by Bailey Dark
One, it was true that if we sweated, we ran the risk of making ourselves colder in the long run, at a time when we couldn’t risk evaporative cooling, when it was hope against hope that the table legs would last us through the night.
Two, I wasn’t entirely certain that my mental connection was done with its hold on her… After all, why had she suddenly become telepath-able? The connection between us was so intense… I was eager to see if she could read any other Vailstorans.
Three, if she really was running from Blatson, was somehow pledged to him, then my loyalty needed to be to this mission first. I couldn’t allow a woman, albeit, a beautiful, smart, engaging, enigmatic, alluring, vixen of a woman, to derail those plans. If we showed up at Blatson’s compound and I found out that she was his runaway bride or slave, or little sister, for all I knew, then I needed to do all I could to make sure she went back to her rightful place, no matter the circumstances in which Blatson had procured her. Farian needed this deal with Vailstor. We needed their calasis mines, and they needed our frajili. That was the trade I was authorized to make. If Blatson said no, I was to duel him, kill him, and help empower Truloy, another General, who, from what I heard, I would like a lot better.
It was a heavy task Commander Axis and King Kajo had put before me, and I couldn’t fail them.
I was anxious about the fact that I hadn’t been able to report in to them, but my handy comm was long gone by one of the guards and there just hadn’t been an option to go to my spaceship when we were fleeing the city. I wondered if Axis would send a ship after me if he didn’t hear from me soon. I had been radio silent for over a week at this point. I wondered how long it would take for Axis to move to Plan B.
First and foremost, I needed to know if Zaya was really running from Blatson… Before we got any closer, before we bonded any more, and definitely before she delved further into my brain.
I sighed and held her tightly, smelling the lavender and peppermint and the fire flickering just feet away. Mostly, I just wanted to hold her and keep her safe… The power of the mental connection was mind blowing. I hadn’t let her in as deep since that first time. I wondered what it would be like if I did. Now that she had learned a few tactics for emotional Will restraint, would that intense, breathtaking connection still be there? Part of me wanted to feel it again, part of me was afraid of how vulnerable it made me feel.
And that pain in her heart… So much pain… Had Blatson put it there?
My hands tightened into fists around her. Whomever had put it there… I didn’t want to let any other harm behalf her.
For tonight, I told myself. As I fell asleep right now, I can let myself feel like I can keep her safe, like it isn’t complicated… Let me let myself feel like she can be mine…
Thirteen
Zaya
“Zaya…” A hand was shaking my shoulder. “Zaya…” I blearily opened my eyes. The charzbos smiled at me from where he crouched near the fire. He brushed my hair back behind my ear. I blinked rapidly into the early morning light.
“It’s morning.”
“Yes and the storm has stopped.”
He turned back to the fireplace and stoked it, putting some more pages on it and one of the logs we had been drying out. The book pages flared up and pressed their hope for flame into the dried log.
I pushed myself up onto one elbow, rubbing sleep from my eyes, my fingertips lingering on my lips a moment. Had that been a dream? Had we kissed last night? Yes… Yes, we had. And I had initiated it. I shrugged off any embarrassment and pulled the towels and cloak up around my shoulders as I sat up. Cartari handed me a drink of water, which I gratefully chugged.
“Would you like to go out into the new snow with me?”
I smiled at him. “What for?”
“I’m sure we can find a sledding hill.”
I laughed. “Are you a child?”
“Whenever I get the chance to be.”
I nodded at him, finding his grin irresistible, then stood up and stretched. The cabin was getting warmer by the minute, the frost retreating into runs of teardrops down the windows. I reached up high and stretched out my whole body. Cartari was looking far too obviously away from me, when I had hoped he would be enjoying the look of my body twisting and turning to wake up. I frowned. I wondered if he was embarrassed by the kissing of the night before. He had stopped it, after all. Maybe he had someone waiting for him back on Farian…
A spike of jealousy went through me that astounded me. Why would I care? He was a charzbos. A barbarian. I had no reason to care if he was taken already or not. All I needed to care about was him getting me to Astrida safely, before Blatson could find out where I was. If Blatson threw the might of the military behind him to get me back, not even a telekinetic warrior could keep me safe.
