"Go to sleep, Cassandra," he murmured, not looking up from the flames.
I closed my eyes, felt the keen ache inside my chest, the pain as my heart was sliced to ribbons all over again.
I could have him. I knew I could. All it would take was for me to get up out of this bed and walk over there. He wouldn't deny me. He wouldn't deny himself. His longing matched mine.
But it was false. Or maybe just part of the whole. The attraction existed, but the love was no longer there.
I rolled over onto my side, my back to the hearth. I ached in more than my chest now. I ached everywhere. When would this end? When?
I'm not sure how long I lay there, how long he stood by the fireplace watching the flames, how long neither of us said anything but both of us knew the other was awake. I thought he'd leave, but maybe he was waiting for me to fall asleep first. I couldn't, as tired as I was, I just couldn't.
God help me, I was in love with a man who didn't love me back. A man who had loved me once, told me he would always love me, no matter what.
Tears leaked out of the sides of my closed eyelids as I thought back to Brazil and that moment in the shower, when Theo held me, comforted me, after being apart for so long, suffering so much, and then finding out I was more than just Gi.
"However this plays out," he'd murmured against my lips, his hands smoothing down my back, over my arms. "I will always love you. No matter what comes next. I will always love you. Whatever you become. I will always love you."
I couldn't stand this. It was tearing me up inside. I couldn't live with this depth of pain. I'd survived the Gi. I'd barely survived the Pyrkagia. I would not survive Theo Peters.
The bed dipped at my side and hard arms wrapped around me, "Shhh," he whispered. "Shhh."
I let him hold me, because I am weak.
I let him comfort me in his embrace, because I couldn't find the strength to pull away.
I let him pretend he still loved me, because the alternative was killing me slowly anyway.
I fell asleep in the arms of my Thisavros but feeling a lifetime away.
And woke up in a dream on a windswept hillside, my hair floating around me in a magical breeze, as my eyes met the sad blue of Gramps'.
"Casey, sweetheart," he said in that familiar gruff voice. "My poor, sweet girl."
There was no stopping the tears. Like the rain that poured down in the real world, but was strangely absent in this dreamscape, they kept coming, and coming, and coming, and coming.
Until I was sure I would flood the world with my resounding grief.
Chapter Six
I Couldn't Stay
The wind whipped his words away.
"What?" I shouted.
"Here," Gramps yelled back, indicating a natural shelter formed from the edge of a cliff that I hadn't noticed before. I was sure it had appeared out of nowhere.
I followed behind him, noting how sprightly he was, how his blond hair only had a smattering of grey. How at sixty, the age he was when I thought he'd died, he'd appeared fifteen years younger. And now he appeared even younger than that. I couldn't get my head around it. If this was a just a dream, then he could appear in any fashion.
But I knew better now. I wasn't the naive granddaughter he left behind with a library full of books obscurely related to the Elements, and a memory full of stories to guide me like bread crumbs through a dangerous forest. I wasn't that girl anymore.
I'd been through a bucket load of crap, which I sincerely thought might be because of this man. I felt my fists clench as we made it to the relative quiet of the sheltered cave. He turned slowly to look at me, a knowledge he'd always had present in those pale blue eyes. Eyes the exact same shade as mine.
I'd grown to hate him recently. For all the lies. For faking his freaking death. But most of all, I'd begun to hate him because he'd clearly known what was going to happen to me and hadn't said a word before he left.
"You've got some explaining to do," I said softly, my throat felt raw from all the crying. My skin too tight on my face. My heart too weary by far.
"Yes," he agreed. "It's time."
I sucked in a fortifying breath of air and sat myself down on the dirt floor beside the cliff face. My grandfather followed, making the move seem more simple than a sixty year old man should.
"We've already established you're an Alchemist," I said, swallowing past the lump of betrayal in my throat. "And that you groomed me for what I now am. Tell me," I whispered, the wind still moaning out on the moor, but not reaching our little piece of solitude, "why?"
