“No.”
Triaten could see it took extreme effort, but she pushed herself upright.
“Just go back to sleep, Tri. I’ll be fine.” She turned from him to swing her feet off the bed.
Triaten wasn’t going to let her escape this time, and he grabbed her wrist before she could slip off the bed.
“Stop, Char. This has gone on long enough. You need to tell me. Whatever it is. You need to tell me. What are you afraid you’ll say in your sleep?”
She sat with her back to him, wrist captive in his hand. Her head went down, and Triaten could barely hear her words.
“Once. The last night. I slept with him, Tri.”
“What?” His hand left her wrist.
“I slept with him.” Her words were even softer, shoulders slumped in utter defeat.
“Did he rape you?” Triaten’s voice was deathly calm at her back.
She shook her head. She still would not face him.
Triaten flew out of bed, whipping on pants. “How could you do that, Char?” Each word escalated in anger. “How could you lose faith in me? You know I would never leave you.”
Charlotte finally turned to him, cheeks stained with desperate tears. “I was on my knees, Tri. I had just told you we were a lie—a lie—do you not know how it killed me to do that? And then Damen had video of you kissing Shiv.”
Triaten froze. “You saw that?”
“Yes.”
“Dammit.” Triaten kicked the leather club chair next to the bed. It went flying. “I should have known.”
He looked at her pleading face. “That was nothing, Char. One kiss. It was a set-up. On both of our parts. And it didn’t mean anything.”
“Didn’t it? I manifested the cruelty that made you leave, Tri—I truly believed it was the kindest thing I could do for what was going to happen to me. So you would be done with me. So you could live. And then I saw you and Shiv.” She caught a shuddered breath, eyes at the ceiling. “You disregarded me so quickly, Tri. It was only hours, and you moved on from me to her.”
“What you saw was a farce, Char. You never should have believed it—I would never do that to you.”
“But I saw it. What was I supposed to think? I was so low. And then he offered—he told me to just close my eyes, and imagine it was you in front of me. Imagine it was you touching me. I was drunk and it was hazy and it was the only way I couldn’t lose you. In my mind.”
Triaten pulled away from the bed, face curdled. “I don’t want to hear how he seduced you, Char.”
He stomped across the room to the door. Charlotte was quick to her feet and followed him.
“Tri, stop, please.” She grabbed his bare arm as he opened the door. “I’m not as strong as you, Tri—my mind has never been. Please don’t go. Please. Just let me explain.”
His movement quelled for only a moment, as he looked down at her in disgust. “You lost faith, Char. You lost faith in me. I can’t be around you. Not now.”
He walked out the door.
~~~
It was still dark when Triaten exited the new barn at the ranch that housed a complete training facility, including punching bags and dummies. Which was exactly what he needed to be doing for the past three hours. Beating up inanimate objects.
Drenched in sweat, he didn’t register the cold hitting his bare chest as he crunched shoeless across the snow back to the main house. Sudden headlights coming up the drive startled him, it was only five a.m., and he wasn’t expecting anyone to be arriving at the ranch. Moonlight glistened the white snow around him as he stopped and waited for the vehicle to close the distance to the house.
It was one of Triaten’s jeeps, which made him even more curious what was going on. The jeep parked and Stewart got out. Stewart liked his sleep, and was a grumpy mess without it, so it was peculiar that he was out in the middle of the night.
Triaten quickly stepped alongside him as he went to the house. “Stewart, what in the world are you doing up?”
Surprised, Stewart looked up at him. “Oh, hi, Triaten. Sorry I didn’t see you there.”
“What are you doing? It’s the middle of the night.”
“You don’t know?”
Foreboding settled on Triaten’s shoulders. He shook his head. “What should I know?”
“Charlotte. She woke me up and asked me to drive her down to her place. Said she was exhausted and didn’t trust herself to drive on the icy roads. She didn’t want to cause an accident and hurt anyone. I figured you were off, otherwise engaged, so I drove her down.”
