I know it’s probably mostly about me and all of the strange things I’ve done lately. I wonder if Harry will keep my secrets. I do trust him, but I know that he’ll spill my secrets if it means it might save me.
Somehow, I know Isaac isn’t contributing to their conversations. It’s as if I can feel his concern, his fears. I imagine him sitting quietly off to the side as everyone talks around him. I don’t know how I know this, but I do. I don’t know how I can see it, but I can.
I look out at the endless ocean covered by darkness. Every now and then I can see a small white-capped wave rise up and blink out again. I think about the ride home and about what everyone said as I sat there, completely still and utterly quiet, lost in my own uncertainties. Apparently, when I left Zia, Daisy and Hannah at the restaurant, I had been gone for over four hours. It never even occurred to me that as I stood talking with Malachi that the night had fallen. Only now as I think back on it do I remember the lampposts coming to life and the car lights blinding me. But just like in the clinic when the nurse drew my blood, time had been completely stripped from my mind.
I know now that it was Genna, there in the room with me at the clinic that day. I know she was there when I saw the wall move. Somehow, Genna made me calm, like she had tried to do at Isaac’s when Nataša was giving her speech. And in the library.
But why would she do that?
I know the only way I’m going to understand any of this is when I tell Isaac about her in just a few more minutes.
And I’m terrified. I’m terrified because now more than ever, I know that my Blood Bond and Genna Bishop are somehow linked, even despite seeing her before I ever met Viktor.
Isaac will know now. He will know everything. He’ll know that I’m a liar and that I’m not fully his because the blood of his enemy keeps me alive.
The tears pour from my eyes and I don’t try to stop them this time. I just let them flow, my body shuddering in a surrendering mess. I cry quietly in the night under the tree, my legs pulled up onto the swing seat, pressing against my chest with my arms wrapped around my knees. My bare feet are cold, but I didn’t care to put on shoes before I came out here and I don’t care to put any on now.
I hear Isaac’s footsteps shuffling through the grass and sand behind me.
“I’m sorry,” he says, “but that’s as long as I can leave you out here by yourself.” The swing shifts as he sits down beside me, pulling me into his lap. His closeness only makes me want to cry harder, but I don’t. He wraps his arms around me and kisses the edge of my chin. The sweetness of his breath lulls me. “I’ll wait for as long as you need before we talk about it, but I need to be here with you.”
I reach up, my fingers halfway hidden in the sleeve of my sweater and I wipe my face. Nathan and everyone else come out of the house from the side door and walk toward the beach carrying blankets and other various items I can’t see.
I pause, looking only at Isaac now, letting my gaze fall to see the outline of his beautiful face, his perfect lips and then once again the endless depths of his eyes.
“Why do you love me?” I say, my voice soft, almost a whisper.
I try to make myself believe I’m only testing the waters right now, feeling out his answers before I tell him the one thing I don’t want to, but really I think I’m just looking for reasons to put it off.
Isaac draws back a little, mildly surprised by my question. But his eyes grow softer and I can sense how easy this is for him, instead of it catching him off-guard and leaving him scrambling to find the perfectly-worded answer.
He kisses me on the nose and says, “This could take a while.”
A tiny smile warms my face, pushing through the tears and the pain.
I feel his arms squeeze me.
“I love you because you’re extraordinary. You have all of the things I respect about a person wrapped up in one package, while every other girl I’ve ever met only had a few of those things. I love you because you’re selfless, incredibly strong and because you’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
An unexpected sob rattles my body and more hot tears stream down my cheeks, but I’m smiling behind these tears.
Isaac lets me cry for a moment longer, smiling back at me before reaching up and wiping the tears away with his fingertips.
“I believe there’s someone out there for everyone,” he says, “and when you meet that person, sometimes you know right away they are who you were meant to be with. And sometimes, years can go by before you let yourself believe that the feeling you’ve had about a person for so long, is actually love. And what a waste that is.” He stops and smiles more warmly, his eyes searching my face. “I love you because I knew the first night I spoke to you, when I pleaded for you to get in the Jeep, that you were the one meant for me and I’m glad I was lucky enough that it didn’t take me years to figure it out.”
This time he kisses my lips. I shut my eyes, feeling his lips linger on mine for a long moment.