Cartari handed me my cloak from the floor. It was a gorgeous piece of clothing. What dignified lady had lost it in the southern precinct jail, I wondered? Black with red feather accents, just my style. I slung it over my shoulders.
The door was snowed in and Cartari had to push quite a bit to get it open, but he finally cleared aside about three feet of fresh fallen snow. We strapped snowshoes that Cartari had thankfully not decided to burn during the tense night, to our feet and headed into the blanket of white.
The sunlight blasted us with brilliance as we threaded our way along the narrow trail. At least, I assumed it was a trail. Cartari seemed to know where he was going. Snow-laden branches above us shook occasionally and fell to the sides, letting shivers of snow sparkles fall into the air.
A bird shot off from its nest and cooed into the air, also grateful to have survived the storm.
We walked through a grove of giant redwood trees and a meadow spread out before us. A broad pond glistened, frozen over, snowbanks high on its sides. We walked up to its side. I smiled as Cartari bent down to unstrap his snowshoes.
“This isn’t a sledding hill, but I’ll swing you around on the ice, instead.” He grinned at me. I sighed good naturedly and took off my own snowshoes.
“I’ll race you.” Then I sprinted out onto the ice. Cartari was but a moment behind me, grabbing my arm, then twirling me around, slinging me out from his body, struggling to stay upright as his boots slicked away from him.
I laughed and clung to his arm as he spun me around and flung me far away, so that I glided, arms flailing, feeling as though I were flying, and he was racing behind me to catch up.
He grabbed my waist as I slowed, bent over, exhausted from laughing and from running on the ice. He pulled me up to him looking into his pale green eyes as they glistened with the shine of reflected snow and sun, and he swooped in to kiss me gently on the lips. Then he stepped back and pushed me away from him telekinetically so I was gliding out into the center again.
“Stand up straight! I will guide you!” He commanded. So I stood up, holding my arms out to my sides, but then his telekinetics slid me along the ice, ramping up faster and faster, my feet barely touching the ice, until I was out nearly in the middle and he was a speck behind me. Then his powers spun me, twirled me, like a ballerina, and I was getting dizzy as the snowbanks flash, spun, flash, spun, away around, laughing and smiling, the sun gazing down in supreme beauty, and he was getting closer and then a loud crack sounded beneath me. I could barely register the splitting ice before I broke through it, my spinning body dashing down into the ice water.
“Cartari!” I gurgle screamed from within the water. I flailed wildly to grab at the ice, but it broke beneath my glove’s grasp, and I heaved a huge breath of air into my lungs. In the next second, I was captured in the flow of water we didn’t even realize the pond had and I was dragged beneath the other side of the ice, the surface above my head.
The silvery transparency of the ice flashed by above me as I tried desperately to cling to it, to pound on it, to bash my fist through. I saw Cartari’s shadow far behind me and I tried to swim back in his direction, but the current was too strong, and I was pulled along, dragging
my gloves against the underside of the pond’s surface.
Panic flooded me, my heart racing, fear gripping at my heart. Help me!
My lungs were starting to ache, my face freezing in the cold water, my limbs moving less quickly, my frantic legs starting to have trouble treading water, as I dropped a little from the surface.
No! I thrust hard to the surface, bashing my head against the ice, but at least propelling myself forward and reigniting my freezing limbs. I have to keep going! I can’t freeze! I have to—mentally! I can reach out to him mentally!
I opened myself, the way I had practiced, hoping Cartari would be thinking the same thing, and I reached out to him, trying to feel his mind.
“Zaya! Zaya!” It was an explosion of his thoughts, a fearful impression of exigency. “Open yourself to me! Tell me where you are!”
“Cartari! I’m here!” I flooded him with the fear and cold and struggle I was feeling. His mind rebelled against my intensity a moment, then accepted it and pushed back the same intensity. Lights flurried in my mind and I wondered if I was getting hypoxic, but it seemed to be coming from the connection with him.