They got to the kitchen door and went into the ranch house. Triaten flipped a switch, and Stewart shielded his eyes from the starkness of the light.
“Did she say anything else?” Triaten asked.
“No. She doesn’t let much out, that one. I tried to talk to her, but she was asleep by the time I closed my door on the jeep. She slept the whole way down—at least I thought she was sleeping, but the second I stopped in front of her house, she jumped out the door with a quick wave.”
Triaten nodded. “Thanks. Got it. Keys?”
Stewart handed them over. Triaten ran up the stairs to get shoes and a shirt, and was back out the door into the night within a minute.
Driving insane down the mountainside, Triaten pushed the four-wheel drive to its limits on the icy roads. He pulled up to Charlotte’s house on the other side of Brigton, only to find it completely dark. He knew Charlotte had rarely been back to the house since she moved up to the ranch with him. If Stewart hadn’t just said he had dropped her off here, Triaten wouldn’t have thought anyone was in there.
Chest thudding, he ran to the doorway. His hand slid along the topside of the door trim, searching for the key to the front lock. Nothing. He flipped up the mat on the stone entry, just in case it had been moved. Nothing.
Fist clenched, he started pounding on the thick wood door. Nothing. He took a step back to look in the window alongside the entry, and bellowed, “Char. Char. Are you in there? Char.”
Nothing.
The foreboding heavy on his shoulders quickly turned to panic. He pounded with both fists on her door, yelling her name. No lights. No sound from inside.
Panic gripped him fully then, and he took a step back. Without hesitation, he kicked in the door.
He stepped in, eyes searching the living room and what he could see in the dark kitchen. He noted it was only a few degrees warmer in the house. The heat had yet to be turned on.
“Tri, what the hell?”
Charlotte paused on the stairs, dagger in hand, heavy wool blanket wrapped around her shoulders. Even in the dark he could see her eyes were puffy and bleary-eyed.
“Char, thank god.”
She pulled the blanket tighter around her torso, but she didn’t move from her position half-way down the stairs. “What are you doing, Tri?”
He looked at her, shaking his head. “God Char, you’re making me act like a frickin’ lunatic. This—you scared me half to death. I’m pounding on the door and where the hell is the key?”
“I brought it in with me. And I was asleep, I didn’t hear anything until that wood exploded. But Tri, my door? Really? Did you need to kick it in?”
“You tried to kill yourself, Char, so yes, I’m kind of freaking out right now about your mental state.”
Silently, she stepped down the last half of the stairs and went to the door, still open wide, and swung it closed, shoving it against the splintered wood in the frame. She couldn’t get the door quite to fit, but wedged it just enough to remain almost closed. She set her dagger down on a side table and turned back to him.
Triaten’s panic had quickly veered into seething anger. Anger at himself. Anger at Charlotte. “Char, I found you in the Alps a millimeter from taking your own life. You were almost dead. How am I not supposed to be a lunatic when you’re missing? Other than sleeping with that bastard, you haven’t said a word about your time there. You haven’t told me anything that would let me help you. Anything that would help me under
stand why you wanted to kill yourself.”
He stepped closer to her, fists balled at his sides. “I don’t know where your mind is, Char, and it terrorizes me. I don’t know what the fuck you’re going to do to yourself.”
“I’m sorry.” Weary, she shook her head, voice soft. “I didn’t think you wanted me there. You left…”
“Yea, I left.” Triaten forced his voice down a notch. “I had to go hit something, Char. So I went down to the barn to hit something. That doesn’t mean I was leaving you.”
Triaten rubbed his forehead. “What is going to make this secure for you? What is going to make us secure to you? What do you need from me? Is the ranch not your home? Is it not our home?”
Charlotte drew a deep breath, and then walked past Triaten to sit down on the stairs. “I am just so tired, Tri.” Her words cracked and she pulled her knees up to her chest. “So tired and I’m so sorry. I’m sorry I left. I’m sorry for betraying you. I’m sorry I’m not what you want, what you expect of me.”