Right here, in this moment with Isaac, I truly feel like I would die without him in my life. My heart would die. My
soul would die. I would be an empty shell devoid of anything solid. Any other time with any other person, something like that would seem absurd to me, but not with Isaac. And I try not to let Beverlee’s words of warning ruin this moment, but they wake up inside my head and reach down into my stomach, crushing it into a mass. ‘What worries me the most is falling so fast and hard for someone only to get your heart broken later. That kind of love is the most dangerous.’
Beverlee was right.
But so was I. To love Isaac so deeply really does mean that it will hurt a thousand times more when he disappoints or leaves me. I’m not ready to face that. I never will be. But the longer that I wait the more painful it’s going to be in the end.
I move out of Isaac’s arms and stand up from the swing, pulling my sweater closed around me. I notice a fire near the water, flames rising high into the air.
With my back to Isaac, I begin: “Downtown, there was this guy…well he wasn’t human. He said he couldn’t tell me what he is because it’s forbidden. I followed him to the street where you found me because I noticed a tattoo on his hand that was identical to the one I saw on Genna Bishop’s hand.” I look out at the ocean and work the words out in my mind some more. “But he was mostly interested in me because apparently I could see him and I wasn’t supposed to.” I turn at the waist to see Isaac still sitting on the swing behind me. His face is blank, devoid of emotion, but I can already see that he’s holding back a thousand emotions the best he can. It’s as if he already knows what has happened and that he already knows what Malachi is. If this is true, then Isaac likely also knows why I could see Malachi…because I’m somewhere between life and death, sanity and insanity. Because of the Blood Bond.
My heart falls into the pit of my stomach, but I also hold back a thousand emotions and try to finish my story with tears in my throat. All of my words, my explanations, are coming out in a disorderly sequence, but it’s the best I can do.
“Malachi—that’s his name—he said that her real name is Genevieve. She’s been following me since I started school in Maine, but I’m the only one who can see her. Malachi…he…,” I hesitate at this part, ashamed of whatever it was that Malachi did that made me so weak, “…well he did something to me.” The first of Isaac’s emotions finally spreads over his features; his eyebrows have turned inward, his expression tormented by pure anger. “I-I don’t know what he did exactly, but when he stopped, he told me that I’ve been Marked.”
Isaac shoots up from the swing, leaving it to jump and jerk around madly for a few seconds before it slows to a mild sway back and forth. His hands are balled into fists at his sides and his eyes shift black and for a second I’m not sure if the anger is directed at Malachi, or me.
I take a step back, but before my heel even touches the sand, Isaac realizes that he’s scaring me and rushes over, enveloping me in his arms; an instant reaction to right an unintended wrong. And he just holds me, the power of his arms like a wall of protection, keeping me away from the outside world and all of its cruel realities. I feel his lips pressing hard into my hair and the rapid beating of his heart against my body.
He lets out a long, deep breath. “This explains everything,” he says, and my whole body tenses up with apprehension. I think my heart has stopped beating altogether.
He holds me for a while longer and while there’s nothing I want more than to just stand like this forever, I can’t stop myself from wondering what’s going on in his mind. Does he already know about Viktor? Because if so, this wasn’t the reaction I was expecting. Once again, Isaac is completely unreadable, but this time not for reasons intent on making me crazy.
Isaac pulls his body from mine, his hands holding both of my arms and he looks down at me with natural blue eyes again. “You’re going to be okay, baby,” he says and I don’t know whether to feel relief, or confusion. “I won’t let anything hurt you. Do you understand me?”
I just nod because I’m still unsure of everything. Isaac takes my hand. “Come on,” he says pulling me along, “My brother can explain this better than I can.”
Without another word, I go with him toward the moonlit beach.
18
THE BONFIRE SEEMS TO rise higher in the blackness as we get closer, the flames reaching into the night sky, appearing to lick the stars. Ocean waves steadily lap the beach like a hundred gentle fingers reaching for land only to retract and slither back out into the deep abyss. A tiny white light, just barely larger than a pinhole, moves along the dark horizon far off in the distance. I stare at it until it completely blinks out, lost in a haze of my own thoughts, my own bitter memories.
As all of my friends look up at me and Isaac as we join them, I wonder if I’ll lose any of them for keeping the secret that I have kept. About Viktor being alive.
I feel the cool sand shift underneath my feet as my body pulls back in unison with Isaac’s to adjust the distance between us and the flames.
Harry’s face is filled with remorse, more-so than anyone else’s because he already knows about Viktor. And about me.