“Tell me where you are!”
“The current is taking me south in the pond!” My lungs were straining severely. Their ache was starting to spread to other capillaries, pain taking over my fingers, my feet, my face. “I can’t see your shadow any more! It’s too fast! I can’t breathe, Cartari, I can’t breathe!”
“Just calm your mind. Latch onto me. Feel me. I am with you. I will find you. Keep talking to me.”
Cartari’s thought was overflowing with a soothing emotion, with a gentle flow of care, concern, of feelings of safety and hope. I knew he was just doing it to manipulate my panic, but I latched onto the feelings and focused on our connection. Lights burst in my brain, seeming to warm me, letting my legs function better again, as I had dropped a few feet from the surface. I pumped hard to get back to the top as I saw a jagged piece of ice hanging down in the current. I grabbed to it as hard I could. It allowed me to be just a few inches from the surface.
“I’m holding to a piece of ice beneath the surface. Please find me. Please find me.” I was ashamed of the whimper in my thought.
“I’m coming for you, Zaya. Hold on. Stay focused on me, on our connection. Feel us.”
I stared up at the ice’s underside. Its crackle was beautiful, blue, and silver, and golden in the sunlight. The light traced rays out onto the surface, a sharp contrast with the chilly, cool, dark waters in which I swam.
A bubble escaped from my lips. I couldn’t hold my breath any longer… just not any longer…
“Stay with me, Zaya! I’m almost there!”
And there he was, his shape looming, a shadow of refracted colors, just over me. He knelt down over where I was gripping the ice.
“I’m going to break the ice and get you out of there!”
Cartari began smashing the ice near me with the hilt of his knife. Slamming, shuddering, splintering its sheen. Cracks began to shiver out from where he was impacting the ice.
My legs slowed. My fingers were too cold to clench the ice much longer. Another bubble escaped my lips…
“Zaya, focus on me.” A flood of warmth rushed into me from his thoughts, wrapping me with care, concern, something that felt like guilt, and almost a sensation of love…? How could he love me? He didn’t know me. He was beautiful like a stream, flowing into the woods, but never out again, because it couldn’t find its source and then it would get lost down by the docks or flounder in the mines because I wouldn’t know where to look for it…
“Zaya! Zaya! I’m almost there! Look up at me! Look up! Focus on me!”
I clung to the ice and shook away the thoughts of hypoxia. I forced myself to look up, every movement a fight against incredibly cold sensation resounding in every cell of my body, and smiled at the charzbos as he gave one last heavy heaving blow to the ice. It smashed apart and his fist went through to reach down into the water, gripping at my hand, just as it slipped on the jagged sliver I clung to. He pulled me over and to the hole. My lips burst through it and I gasped in air.
Oxygen flooded back through me and I rocked my head back into the water, nearly drowning myself, if Cartari hadn’t still had a hold on my forearm. He was still raking at the ice with the hilt of his knife, but I at least could be getting air.
Finally, there was room to squeeze my body out from the water, and he pulled me up, effortlessly, and held me tight to him, and then we were flying, literally, flying, as he used his telekinesis, over the pond, over the snowbanks, and back into the cabin.
I could hardly register what happened next, I only knew the fire was flaring larger than he had made it before, my teeth were chattering so bad I thought they would roll out of my head, and Cartari was stripping me naked. I only realized he was naked, too, once we were fully under the towel mound, supplemented by his coat, and he was clutching me to his chest, holding my head tightly against him, my heart thudding against his. My hands were tucked in between his arms and his sides and my feet were pressed tightly between his legs. He was so warm… I was so cold…
I don’t know how long we laid there, but he was continually talking, telling me soothing things, telling me stories about Bristola, myths, legends, childhood antics, pinching me if I ever seemed to be falling asleep.
Sensation started to, painfully, come back into my hands, feet, and face. It was a ricocheting slice of pain as my capillaries regained blood flow and fed their ways down all my limbs. I started to cry into his chest as my pinky finger came back to life and it nearly broke with the bristling pain of new blood flow.
