“Emeric, I—“
“Silence,” he ordered. “You leave me no choice any longer, Serena. I warned you several times. This was your last chance.”
“No,” she breathed, her eyes widening in sudden recognition of something Callie couldn’t understand. In haste, she went on, “No, wait, Emeric don’t do this—“
“You have until sundown to collect your belongings and leave this canopy,” Emeric said, his tone ringing with finality.
“Emeric, don’t,” Serena whispered, looking about as close to tears as she could.
“It is decided,” Emeric said coldly. “From this day forward, you are banished from this forest.”
Serena looked around frantically, floundering for something to say, seeming unable to breathe. Callie comprehended in a second what he must have meant.
“Wait,” Callie said, sitting up.
“Callie, don’t,” Alex growled, not even turning around. Emeric’s gaze was pulled to Callie’s face in barely concealed hatred.
“No, hang on a second,” she said. She tried to pull herself up, but couldn’t manage to balance with her leg held up at the angle it was. “Just…wait,” she stammered, awkwardly trying to prop her hands behind her.
A hand extended towards her. Callie looked up, and saw Alex looking at her without emotion. She knew that he didn’t want her to do what she was about to, though he helped her to sit upright anyways.
“Thanks,” she said. She took a deep breath. “It wasn’t her fault,” she went on, now that she could think straight. “And besides, it isn’t even true. I wasn’t saved by Alex. I wasn’t wearing my seatbelt that day, and the car flipped over, and I fell out of the window and landed….” But even as she spoke, she realized how ridiculous she sounded. Emeric looked down at her skeptically. Serena glared down at her with contempt. Callie looked to Alex for help in explaining it, but his face was still cold, empty.
Callie couldn’t wrap her mind around it. Alex couldn’t have saved her. And yet…. Another foggy recollection was rooted in her mind from their time at the pond. She remembered that he had told her there was nothing she could have done, and suddenly she realized something she hadn’t picked up on before: he had been there that day.
She gasped. A glimpse of guilt betrayed Alex’s stony expression, but it disappeared quickly. She continued to stare at him, the man whom she must have known for years but who suddenly seemed such a stranger. And yet, she couldn’t think about this now. It was too big. And she had something else to say before the moment was up.
She swallowed, shaking her head, recollecting her thoughts. “It isn’t her fault,” she began again, more evenly now. She looked up at Emeric. “This forest is her home. These people are her family. I would have done the same thing, if my family were in danger. You can’t blame her for trying to protect hers. And if you banish her now…then what am I fighting for, exactly?”
Emeric frowned. “Callista—“
“A family,” she said, holding up a hand, “can’t turn on each other like that. So if that’s not what you are, then I am only here to save traitors. And I won’t do that.”
“What are you saying?” Emeric asked, his words a silent threat.
Callie pinned him with a steady stare. She was astounded to find that she was so much less afraid of him now than she’d been just a week ago. She didn’t cower under his intimidation; she knew what he wanted, and she knew what he would do to get it.
“If you banish her, I won’t help you. You can lock me up here as long as you want. Hell, Maggie probably doesn’t remember who I am, anyways,” she bluffed. “But when it comes time for me to play my role in all this, I won’t do it. You can count me out.”
Emeric’s eyes were glittering. “We can force you to obey us, Callista,” he said, his voice like a low-burning fire. “Your unburdened life here is by no means a guarantee.”
“No, you can’t,” Callie said with a forced calm.
“Callie,” Alex warned, his voice low. She wondered in a distant part of her mind if he would turn on her by the time she was finished. She realized he would likely side with Emeric. But she knew what it felt like to be abandoned by one’s family. Her own had done so by accident, and she wouldn’t stand by and let someone endure the same heartache unnecessarily.
“You can’t,” Callie went on. “You have no way of witnessing my memories, even if I did Perceive with them. Which I won’t. Right?”
She looked back and forth between all of them. “I mean, I’m just guessing,” she went on. “But it seems like, if you could Perceive on me, you’d have done it by now, instead of asking so many questions. So here’s my deal.” She leaned forward, hoping to show Emeric her eyes, hoping he’d see that she wasn’t in the habit of making false promises. “Either Serena stays, or I go.”
Emeric gritted his teeth, his nostrils flaring, his eyes wild. “Alex,” he hissed, his voice nothing but a low rumble. “Get her out of here.”
Without warning, Alex’s arms had wrapped around Callie in a vice-like grip, and she was wrenched from the couch unceremoniously. She flinched as her nerve endings were shot through with the pain of movement, and then felt him gentle a little. But then they were peeling through the air with angry speed, and when Callie looked back at the house, all she saw was Emeric, his head hung, his posture defeated.
Chapter Twelve
Retelling
Callie studied his face as he flew, noticing how some strange mixture of disappointment and fear and irritation had mangled his features into something nearly unrecognizable. She knew that he was upset, and so she didn’t try to speak. But looking at him now, it was like she was seeing someone new, someone she had never met before. She didn’t know what to make of what Serena had said, but something told her that it had changed everything between them.
When they landed, Callie could have laughed at the location. She stepped down from his arms onto the stone ledge outside of the cave, and smirked at him.
