Unmasked (Rise of the Masks Book 1)

by Kaplan, EM

  She bit the inside of her lip and cleared her throat. "About that . . . "

  “Wait,” he said. He took her hand and led her back to the dressing room where he hurriedly dried off and pulled on a pair of pants while she turned her back to afford him a little privacy. When he came back to her, she found it hard to meet his gaze. She focused on the scar on the underside of his chin. His nearness made her eyelids half close and her breath come fast. Heat, again, washed over her, up her cheeks into her hair, into the tips of her ears. When he stroked his hand along her jaw, against the soft skin behind her ear, and cradled her face in his hand, she lost all semblance of control and wrapped her arms around him, pulling his face to hers. She would never let him go.

  Uncontrollably, she started to contract. Everything about her, mind and body. The muscles throughout her entire body seemed to convulse, to spasm. Inward further and further she clenched, drawing on the scent, on the tidal waves of emotion. She gathered it in until she was nothing but a speck within herself.

  Then, she exploded. Out, farther and farther, feeling a wash of raw and powerful love, terror, pain, and joy whip out of herself.

  Her back arched, and she shouted soundlessly as ripples of energy exploded. Every particle of herself vibrated and hummed. The wound from the agamite-encrusted stone on her forehead healed in the wave. Skin reconnected and absorbed the flecks of green stone left there. She took the stone into herself. And burst, from the inside out. And she knew without having to open her eyes that she was golden.

  Chapter 36

  Later, much later, Ott was dying in his dreams. Nothing could save him. He was alone and adrift. He thought he had found Mel and had taken her into his arms only to find her dripping away like ice melting into water, the smooth deathlike veil of a Mask in her place. His luck had run out; it was over. He woke with a gasp in a sweat-drenched tangle of blankets and looked over at the sleeping woman next to him.

  Mel.

  Smooth, smooth golden skin. Sun-drenched hair. He'd gone to sleep with a wounded, broken Mel and had woken up with a goddess, Lutra forgive him again for his blasphemy. Mel stirred and turned over to face him, blankets draped low across her. She was stunning. He drew a sharp intake of air. Her forehead injury was gone, as were all traces of blood. Her sleepy eyes fluttered, and then flared wide open at his unblinking stare. He wanted her. He hadn’t forced himself on her, but he wanted her.

  "I could use a skin to prevent pregnancy," he offered. He was fighting the urge to touch her, to get under her skin. And he cursed himself when a frown crossed her smooth face. Lovely dark eyes blinked once. Of all the dumb, clod-kicking things he could have said . . . She pulled up the blankets to cover herself though she was still clothed, but stopped, looking embarrassed, a flush seeping up her neck.

  "I can't become . . . I can't have a child unless I, um . . . " She avoided meeting his eyes while speaking of her Mask capabilities. "To conceive, I have to meditate. I have to go within myself to open certain . . . passages that have been closed off. Blocked. If I wanted to have a . . . " She trailed off nervously, watching him closely for his response. He could feel his eyebrows shooting upward. He hadn't known that Masks had that much control over themselves . . . to be able to manipulate their bodies in such a way. As if they were gods. A shiver ran through him, which she saw. That frightening red tinge from strong emotion—any strong emotion, he was realizing—was back around his vision. But he held himself still in the bed next to her waiting, hoping that he was indeed still lucky and Lutra blessed, that the whole nightmare about the Masks was his drunken, fearful imagination.

  "Ott," she then said in a low, quiet voice. No such luck.

  He sighed and rolled onto his back, lifting an arm to cover his face. At least the red tint went away when his eyes were shut. "You're a Mask," he said flatly. He wished there were some way to stall her answer, to freeze them in this one moment in time. To stop everything. To halt the relentless flow of time and capture it in eternal ice. Now, before she said the inevitable and changed everything between them.

  "Yes . . . I mean, no," she said. What was that in her voice? Denial? Confusion? Either way, she had said yes. And he had seen her in the Mask with his own eyes, whether or not he wanted to believe what his eyes had been telling him.