"They are not who you think they are, sweetheart," he said. "There are good Athanatos and bad, like humans. But those at the top, those closest in age to the ancients, have become corrupt. Imagine the length of time they have existed. Imagine what that does to a mind."
All quite reasonable, when you think about it. But then, one look at Aktor and I could refute that claim. Twenty-five thousand years old and he was more sharp minded and level headed than the rest of us.
The Rigas on the other hand? Hmm.
"Why me?"
Gramps shrugged. "We just knew it would be."
I frowned. The wind picked up and started howling. Gramps glanced out onto the grassy hillside, then looked up at the skittering clouds.
"You need training," he declared.
"Well, you did dump this on me," I snapped.
He shook his head as the wind became a mournful howl.
"Sweetheart, we may know things, we may even be able to manipulate things, but we cannot create an Aether."
A chill invaded my body. I'd assumed. Hell, we'd all assumed, even the Ekmetalleftis had assumed. We'd all thought I was an Alchemist creation. What did he mean?
"Listen," he urged. "Clearly we're never to have long enough in these visits to converse, perhaps he wills it this way." Who? "Perhaps it's a by-product of your lack of training. But things are moving faster than expected."
"What things?" I demanded, having to raise my voice again, despite the protection of our alcove.
"Disasters," he shouted. "Everywhere. Watch the news, Casey."
The news? The man was losing me, or more precisely I was losing him, his image flickering like an interrupted signal.
"No!" I cried, getting up onto my knees and reaching for him. "Stay!"
I may have hated what he'd done, what he'd known and never shared, but he was still family. Still my Gramps. And he knew more than I did. More than we all did. Alchemist or not, trusted or not, my grandfather had answers and I damn well wanted them.
"Casey!" he yelled. "I'll send someone to you. Be brave, sweetheart. It begins now."
The wind had entered a crazed stage of whistling and a high pitched crying that pierced the ears. It sounded unnatural, yet you knew it was the sound of air whipping through air at great speed.
"What begins?" I shouted back, clasping his almost incorporeal hand.
"Genesis," I thought he said, right before he disappeared.
I woke sitting upright in bed drenched in sweat. The room was empty. Just me and the sound of rain on the window pane, the curtains closed, but a weak light illuminating the edges. Dawn was coming and Theo had left some time during the night.
To go to Isadora?
I slumped back down on the bed and let out a wretched sigh. Then rubbed my face trying to stimulate my brain into assimilating what had just transpired. Theo and I were at an impasse, but this new Stoicheio and whatever my grandfather had tried to warn me about were more important right now.
I threw the covers back and climbed off the bed. I was in no mood to deal with any of this, staying curled up in a ball beneath the sheets sounded just right. But action was better than inaction. If I stayed here, I wouldn't fall asleep again. My grandfather's dream visit revolving inside my mind. The threat of Pyrkagia ever present; a few hundred kilometres between us and them did not make anything safe. The knowledge that the Aeras would want an update, or maybe they already knew and were waiting im
patiently for me to follow through with my agreement to get in touch when Air Awakened.
And let's not forget Theo. My Thisavros.
No, staying in bed was definitely out.
I crossed to the bathroom and looked inside. Well appointed, tiled in creams and browns, rain shower-head, glass walls, and fluffy white towels. I could have been staying in an upmarket hotel. Trust the Pyrkagia to make sure their accommodation was top notch.
I found new toothbrushes under the sink, razors and soaps, all manner of creams and perfumes. All sorts of necessities a woman could want. In Theo's room. Either Aktor had brought these in after I ended up here, or he'd been covering his bases. Unfortunately those bases could have been for Isadora and not me.
I took what I needed and stepped into the shower, realising this was the first decent ablution I'd had in apparently four months. I had washed at Pyrgos, though; the doctor didn't like working on a specimen that was unclean. Understandable, it could have compromised his experiments.