“This is becoming our spot, I guess,” she said.
Alex barely looked at her before he turned and stalked away, into the shadowy confines of the cave. She sighed, knowing better than to follow him. He had some thinking to do; so did she. He would come back out when he was ready.
She sat down on the rock, swinging her legs over the side. It was funny to think how afraid of heights some people were. She had been living on sticks and boards, suspended in the air, for days now, and that particular fear had yet to strike. Maybe it was delayed by all the other worries she’d had lately.
Callie lifted her head and saw the pink clouds drifting slowly across the sky, cotton puffs in vague circles, lifted above all the rest of it. Things had always seemed more peaceful up there. When she’d been a kid, she’d thought that one day, when she was older, when it was time for her to leave the world behind, she would be lifted up to those clouds. And then when her parents had died, that was always where she’d pictured them, sitting on top of the horizon, looking down at her and Maggie. Maybe that was why she’d always put on a brave face, why she had downplayed Maggie’s problem for so long. She didn’t want them to worry.
It was another minute or two before Alex finally emerged. Wordlessly, he sat down beside her on the ledge and watched the heavens with her. She slipped her hand on top of his, and felt him relax beneath her touch. In the silence that grew between them, there was understanding. They still had to discuss what had transpired this morning; but they were no longer strangers.
Turning to him, she asked, “Are you angry?”
“No,” he mumbled, though he didn’t meet her eyes.
“Liar,” she whispered. He didn’t disagree. They remained still, and she waited for him to want to tell her. It didn’t take long.
He turned the weight of his regard on her, and said, “You shouldn’t have saved her.”
“Alex, this is her home,” Callie said. “I know a thing or two about being forced to leave home.”
He winced under the reminder,
but didn’t back down. Callie inched closer to him, and leaned her head against his warm, bare shoulder, watching the way the sunlight bounced off of the river below, erupting from the current like nodding diamonds.
“Tell me why,” she said. “Why don’t you want her here?”
“She tried to kill you,” he said, an underlying savagery in his voice. “She has been angling towards your death ever since your arrival.” Callie saw that the thought upset him. Despite his distress, however, Callie bit her lip to hide a smile. It didn’t work, and she suddenly found herself laughing. She felt Alex shift beneath her head, and looked up at him.
Through her laughter, she said, “I’m sorry. Oh, man, I’m sorry.” She could barely catch her breath now. “It’s just…people keep telling me I’m not immortal. But how many near-death experiences does it take for you all to figure out that I am?”
He frowned, though when tears sprung to her eyes and she began clutching her sides for support, she found that he was chuckling, too.
“I can’t believe how many times I’ve been sure that I’d die this week,” she gasped.
He rolled his eyes, and lifted an arm. She ducked beneath it, and he settled it across her shoulders. She nestled into his chest, her laughter beginning to subside, though her smile remained. She gazed across the ravine and took in the beauty around her. The noonday sun illuminated everything, warmed her skin. A certain, happy peace stole over her, and she sighed. His heart beat thickly beneath her cheek, and she began to breathe in its rhythm.
“Is it true?” she asked quietly. “What Serena said, about you being there the day of the accident…saving me. It’s impossible, isn’t it?”
He was silent for a long moment. She drew back her head, looking for the answer in his face. He searched her expression silently, his brown gaze flitting back and forth between her eyes. And then he took a deep breath.
“No,” he said. “It’s not impossible.”
She swallowed, the shock of his reply dulled slightly because, somehow, she thought she might have already known. “But the EMTs,” she started. “They told me—“
“I was there that day,” he said.
“—that I must have fallen out of the open window. I wasn’t wearing my seatbelt—“
“I saw the truck coming over the hill, and it was swerving between lanes, but your father couldn’t see it.”
“—and so when the car was turning over, I fell out of the window—“
“I pulled you out of the door before the car hit the ground.”
“—and I landed on the street. They took me to the hospital,” she finished. Reciting the story to herself, solidifying the details in her mind, didn’t help. She looked up at him helplessly. “It was a miracle, they said.”
Alex gazed down at her with a sad expectance, and she knew then beyond doubt that he had saved her. Everything she’d thought she’d known for the past four years…all of it vanished with a breath of realization. He had been there, had pulled her from the car, had saved her life.
The white feathers…
Tears dwelled in her eyes again. She shook her head. “It isn’t fair,” she whispered, her voice failing her. “It isn’t fair that I had you and they didn’t. I shouldn’t have survived. I shouldn’t have survived if they couldn’t,” she said, her words dissolving as he drew her near to him again. She couldn’t stop the tears; her body shook with them. All of the sadness that she had bottled up, unwilling to show to anyone in the past couple of weeks, broke forth. Without a word, he rocked her back and forth, letting her spill them onto his chest; it was as if they both knew that no simple speech could comfort her in that moment. No words could make this better.
He held her that way, without complaint or question or advice, until she had exhausted herself. She lay limp against him, not willing to speak or move. She felt utterly drained, and began to sink into a coma-like state.