  "Either you are or you aren't, my lovely. Which is it?" he said, still unable to bring himself to look at her. That falsely flirtatious tone had escaped him without him intending it. My lovely. He'd spoken to her as if she were a barmaid. Not his Mel, the one he'd been dreaming about, fantasizing about for months. Head pressed into the pillow, he was sinking into a dark abyss. He could feel his bones caving in on themselves. He felt the blankets across his belly move and thought she might be leaving the bed. Getting her shoes back on. Putting that damned creepy cloak over her skin like a shroud locking her away from him forever. All for the best, probably, he tried to tell himself. It was better that she leave now that she could see what an uncouth, cowardly bastard he truly could be. Except the minor detail of his heart being ripped directly out of his chest.

  Instead, he next heard her soft voice nearby his ear, and felt her breath on the arm that was covering his face.

  "It's not fair, is it," she said.

  He frowned, momentarily flummoxed. "To which of the many candidate parts of this . . . situation are you referring?" He lifted his arm, finally, to look at her, but was still startled by her proximity. She was kneeling on the bed next to him, her knees at the corner of his pillow, but looming above him so that as he looked up, he saw her face beyond the lovely, distracting swells of her breasts underneath her shirt. A red halo flared to life around her. His mouth went dry. Unconsciously, he found himself slipping a hand over her thigh to draw her closer. She leaned over to him so they were nearly nose to nose. And he choked when she suddenly threw her leg over his hips, straddled him, and brought herself down firmly on the blanket that covered him. His hands were on her thighs again, but she interlocked her fingers in his and pressed both of his hands up by his head. Hinging her hips on his.

  "OK. I can die now," he said, as her golden-tipped hair hung around their faces in a curtain. But she studied him with a seriousness that robbed him of his thoughts and words altogether.

  "I think I can help you," she said finally.

  He was distracted by her closeness. All that golden skin. Turning orange in his red-tinted vision, he noticed with some anxiety. The tint was flooding his eyes due to his lust. Desire. Whatever he wanted to call it. It was starting to surge. Uncontrollably. The thing that happened when he started ripping heads off other things. With a tinge of panic, he lurched, trying to roll away. But she clamped down on him with her legs. My, she was strong for such a soft, skinny little thing.

  "Wait," she said, then kissed him until he was docile. Pliant. Limp. For the most part.

  "Kissing is good for the panic," he said. "More of that." He groaned when she finally broke away and sat back. But she was serious again.

  "Ott, I'm a Mask," she said.

  "More panic," he said. "Lots of panic coming now. Heaps of it. Blizzards of it." But he remained as still as he could under her.

  She waved her hand between them as if to clear away what she'd just said. "I mean, I'm Mask-trained. But I'm not a Mask. How could I be when I love . . . when, I'm too emotional. Too sensitive of others. I'm not a Mask." She said the last part with certainty. He waited.

  She went on, "Yes, I'm here as part of the delegation. I'm here on a task. But it's my first task. Kind of a trial one. But I don't know what I'm doing. I don't belong here. Well, I know I belong here. " she said, laying a hand on the concave muscles and skin above his navel. "But I don't know what I'm doing here." She waved a hand somewhere over her shoulder. The gesture made the lovely parts of her body move in such a way that nearly prevented him from hearing what she was saying. But dumb as he was, he had heard enough and was stunned.

  She'd just as well said she loved him. Well, just as good as said it although
she’d stuttered and interrupted herself. He could say it back to her, take the upper hand, and be the one to say it first. Except everything was red again. Red like battle fury, apparently also brought on by lust. He couldn't win. It was either all red or else it was black death and despair when the red was gone.

  So instead, he said, "What's not fair?"

  She locked eyes with him, suddenly all seriousness again. "It's not fair that I was able to heal myself. And you are still wounded."

