Uendeligt: An Infinitely Forever Novel

by S King

  “What aren’t you telling me?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Bull, I can tell from the way you won’t meet my eyes and the way your muscles are coiling in your arms.”

  He actually had the nerve to look at both of his arms as if he could see what I saw. Snorting he looked at me over his shoulder.

  “My muscles always do this when I’m tired.”

  Yeah, maybe they did. But the veins in his hands and along his forearms seemed to be more pronounced than normal. Maybe I was just over thinking. It wouldn’t be so far out of the realm of possibility that he—like me and Karina—had changed somehow in the short time we had been apart. So, why was I getting the feeling I was missing something crucial?

  Deciding against starting a fight with him, I brushed the worry aside. Just because his eyes seemed to hold secrets that hadn’t been there last night, it didn’t mean it was about me. Just because his muscles looked like they were ready to demolish a skyscraper, it didn’t mean he was keeping something from me.

  Still, even as my inner voice continued to counterattack everything I was seeing. I couldn’t help the obvious from tumbling from my mouth.

  “Can we make a deal?”

  He opted for a different pair of flannel pants and ignored the shirts, before coming to stand in front of me with a raised brow.

  “What kind of deal are we talking about?” Although his tone was dead serious. Lust and need danced around in those gold-silver eyes of his.

  I smirked and tilted my head back to look at him, “no more secrets.” I just needed to see the old familiar shadow I had become friends with before that faithful night on the cliff’s edge.

  Demir returned my smirk with his own and closed the distance between us. Grabbing ahold of my waist, he looked down at me and rubbed his thumb along my bottom lip.

  “I promise.”

  As the vow tumbled from his lips, I knew he was lying. We had been trained to lie. Trained to cover the truth up with everything within our grasp. Now was no different. However, I didn’t have much of a choice between believing him or not.

  Grabbing the collar of his button down, I crushed my lips to his and threw caution to the wind for what was to come. For the time being I needed to enjoy this simplistic lifestyle that had seemingly fallen into our laps. Even if it were nothing more than a pretty little lie.

  §§§§§

  It had been several days since Karina and Dristan had stopped by. But when they did, Karina had gotten a wild hair to do something completely psychotic and totally in character. Of course the men in our lives were no better at getting on board than a fish out of water.

  Judging from the looks on their faces I didn’t know who looked more confused by what Karina had just said. Demir was frowning as if someone had told him his house payment was going to be closer to the five-thousand dollars a month range. While Dristan was staring at Karina like she’d spoken a foreign language or came up with a riddle so ridiculous the gods themselves couldn’t even understand.

  “What?” Karina looked between her boyfriend and mine with a sarcastic glint dancing around her eyes.

  Demir opened his mouth but closed it before making a face at Dristan. Obviously, he wasn’t going to jump off into that jolly train. Opting to let his best friend deal with the impending argument from the only woman capable of blowing this world to shit and back. He said.

  “Babe,” Dristan seamlessly picked up the ball that was thrown his way and tapped his temple. “We can’t do that.”

  “Why the hell not?” She snapped.

  “Because the scientists want Luminous on a fucking platter!” He fired back.

  “More or less,” Demir and I agreed.

  “Whose side are you on?” Karina said staring me down.

  I raised my hands in surrender and leaned back into the couch. Somehow Demir had inched closer to me and threw his arm around my shoulders. Welcoming me into his body heat, I nestled in at his side and watched as my best friend and his best friend came to blows.

  “As for you,” Karina stabbed a finger at Dristan, “they want her for their sick little games? Well we can do the same with them!”

  “You’ve lost your fucking mind!” Dristan shot out of the chair and towered over her. “You already were stupid by blowing the courts to hell last year! You’re lucky they haven’t caught you! Now,” he spread his arms and laughed under his breath. “You want to put individual Russian Heart bombs in the judges’ chambers? Then you want to completely demolish the courts as if that’s going to solve everything?”