“Stop right there.” Triaten went in front of her and knelt on the stairs. His hands went onto her knees. “You are always what I want. No exceptions.”
She tilted to the side, leaning her head on the wall for support. “But I’m weak, Tri. And I hate admitting it. I’ve tried for a hundred years not to. But I’m weak. I’m not like you or Aiden. My whole damn life I’ve been trying to keep up with you two, but I’m not like you. I’m not strong in the ways you are. And I slip. I slip and I hide it so you never know. Because I don’t want you to see me weak.”
Tears started to brim in her eyes. “But I do slip. I slipped at the castle. I wanted you so badly that I convinced myself it was you, and I slept with Damen. And then I was horrified at what I had done. I was alone. You were gone, moved on. I was utterly alone, and I convinced myself it was better for me to die than to be a conduit for something evil, something uncontrollable like Skye. I thought I was doing what was right, even if it was the coward’s way out. I wasn’t strong enough to see past that moment. I wasn’t strong like you need me to be, Tri. Like you expect me to be.”
She heaved a big breath, trying to control the quaking in her voice. “And now…it’s an impossible thing…horrible…to know that about myself. What I was willing to do. Take my own life. Unforgivable.”
Triaten stared at her, stunned. He had no words to make this better. To take away all the absurd pressure Charlotte had heaved upon her own shoulders. For years, apparently. What had he done to her spirit? How had he not seen what she was doing to herself? How had he not stopped her from strangling her own soul?
There, on the stairs, in the cold dark, clarity hit him. It wasn’t him she doubted, wasn’t believing in. It was herself. She didn’t think she was worth coming back for.
And that was his own damn failing.
She lifted her head from the wall, in control again of the tears that were about to fall. “Please, don’t look at me with pity, Tri. You wanted to know. There you go. I’m a head case. I always have been. It’s just that I usually hide it better than right now. And I don’t say these things to gloss over what I did, I own it. And I own the consequences. I own it if you want nothing more to do with me. I should have known you wouldn’t desert me. I should have held on. As long as it took. I should have believed in you. I didn’t. And it was the worst mistake of my life.” She sighed. “I just needed you to know why.”
Triaten’s hands tightened on her knees. “It was an impossible situation you were in, Char. And I refuse to play judge and jury on impossibilities. Do I wish it had never happened? Hell, yea. Do I honestly love you too much to judge you? Hell, yea.”
The smallest glimmer of hope sparked to life in Charlotte’s deadened eyes.
Triaten’s hands went behind her neck and he leaned in to her face. “From here on out, Char. Promise me. No matter what. You don’t run from our home. You don’t run from me.”
Slowly, with a promise that her soul would keep for thousands of years, she nodded. “I will never lose faith again.”
{ Chapter 18 }
Aiden’s hand firmly grasped Skye’s as they slipped into the back of Hotel Auric. The shroud of darkness would keep them unseen, and they could slip back out of town if that became necessary. Skye’s steps slowed, but she was relenting. She knew just as well as Aiden did, that the first test to coming back to life on the mountain would be Helen.
Aiden had convinced her that Charlotte could forgive anything. And Skye believed that of her friend, as much as it curdled her stomach to think of what she had done to Charlotte. Aiden also knew that Triaten would be suspicious, but he was also convinced he could strong-arm Triaten into embracing Skye back into the fold.
Helen was the one Aiden was most worried about. With her knowledge of Skye’s time on the dark side, what Skye had been capable of, Helen had the power to squash any hope of the two of them returning to the mountain. Returning to home. And that was what Skye so desperately wanted. So desperately needed. Home.
After leaving Leander’s mountain, they had spent another month of slowly putting Skye into society—far away from the watch of the elders. Initially wary and watching her every movement, Aiden had come to accept that Skye’s sheer will could control her body, control her urges. But Skye hadn’t surprised herself at all. Once she had made the decision on the mountain that she was done. She was. She still thought about it daily, hourly sometimes, that singular feeling of ecstasy that only violence could get her. But that didn’t mean it had a hold on her any longer. She finally had a hold on it.