“That day,” he said, the rumbling of his voice sending ripples down his chest. Callie closed her eyes at the sensation. “I was supposed to make sure that you were on your way back home before I left, so that I knew where you would be. I was only supposed to stay until you had left your sister at college. But for some reason, I couldn’t leave. I had this feeling—”
He paused, and took a deep breath.
“And then when I saw the truck, and knew what was about to happen….I have seen men butchered before me, Callie. I have watched as the life drained out of whole generations. Entire races have wasted away while I stood witness. I can remember almost every worldly horror, and yet your death,” he said, and Callie felt his heart begin to speed. “That I could not have watched.”
She forced herself to peel back from him, to watch him as he spoke. He hid his emotion as he studied the falls.
“In that second, I knew I’d be breaking the most important rule. I would be defying practices which I have placed my faith in for thousands of years. And yet…I realized that I couldn’t not save you. It wasn’t in my power.”
“Why?” she asked, confused by the urgency in his proclamation.
He glanced downwards. “I have no idea.”
She lifted an eyebrow. “Well, that’s a first,” she remarked drolly.
He looked at her in question, and saw that she was smirking. Though her heart was still heavy, weighted down with guilt, she felt a little lighter when he looked at her like that. Like she surprised him, and yet like she was what he knew best in the world.
She drew a fortifying breath, and then looked back in the direction of Shay’s house. “What do you think he’ll do to her?” she asked.
“He’ll let her stay,” he replied solemnly. “He wouldn’t risk losing you.”
Callie nodded, expecting that. She returned her focus to him, and saw that he was watching her intently. She swallowed under the scrutiny of his deep, liquid brown eyes, and felt herself being drawn in again. This bond between them, whatever it was, was powerful. It pulled her in.
Without warning, Alex drew back, away from her. He stood up and offered her his hand. She took it, allowing him to pull her to her feet. “Where are we going?” she asked.
“We should probably get back,” he replied. “Emeric will have left by now.”
“Right,” she said. But when he turned his back to her, taking a step backwards so that he might lift her on more secure ground, she realized that she didn’t want to leave. Not yet. She didn’t like the sight of him retreating from her.
When he faced her again, and opened his arms to her, she caught her breath as nerves overwhelmed her. With a shy, small step towards him, she closed the distance between them. But instead of stepping off of the ground and into his arms, she placed her hands against his shoulders and allowed herself to be lost once more in his face. She drew a deep breath, closed her eyes, and tilted her head….
“Callie,” he said, so low and soft that it barely existed atop the rumbles of the falls. And yet somehow, perversely, that murmur acted as a slap, especially once he took a step backwards.
Callie opened her eyes, feeling the immediate rush of hot blood to her cheeks. She didn’t know if she would blush or cry, but her nerves became steel daggers to her gut. She felt slightly winded as she noticed the cold resolve written in Alex’s features, the blatant rejection which it signified.
“We can’t do that,” he said, more softly still, and Callie then knew the sharp, ruthless sting of rejection. It hurt all the more because she had never been in this position before. She had never been one to obsess over boys. She hadn’t been able to bring herself to care about much in her teenage years. But now, once she recognized the strange sensation for what it was, she felt ashamed. Humiliated.
She swallowed. “Okay,” she said, detaching her voice from her emotions.
A twinge of guilt flashed in the little triangle between his eyebrows and his nose, but then the vacant, hard expression was firmly in place once again.
A subtle movement caught the corner of her eye, and she turned to l
ook into the forest. She gasped as a pair of purple eyes stared back at her from between the leaves on the other side of the small valley, seemingly disassociated from any face, existing all on their own. They blinked at her once, but when Alex noted her surprise, and turned to see what had caused it, they disappeared altogether.
“Callie?” he asked.
But she could barely look at him, let alone tell him what she’d just seen. Her heart began to race, the mingled sensations of shock and heartache causing her blood to surge. “I think you’re right,” she mumbled. “You should take me to Shay’s.”
He didn’t move for a moment, but then she saw him nod. Wordlessly, he gathered her in his arms and leapt from the ground. And it was in such silence that he placed her minutes later on Shay’s doorstep.
She walked inside, not brave enough to look back at him.
“Callie,” he said hesitantly. She paused, though didn’t turn.
“Thank you,” she said. “I’m okay from here.”
She heard no motion for a long while, and she stood frozen in panic, hoping that he wouldn’t try to console her. That would be even worse, having the man who had bruised her heart try to bandage the wound. But then, after another second, she heard the rustle of feathers as he left.
She didn’t waste a moment. “Shay?” she called, sprinting back to Shay’s room. Her leg stung a little with the motion. It was empty. She returned to the main room, and found Shay hidden behind the couch, bent over a notebook on the floor, scribbling furiously.
“What are you doing?” Callie asked.
Shay looked up, seeming confused with the question.
Callie sighed. “Never mind. Listen, Sirens were all Guardians at one point, right? So if I describe a Siren to you, you might recognize who I’m talking about?”
Shay pushed up from her crouch, and eyed Callie with suspicion. “If she changed after I was already in the village, then yes, I would likely know her by her description. Though it depends on the accuracy and the detail which you—“
The Guardian (Callista Ryan Series) Page 14