  “Yes.” Karina made a disbelieving face at the man standing nearly a foot and half taller than her and waited for the next baboonish attack to come her way.

  Dristan scoffed and put his hands on his hips before looking at her. “You’re certifiable.”

  “As if that’s news.” She rolled her eyes and waved off the comment like it was nothing to be called crazy.

  “Karina, we’re not doing it.”

  “The hell if we aren’t.”

  “I said no.”

  “And I said yes!”

  “Tough shit!”

  Karina’s eyes turned wild with anger as the tension—and temperature dropped in Demir’s living room. Dristan knew who he was dealing with and didn’t care about the hot headed tempered woman’s ability to wire up a bomb. Granted, that could’ve been from years of going back and forth with her. Learning her techniques and limits. Figuring out the best way to deescalate the situation before he was forced into a grave by one of her infamous heart bombs.

  “A hundred says Karina slaps him,” Demir whispered against my hair as his hand snaked around my waist and pulled me tighter against his side.

  “Two hundred says your windows shatter before the sun sets,” I breathed and drew idle circles in his thigh.

  He shifted against the couch. I wasn’t oblivious to what my light touch was doing to him. If I couldn’t idle my time away with plotting against the courts or the scientists then I was going to do something more pleasurable.

  “Deal.” While his finger dipped under my waistband.

  “You’re not going to tell me what I can and can’t do!” Sure enough, Karina grabbed the water bottle on the edge of the coffee table and launched the thing at Dristan’s head.

  “I’m not telling you what to do!” Effortlessly Dristan knocked away the bottle, “you want to blow up the courts and everyone in it!”

  “Not Demir!”

  “Thank you Karina.”

  “Shut up,” she turned away from Demir and glared at Dristan. “The judges killed Slade!”

  “What?” I sat up and looked between the three of them. I did not just hear Karina right. That’s all it was. She had said something else, and I just heard something unthinkable.

  I’d been under a lot of stress and hadn’t been in my right mind. Neither Karina, Dristan or Demir would’ve kept something like Slade’s death a secret from me. Right? I mean, we were past the secrets stage in our relationship and Karina would’ve told me as soon as she found out. So, I just didn’t hear her right.

  But I knew I wasn’t having an auditory hallucination or misunderstood what had been said when I looked at Karina.

  “You haven’t told her?” Some of the fire died between Karina’s and Dristan’s arguments as both of them looked at Demir.

  Pulling away from Demir, I frowned and stared into his eyes. Right there. What I had been missing since he had come home, dancing in his eyes like a lover forgotten. Was the disinterest and coldness I had familiarized myself with over the years.

  He had been in the guard long enough—fought against me long enough, that I’d be fucking blind to not know the look in his eyes now. And here I thought we were past the lies and secrets.

  “Demir?” I asked slowly and stood from the couch to stare at him.

  Karina and Dristan fell into the chairs facing the couch and didn’t say anything as Demir stood to his nearly seven-foot height. Pushing up his sleeves,
he looked down at me. Waiting for me to put the pieces together on my own like I had done with figuring out what the scientists wanted me for.

  “What happened to Slade?”

  “He was sentenced to death and was executed last night for breaking into Onyx Elite and stealing files from Judge Sadvidge.”

  The statement came off as matter of fact, here’s how the weather is. There was no remorse coming across Demir as he handed down the news or explained what had happened to keep him out all night. Instead, he told me Slade’s fate and didn’t bother trying to sugar coat it. Not that I wanted him to sugar coat anything when it came to telling me the truth. But it didn’t make the pain that came with it hurt any less.

  I unconsciously stepped away from him, frowning, “no, no. He wouldn’t have done that.”

  “He did and now he’s paid the price for his crimes.”

  A chilling silence overtook the living room to the point, I had to wrap my arms around myself in order to keep from shivering.

  Finally, I looked at Demir unable to trick myself into believing such stupid theories of how he was just doing his job. How he didn’t mean what he was saying. Underneath the rough and gruff exterior he was torn to bits by having watched his friend and the only other ally in our circle be ripped from this world.