Skye knew there were a few sketchy moments when Aiden feared she was going to slide, but she held onto control. She proved it time and again. And now all she wanted was to go home.
Although reluctant for her safety, Aiden wholeheartedly wanted the very same thing. They both wanted the ease of their home. The laughter. The fun. Skye wanted to be back to where she was the most natural. The happiest.
But first, Helen.
Aiden led Skye up three flights of stairs at the back of the hotel, two floors above the main parlor. They stepped from the stairwell into the main hallway, and Aiden went to one of only two doors on this floor.
He looked back over his shoulder at Skye. She was petrified, but gave him a small smile. She wanted this so badly.
“This is Helen’s suite. Are you ready?”
“Yes—but Aiden, if this doesn’t work…” Her voice trailed.
Aiden squeezed her hand. “If it doesn’t, we will find a new home. It doesn’t matter where we are, as long as we are together.”
Reassured and relief palpable, she closed her eyes and leaned forward, kissing his upper arm. She looked at him. “I’m ready.”
He knocked on the white enameled wood door.
Almost immediately, it opened.
“You are on time.” Helen stepped back to allow them in. She was in a white button-down shirt and white pants. “Surprising for you, Aiden, but telling. We will meet in here.”
Helen wrinkled her hawk nose. “You two stink.”
“We’ve been hiking and travelling for days, Helen,” Aiden said, “and you were more important than showering.”
“Well, at least you have that priority right,” Helen said, her face still crinkled at the smell.
Skye looked around the wide room they entered. It was a living room, for all intent, although Skye wondered what sort of living happened in there. Everything in the room was white. White couch, white side chairs, white rug on top of white carpeting, white pillows on the seating, white walls, white ottoman, white drapes, and white ceiling. Only the ceiling light fixtures lacked white. They were crystal chandeliers, cut with the clearest glass.
Helen had her arms crossed, and stared at Skye, her beady eyes crinkled at the corners. “Yes, it is white. Get past it. It is a comfort to my mind. And please remove your shoes.”
Skye looked down. Aiden had already slipped his off, and they sat neatly on the white marble tile by the door. Skye followed
suit.
Helen waited until Aiden and Skye sat down on the couch, before she moved to sit across from them in a side chair.
She picked a spec from her white pants, then looked at them. “I kept what I witnessed secret. Now prove to me it wasn’t idiotic on my part.”
Skye glanced at Aiden, then looked at Helen. “What do you need from me?”
“Aiden has already told me you have been with Leander. I commend you two for finding him in the first place. I had long since given him up to be un-findable.”
“He was a great help to me.” Skye clasped her hands into her lap, trying to hide her nervousness. “I believe I can now control this new development in my body.”
“Do you?” Helen looked down her bird nose at Skye. “I will be the judge of that.”
“How?”
Helen stood. “I am going to go deep into your brain, and you are going to let me in there.”
Fear tightened Skye’s chest, and her hand slid over to grab Aiden’s. He squeezed it.
She looked at Helen. “You can go anywhere you need to in my mind. I have nothing to hide from you.”
“Good answer.” Helen walked around the couch until she was directly behind Skye. “No. Before I begin, let Aiden go. I can’t have his energy flowing into you.”
Skye slipped her hand back into her lap.
“Relax.” Helen said, behind her.
Skye attempted to relax her muscles, but it was of no use. Especially with Helen breathing down her neck. “You realize there’s no way I can relax, don’t you?”
“Fine. Then lean your head back and close your eyes.”
Skye did so. She felt Helen settle her hands along her forehead, palms on her temples.
Skye took a deep breath, and then lost everything in her mind. The white room was nothing compared to the blinding whiteness that suddenly consumed every part of her head. Her mind was no longer her own. It went on and on, waves of whiteness flashing through and around her consciousness.
And then, just as suddenly, Helen’s hands left her head, and Skye opened her eyes, disconcerted, gasping, both hands pawing for Aiden next to her.
Flux Flame (A Flame Moon Novel Page 18