He just held me tight and gradually warmed up my body and slowly, slowly, I could push off him and look into his eyes.
“You’re naked.”
“So are you.”
“I don’t think I will lose any of my fingers or toes.”
“Or your nose. You wouldn’t be as pretty then.”
I stared at him, in shock. Then he grinned and kissed my nose. “Just kidding. You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, Zaya.”
I traced my fingers over his collarbone, over his pecs, and along the shimmering flare of a sun tattoo he had that capped his shoulder and tore flames into his chest. There were scars all across his chest and back.
“Are you a warrior on your planet?”
“Yes, Special Operations.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means I’ve probably forgotten many of the battles these scars came from, I’ve been through so many.” He grabbed my hand and held it tight, then brought it up to his mouth. He bit down on the tip lightly and I smiled at him, giggling. “That was smart of you to think of using the telepathic connection when you were beneath the ice. I’m glad you did that.”
“I’m glad you taught me how to use it.” I curled my hand into his and entwined our fingers. I moved my leg between his and moved my thigh tightly up into his. His breath caught as I wiggled my hips closer. “I’m glad I have the ability to connect to you that way.”
“Me too…”
“It’s the only thing that saved me. You’ve protected me twice now.”
Catari looked at me, a shade of sadness in his eyes. Then he shook it away and smiled. “Can we kiss now?”
I laughed and pushed my hands into his chest, pivoting my hips to swing up on top of him. The towels and cloak fell away. The red roar of the fire lit up my skin with a rosy kiss. I straddled him and let him soak in the sight of my breasts, the curve of my waist, and I squeezed his hips with my legs. When I bent over to kiss him, my nipples dragged across his chest, pinpoint with desire. He moaned into my mouth, his hands finding their way up my waist to my ribs and back down to my ass. Our kiss was gentle and sweet, but hungry, still.
“Do you want me?” His thought rang loud and clear through my mind and I thought for a moment that he had whispered it, but his mouth was otherwise engaged.
“I want you, Cartari… I w
ant you inside me…”
He pushed me back, a huge smile on his face.
“You used my name.”
“I used your name earlier, too,” I said, referring to when I was calling to him from the water.
“That’s different, that was in fear. Now it’s in… In…”
“In what? Lust? Desire? Hope? Let me show you what I’m feeling…” I pressed my lips to his forehead, holding his cheeks in my hands, and swelled my Will into him, sending all those emotions to him with a furious force. Lust… Desire… Hope… Trust… Care…
I pulled back and licked my lips. He smiled at me, laying his hand on my cheek, the other hand he put over my heart. As he reached back to me and responded with his Will, sparks exploded in the cabin, tracers bouncing off the wooden walls, dashing about the room, buzzing into our bodies, and ricocheting through our cells. I watched the sparks ignite, a mini firework display, fearful something explosive was in the fireplace, but Cartari held me tightly to him, hand on my face and my naked chest, a knowing smile in his eyes, and I trusted him… He pushed back the same feelings to me and they flooded through with such force that I was knocked breathless, and I clung to his shoulders, heaving forward, gasping, astounded by the connection, by the feeling of reciprocity, and beyond that, the feeling of supreme loyalty, of partnership, of togetherness… It was as if we were one.
I looked at where my fingertips pressed into his skin and lights were rippling out from where I touched him, pressing through his skin, as if a torch was radiating out from underneath. I moved my hand, then placed it back, amazed at the ripple glow of light.
“What is this?” I demanded, exhilarating fear of the unknown challenging me, tempting me to pull off Cartari, or fall into him. I didn’t know which I wanted. To know more and be forever lost in this magical embrace, or to backpedal, to flee, to return to what I once was.
“I think it means you’re my Destin… It’s a Curan legend, a bond between two people that is unfathomable, unconditional, something that wars are fought over, lives are lost for, and kingdoms are pledged to protect. I don’t know what else this could mean, Zaya… I think you were meant to be mine, and I am meant to be yours.”