  Yet and still, I could see within his eyes none of my theories were right. Demir Losett was a leader and a rule follower to the end of time. He had done what he was told to do at the expense of Slade. And now? Now all of us were left to pick up the pieces.

  “Why? Why did you allow this to happen?” I breathed, still trying to come to grips with the truth staring me plainly in the face.

  “Do not ask me to explain further,” he said, his eyes that were just filled with love and adoration from our time together. Now utter endless pools of the man he had become since putting on those fucking black robes.

  Sure, everything from last year made sense now, thanks to having lived through his scheming methods. But I had thought originally we had gotten past it. Demir was supposed to let all of us in on what he was going to do. What he planned to do, and yet. Here we were finding out the truth through means of an unrelated argument.

  I clenched my teeth together, gathering my composure and strength. If we were going back to playing the truth and lies games, then I needed to put on my war paint and figure out the situation on my own.

  Finally, I lifted my eyes to his and said as calmly as I could.

  “Spoken like a true judge.” My lips twitched in a smirk for a half a second before I looked away from him. The walls were closing in and air became difficult to obtain. I needed to get out of here and be by myself for a minute…or thirty. “I need to get out of here.”

  “Lumi—”

  Holding out my hand to Karina, I shook my head, “no, I’m fine. Just…I need to be alone right now.”

  Not giving her, Dristan or Demir a chance to come after me. I calmly—as one could in my situation—walked out of the house without looking back. Not even the sound of the wind registered with me as I went through the trees. Numbly walking away from the reality that had slapped me in the face.

  Demir had watched Slade die in the chambers of Onyx Elite. And from the look covering his face when he broke the news to me, he wasn’t even sorry about it. Rationally, my mind tried to come up with some stupid excuse about the situation being similar to the one we were in last year.

  Demir had played the role of a heartless bastard in order to save all of us from meeting the same fate as Slade had. All the way until the very—painful—end of the act. He had acted in accordance with what the judges had wanted from him and done what needed to be done in order to get the results we had to have just so we could keep air in our lungs. Maybe this situation was no different. Maybe he was simply playing a role in order to save the rest of us, and Slade just so happened to be the sacrificial lamb this time around.

  Afterall, it was no different when he handed down the order to Svenia and allowed her to kill my sister. In turn I got to take out the woman who wrongfully identified my sister as being the recipient of one Black Diamond Order.

  Only come to find out Svenia and Lovett had plotted against me and Demir in order to fulfill their own agenda in getting what they wanted. Svenia paid the price she was assigned for the fuck up she made. Without her in the picture Demir and I faced less of a threat when it came to being able to utilize our sects. Now Lovett was gone too.

  “So rationally,” I breathed, watching the leaves and branches crunch and crush with each footfall. “It only makes sense for Slade to be placed on the butcher’s block in order to keep the judges away from what’s going on with me. Right?”

  I stopped walking, looking around the vegetation and blew out a hard breath. My nerves somewhat settling with the self-talk I was playing out verbally.

  “It’s all an act,” I whispered to myself and started trudging through the woods again. “All an act. Nothing more, nothing less. Slade had to die in order for the rest of us to stay alive.”

  A part of me wanted to trust Demir and know he knew what he was doing. I just needed to trust him long enough to get away from the scientists’ reach and out of the other judges’ range. Once I was safe, everything would make sense and we could go back to living in our sweet little fantasy. I just had to be patient long enough for everything to come together.

  “Shit!” I allowed my body to loosen as I bounced down the cliff’s edge and cursed when a rock stabbed painfully at my skin.

  Closing my eyes, I allowed gravity to pull me along and didn’t tense, flinch or jump as more rocks, fallen branches, and things I didn’t want to know about grabbed and stabbed into my body. The rock em’, sock em’ routine ended with me landing on a small incline for all of two seconds before sliding down by the waiting trenches of the marshes.