I’m still not sure if Isaac does….
“It’s a Praverian, Nathan,” Isaac announces, ripping the word out indignantly. “Adria has been Marked.”
Everyone shares the same expression of shock, but it’s the worry in Nathan’s face that frightens me the most.
For now, Nathan doesn’t say anything.
Daisy gets up from the sand next to Harry and stands in front of me with an unnatural look of unease. “That’s why you’ve been fainting.” She brushes the back of her fingers down my cheek. “Oh, honey, no wonder you’ve not been yourself lately.” She pulls me into a hug, but I’m still unsure about what direction this is turning, so as I hug her back I can’t give her the same amount of affection.
She pulls away and smiles weakly at me, which makes me feel like I’m on my deathbed and she’s just trying to be strong.
“A what?” Harry says from his spot on the sand. Hannah, sitting on the other side of him next to Nathan also looks up at us with the same curiosity.
Zia is surprisingly quiet, but she’s paying as much attention as everyone else.
Finally, Nathan speaks up:
“They’re damn dangerous, that’s what they are. Our Elders call them The Keepers, others call them The Guardians—long history, so naturally they come with a long list of titles, too.” I see Nathan’s eyes pass over me as if afraid to look at me. He looks at Isaac instead. “Little brother, you know what this means.”
A chill moves up my spine.
Nathan and Isaac stare at each other for an intense moment, the fire glowing orange on one side of Nathan’s face.
I look away from them and down at the sand and instead of Isaac loosening his grip, I feel it get tighter around my stomach. Maybe Harry was right, maybe he will be like his father and protect and take care of me like Trajan does Aramei, after all.
Regardless, I still don’t want to be like Aramei. No matter what, I can’t live like that.
I’ll die first.
“So, this…whatever you called it, is after Adria why exactly?” Zia says. She tosses a small branch into the fire and little sparks flutter up entangled in the wind. Sebastian is lying on a blanket in the sand beside her, his head propped up by one hand.
I feel Isaac behind me guiding me to sit with him and I do, but he doesn’t let me sit anywhere but between his legs.
“A Praverian’s job, per se,” Nathan begins, “is to protect his or her Charge. But they usually don’t feed from their Charges and if Adria’s been Marked, that means she’s likely not a Charge, but food instead.”
“Food?” says Harry with huge eyes. Daisy sits back down with him. “What do you mean food?”
Nathan answers, “Well, even though they’re immortal—ancient—a Praverian ages really fast. I’m talkin’ within-months-fast.” He sits back down by Hannah and bends his legs upward, propping his wrists on top of them.
Daisy adds, “They drink the essence of
humans to stay young.” She gestures both hands, looking at all of us. “A lot of humans committed to mental intuitions, people with schizophrenia, even dementia and Alzheimer’s—a lot of them are victims of a Praverian feeding.” She adds, shaking her blond head solemnly, “It’s really quite sad what they do to people.” Then she glances at me again, giving me that doleful expression, which seems to do more damage than anything Nathan is saying.
Nathan looks back at me now. “Usually, they choose humans to feed from who are already weak in some way, because weakness makes them more vulnerable to a feeding: disease, mental illness, old age—you name it.”
“So, Adria’s food?” Harry says, still mortified. “That sounds all kinds of messed up.”
“She’s better off food than a Charge,” Daisy says.
“Yeah, to be a Charge is worse,” Nathan adds, “because just being their source of youth doesn’t necessarily mean Adria’s doomed—this can be fixed.” He points outward as if to underline a fact. “Now, if she were a Charge, there’s no compromising on that one. To be a Charge means that person is fated to fulfill some destiny, which from what I understand, always ends in an early death. Praverians help guide them through it, see to it that they fulfill that destiny.”
The more that Nathan explains, the more I’m starting to believe that they still don’t know about Viktor and my Blood Bond. This revelation is crushing because that means if Isaac doesn’t know, then he’s not holding me like he is right now because he accepts it.
I push myself away from Isaac and stand up, my feet sink partially into the cold sand. I feel everyone watching me, but I can’t look at any of them. I can’t look because I’m ashamed. Instead of owning up to the truth and telling them that Viktor is still alive and that I’m bonded to him and that it’s my weakness, I find myself taking advantage of this unexpected turn of events, saving me from having to reveal the truth. I know I shouldn’t do it, but I do.