I started laughing as the water touched my skin. A slightly unhinged sound, so I tamped it down and concentrated on making myself human again.
Of course, that just made the weird laugh return. I was grateful, though, that the tears didn't follow. But my chest hurt again. Would it never stop?
Wrapping a towel around my hair and another around my body I walked out of the bathroom frowning, realising I didn't have a thing to wear and I'd have to traipse down the hallway like this to my old room, and wade through the water soaked furnishings hoping to find something reasonably unharmed to put on.
But sitting on the bed was an outfit. Laid out carefully, pressed, in perfect condition, exactly my size. And definitely hadn't been there when I entered the bathroom.
I smiled. Aktor was the most efficient butler in the whole wide world.
I donned the underwear, feeling pampered with all the satin and lace, then slipped on the fine navy tailored trousers and fitted cream silk blouse. Running a comb through my hair, I decided to leave it to dry naturally and then went in search of coffee. The cappuccino Aktor had bought me last night had reintroduced me to caffeine and now I wanted more.
I was being brave and I knew it. A thin veil of confidence protecting me from completely breaking down. I wasn't sure how much longer I could go on like this, but I was alive. I was free. I was well. I had to work with what I had.
And I had friends. In the form of Sonya and Nico and Aktor. And I had assets in the form of Isadora. And I had...
Well, that wasn't perhaps the best train of thought. I forced my mind elsewhere as I descended the stairs, taking in the abstract artwork in the stairwell, the plants in the foyer, which all bowed their heads to me in greeting, and the smells coming from the kitchen down the back of the house.
I let my nose lead me, my mind blanking of all nasty thoughts, my stomach filling the void with a growl of necessity.
Which was all promptly forgotten when I walked into the kitchen and found Theo offering a bite of a pastry to Isadora at the large rectangular table, while Aktor whistled quietly and contentedly in the background at the stove.
"Good?" Theo asked. Dora nodded, smiling through her mouthful. Looking refreshed and bright and was that a flush on her cheeks?
Why would she be flushing? Was it a glow? I knew why women glowed.
"Try this," Theo suggested, another pastry in his hand, fingers outstretched to Isadora's waiting full lips. "Aktor outdid himself with this one."
"Nonsense," the butler scoffed, smiling over his shoulder and then spotting me.
Oh, the look of guilt. The look of a man who knew he'd been caught out, complicit in an act that caused him shame.
I offered a bright, but brittle, smile back and walked into the room.
"Miss Eden," Aktor announced. It wasn't a greeting, it was a warning. Making Theo drop his hand with the next delicious morsel he was about to offer and move back into his own personal space, away from Dora.
Awkward did not cover it.
OK, so I could amend the list of what I had. I had friends in the form of Sonya and Nico. I had assets in the form of Isadora and Aktor. Right. Good. OK.
I sat down at the table, opposite and down slightly from where Isadora and Theo sat, and poured myself a cup of coffee from a carafe. I stirred in sugar and milk before anyone spoke.
The cup was to my lips when Theo said, "Did you sleep well?"
I took that to mean he left not long after I fell asleep, otherwise he would have known I'd slept right through to just now.
"Wonderfully," I replied, my soul dying.
Where had he slept?
A branch hit the window above the sink. The glass didn't crack but the sound of leaves scratching the pane got all of our attention.
"It's still raging out there," Theo commented.
For some reason Aktor was mute and Isadora was just waiting for the right moment to pounce. The conversation was all on Theo, and he looked freaking uncomfortable about it.
"Has anyone seen the news?" I asked, pulling a pastry off the communal serving platter and lathering it with butter and jam. To hell with calories, I was all bones right now. Brittle, bruised, heavy bones.
"I can switch the television on," Aktor suggested, his inclusion in the conversation somehow lifting the atmosphere in the room.
It was a nice room too, I noticed. Country style cabinetry in creams and greens, wooden benches, brass pots hanging above the kitchen island, the table we sat at old and worn. In a modernist house it stood out. The heart of the home.