  He lay back, letting her meaning sink in. She was whole. Perfect. Straddling him, a veritable goddess hovering above him, he silently apologized to Lutra again for his blasphemy in comparing the two. It was just that one was so unapologetically immediate. Nearby. In hand, so to speak, he thought as his hand involuntarily wandered over her hip. But no matter how she made him feel, she hadn't been able to make him whole just by letting him be with her. No one could do that. Except maybe the goddess Lutra herself, but her domain was his good luck. Charisma. Lutra gave him sociability and ease. Family and community. She didn't repair souls when they had holes in them like his, though he could pray and wish and hope all he wanted. Lutra might repair the pots in his sister's kitchen for all that he prayed. But no, that was blasphemy, and he wouldn’t risk that again.

  And Mel, though she was here now, Mel knew he was broken inside, in his mind. She would probably leave him because of it. He would never be good enough for her.

  He closed his eyes and let himself sink back into the abyss. "OK, I can die now," he said again, though this time without any will to continue. He let himself wallow in it, feel the dark fingers of the depressive sickness trickle into his mind and down into his belly. Losing her the first time had nearly killed his will to live, while exposure to the trogs had brought the battle fury out of him. He was someone else now, not the same lucky bastard as he'd been before this whole mess had started. He was adrift and alone, out of his body, no longer able to feel his own skin, never mind the weight of Mel's body on his hips, wherever their bodies were. Somewhere in a bed together. In Rob's quarters. In a big house in a frozen land.

  He floated away.

  Chapter 37

  Staring down at the unconscious Ott, Mel took advantage of the situation; she should have warned him first, but he might not have agreed to it or even understood it, had she been able to put it into words. She wasn't going to heal him—not in the conventional sense with poultices and herbs and prayer. He didn’t have a broken body, so much as an agamite infection that poisoned his spirit and his mind. She was going to take his pain, just as she had done for Liz, her dead friend from the Keep, in those precious final moments. At least, that was Mel’s intent, though she wasn't sure if she could do it again, now that it was even more important to her. Everything rested on this one task.

  It had been easy to get him to slip away. He was half-starved and exhausted. All he had needed was suggestion. No pushing involved. She had seen it in his face at first glance. His face. She leaned forward over him and watched him drift behind closed eyelids, his mouth slightly slack. Without the tension that had been webbing across his face, he looked like a boy. His whole countenance pleased her. He had a nice mouth. And she liked the shadow on his jawline, liked how it felt against her neck. Her skin had been rubbed raw again and again by his kisses before healing each time. He had fed her needs. Now, she would give some of that nourishment back to him.

  She took his hands in hers and thought for a minute. He was out there by himself, floating like a toy boat in a river tied to the bank by only a precariously thin string. She closed her eyes and reached out to him with her mind. She felt the river of his despair coursing around them. She pondered for a minute. With Liz, the connection had been fast and easy, without thought, without any imagery, maybe because poor feisty Liz had been at the end of her life, weak and dying, no barriers or resistance left to surpass. Maybe because death had no imagery. Or maybe because death was imagery in itself. And though he might feel like it, Ott was not close to death. Not by a long shot.

  More physical contact.

  Mel lifted herself up on her haunches and pulled the blankets away from them. Then she laid herself on Ott, from toes to forehead: her toes on his shins, her forehead buried in his neck. Who knew if it was the right thing to do, but it felt nice. She fought nervousness that bubbled up with the urge to giggle. Calm yourself, stupid.

  He breathed evenly, drifting somewhere far away. She threaded her fingers through his rumpled hair and clamped her elbows close to the sides of his face, scratching the sensitive insides of her arms with his beard stubble. And shut her eyes. And dove into him.

  The current threatened to drag her away. The force of it surprised her. Seen from afar, it had looked like an ordinary river, almost smooth on the surface. But now that she was in it, she could feel its strength. She treaded in place, thrashing her legs to keep her head above the surface. When she pushed her hands through it, the water was black and thin. She pulsed her legs with an extra stroke and attempted to breach.

  Where was he? There. She saw him, floating on his back. Placid. Adrift.

  She stroked her arms and legs cross-current and tried to get nearer to him. But she realized before long that it was futile. Her limbs grew heavy, exhausted.

  But what if she simply stopped trying to resist it?

  To answer her own question, she paused for courage, then ducked her head underwater and . . . took a breath. Water flowed into her like air. Because it was not water. It was pain. Pure, black pain. She opened her eyes under the surface, but saw nothing in the inky depths. She fought panic as she sank deeper and deeper.