  “Jesus,” I breathed, too numb to move or check the damage done to my body.

  I didn’t know if it was thanks to the months I had spent asleep while my body recovered. Or the fact I hadn’t been awake all that long, but something was screwing with my ability to be graceful. Forcing my eyes to search the surrounding area, I tried to control my breathing and take in the scenery.

  Thanks to the seasons turning, the weather was warm, and the water was forgiving to such an unfortunate soul. I couldn’t catch a break even if it were handed to me. From waking up with an inability to walk to causing someone else’s death who didn’t deserve to die. It was one thing after another.

  Then again, laying here in the too soft mushy ground wasn’t necessarily going to solve anything either. But for the time being I had a beautiful scenery to fill my senses. Until the moon made her appearance to make love to the velvet backdrop, I’d just stay right here. Listening to the water and nature.

  “Luminous River, funny running into you here.” My head jacked around on the river bank to find Shang standing above me in that cock-sure fashion he had when I had last seen him.

  “Come to send me back to my makers?” I smirked at the irony of the situation and waited for him to confidently answer yes. Just so we could fight and end this shit show. Granted, I was the one at a disadvantage. My body had just been made into a crash dummy doll and I wasn’t all that confident about my ability to fight so close to the river. Especially without my whip.

  “On the contrary,” he came up to my shoulder before dropping down beside me on the bank and narrowed his eyes on the sparkling ripples next to us.

  I raised a brow and turned to him, listening for someone to come in and disrupt the serenity I had found when I was in Shang’s presence. Maybe it was thanks to not knowing him my entire life. Maybe I had felt calm around him because he honestly admitted to me that he was the one to carry me back to his house. After all, I had wanted nothing but honesty from those closest to me and outside of Karina, I couldn’t get it from anywhere else.

  I hadn’t known the type of peace Shang granted me until after everything I had been through with Demir and
Castlehedge these past few weeks. And I’d be a liar to say I didn’t welcome the feeling with open arms.

  “I wanted to see how exactly you managed to float upriver.”

  “What?” I sat up on my elbows and frowned at him. “I wasn’t—” I stopped my own fact check when I looked around and realized something.

  I knew these mountains. What was worse was the fact I knew where the mountains led to. Just above the ridge was the same cliff Demir had stabbed and pushed me from. Not only did the scene of the cliff’s edge force a phantom pain to spark through my healed wound. But I heard the last statement Demir had left me with before pulling the knife out as if he were next to me right now. Saying the words as if it were yesterday.

  Luminous River, even if I have to sail across the seven seas and the universe. I will find you again. This I promise you, Luminous River.

  The sadistic son of a bitch bought fucking land just below my murder scene? No, like when Karina had said Slade had died, I wasn’t seeing things right. I knew I couldn’t be sitting beneath the same river I had fallen into. The same rive that had carried me to Shang and Fefe.

  However, as I sat up fully and looked around the scene a little more closely, I knew in my heart of hearts, this was it. Frantically trying to break apart the reality to nothing more than a dream or a nightmare rather, I narrowed my eyes on the cliffs and the water.

  It was up there I thought to myself. My eyes found the waterfall where I should’ve come careening down after my fall. On the edge of the cliff I had been pushed from would be stains of my blood. The water—although clear now, would’ve carried what had been forced from me.

  I stood up and walked backward down the riverbank, staring at the top of the waterfall that seemed to lower the further back I went. That’s when I saw it. I saw the mountain top. The cliff’s edge. I remembered the excruciating pain as the dagger I had gifted Demir pierced through my skin. The sharp bite of pain as the metal was pulled away again. All of it I remembered. But what stood out the most would be a memory I’d live with for the rest of my life.

  The cold, heartless look in his eyes as he backed me closer to the edge, promising me he’d find me. No matter the cost. No matter how long it’d take. Nothing was going to stop him from coming back for what we had created when we joined together in a fucked up union. Yet and still, that wasn’t the worst of my mental cinematic remake of the past.