"Yes, please," I said, trying to keep up the image of normality, while inside everything felt so wrong. I bit into my breakfast determinedly and inadvertently made a sound of pure delight.
"They're good, aren't they?" Theo asked with a soft smile.
No, don't smile at me. Please. No.
"Are the others up yet?" I blurted as Aktor worked with the remote to turn a flat screen wall mounted TV on. I needed support. I needed my posse of friends, even if that posse now only included two.
"Not yet," Theo murmured. "They stayed up late drinking our best Scotch."
I blinked at him across the table. How had he known that? Had he come back downstairs and joined them after I fell asleep in his arms?
The TV blared to life and the news channel flashed up on the screen, the rolling "Latest News" scroll along the bottom letting us know the storm was not isolated to just Wellington. Auckland experienced tornadoes. Christchurch had earthquakes as major landslides affected fault lines. Hamilton saw the Waikato River rise half a meter, Lake Taupo having to frantically empty some of its volume or flood Lake Terrace.
That chill, that had invaded my body, set to ice as more and more unusual weather related emergencies around the country flashed before our eyes. The entire room was silent as the newsreader moved on to an international report. Australia had flash floods. Tuvalu in the Pacific Ocean lost more than half its landmass to a rising sea over night. Death counts were high. Further afield, other countries weren't faring much better. A state of chaos had been caused by severe winds, torrential downpours and raging seas.
It begins.
The Earth let out a tragic sigh.
"How did you know?" Theo asked, his eyes on me and no longer taking in the shocking news on the TV.
"Last night's weather wasn't natural," I replied, for some reason not wanting to talk about my dream visit with Gramps.
The old Theo would have understood. The new Theo would just stare at me with that distant look in his eyes, and doubt.
"We thought that might have been you," Isadora chose to say as her segue into the conversation at last.
Of course she did.
"No," I said, not bothering to justify that answer any further.
"Your new... Stoicheio," Theo said, hesitating on the last word. "You haven't mastered it yet."
Thanks. Just thanks.
"Perhaps you have affected the weather as Aeras can," he added and I lost my appetite, replacin
g my half eaten croissant on a plate. "But not been aware of the drastic results."
I dusted my hands off, watching the crumbs rain down on my discarded breakfast.
"It wasn't me," I reiterated.
"Cassandra," Theo said in that voice he always used to effect. The one that showed his age and vast knowledge. The one that preceded a lecture.
"It... wasn't... me," I said softly.
"You cannot be sure," Isadora remarked, fanning the flames in the seemingly caring way she often did. The look of concern on her perfect features was almost believable.
If you didn't already know she was a bitch.
"Aktor says we have contacts with the Aeras," Theo pushed on, ignoring my argument, and thankfully not giving Isadora a glance. "You must seek assistance there."
You must. Not we must. You must.
I flicked my eyes to Aktor, who watched on with genuine worry etched in his old face.
"It would be advisable, Miss Eden," he urged.
"Then we get in touch with Hip," I said. "But it still wasn't me."
"Hippolytos," Theo corrected.
"He goes by Hip," I countered.
"That's an extremely familiar term to use with a member of another Ekmetalleftis branch. You should show some respect."
"Or perhaps you just don't like the idea that he's my friend?"
"Is he?"
"Yes. We got on very well while we were there."
"How well?"
"Very."
"How very?" he snarled.
Aktor cleared his throat carefully. "This is not helping, master."
Master? Since when had Aktor gone back to using that term to Theo's face?
"You're right. I am getting distracted," Theo replied, sending a look my way that said he thought it was all my fault.
Everyone went back to what they were doing. Isadora watching Theo. Theo staring into his coffee. Aktor wringing his hands as he hovered by the stove. Me leaning back in my chair and crossing my arms and glaring at the top of Theo's brainwashed head.
Elemental Awakening Book Bundle Page 61