  I can breathe. I can breathe. No panic. I am smooth, calm. Breathe in, breathe out.

  Her feet touched the bottom. She could still see nothing. She tried closing her eyes, but the weight of the water on her shut eyelids was worse than blinking repeatedly and seeing nothing.

  Wait, not nothing. She saw . . . something. With each breath out, she saw a little something. A light that came with each breath out of her mouth. She observed it. Thought about it. Then tested it. Breathe in blackness. Breathe out clean and bright light. She measured the vastness of the river around her. Then set her shoulders, dug her heels into the riverbed, and inhaled for all she was worth.

  And inhaled. And inhaled.

  The first exhale created a clear protective bubble around Mel. She saw the clean, dun-colored sand of the riverbed under her feet. She inhaled again, closing her eyes, and pushing beyond capacity. She ignored her physical limitations and pulled the black liquid into her emotional self, into her inside space, which, she found, didn't have the same constraints. She burst through the hull of the inner seed of herself and found . . . more space. Green fields that went on and on, crossing each other lengthwise and across and through and other ways she had no words for.

  And exhaled. For minutes. Hours? Days?

  She heard a rumble of male laughter. Ott's laughter swirled around her, just as the inky black fluid swirled around them as if someone had let the stopper out of the tub, and it was all swirling down the drain pipe. He floated by her, catching her arm. She locked her grasp onto him, hand on forearm, hers to his, and his to hers.

  Chapter 38

  When Ott opened his eyes, he felt as if he'd been away for a very long time. Yet, Mel still lay on top of him. And to his embarrassment, he found that he was holding her tightly, rocking his hips against hers while they slept. But were they asleep? He didn't know. He started to draw away from her, but she looked at him with what seemed to be a self-satisfied grin on her lovely, golden face. Gods above, it was like she carried the sunshine with her. She laughed. Her whole body spasmed with her mirth, sending him into an uncontrollable frenzy of lust and . . . joy. She shook her head and it looked like a sheen of glittery agamite-green dust left her hair and floated away in the morning sunlight.

  He lost himself in laughter. And took her with him.

  A little while later, still drowsy, he watched her leave the
bed in perfect complacency. He knew she would be right back, and she was, bearing the tray of food that he had not been able to eat earlier. She sat on the edge of the bed, balancing the tray next to her.

  "I'm going to feed you now," she said.

  He watched her through heavy-lidded eyes as she broke off a piece of bread and placed it in his mouth. He had a sense of something momentous occurring, some ritual of which he could barely grasp the gravity. No ritual that he had ever heard of among his own people. Maybe it was from hers. Maybe it was their own. The bread was heavy with grains and fresh baked that morning, he guessed. Flavor flooded his mouth. He found that he was hungry for the first time since . . . since when? Before the Keep. She waited until he swallowed the first bite. Then, bite by bite, fed him cheese, fruit, meat, more bread, and ale from the tray.

  "What are you doing to me?" he groaned, lying back, finally full.

  She paused, feeding herself then. "Was that a complaint?"

  "No, my love," he said softly, this time meaning it with every ounce of himself. My love. His Mel. He liked to watch her eat. He folded his arms behind his head, eyes firmly on her until he suddenly noticed that his arms felt different. Fuller, heavier, no longer wasted. He brought one up and examined it. Thick ropes of muscles wove around his arm, and no bones protruded from his elbow and wrist joints anymore. Then, the other. Yes, definitely, his arms were thicker. He pushed the blankets back from his belly earning a squeak from Mel as she caught the teetering tray of food that he'd knocked off balance. He smoothed a hand down his abdomen. No longer caved in. Smooth and thickly muscled. Healthy. No. More than healthy. Then, he noticed his feet pressing the foot board of the bed. Rob's extra-long, specially built, big bed. He whipped the blankets off and leaped to the floor. Mel pushed the tray aside and watched him with an amused quirk to her eyebrow. Ott wobbled, his sense of balance thrown off by his altered perspective. He was taller by a good three inches.