Sun

by J. C. Andrijeski

  When I didn’t answer, her jaw firmed.

  “I know you protected me from Revik,” she said. “I was there for that. I heard it.”

  She bit her lip, still looking at me.

  “Why, Al? Why didn’t you just let him kill me?”

  Looking away, I fought again to focus on the window, to block her out entirely––her light, her voice, everything I could hear and feel in both.

  In my peripheral vision, I saw her gesture towards my abdomen.

  I also saw her wipe her eyes, right before her voice grew thick.

  “I nearly killed you,” she said. “I nearly killed you, Al. I left you there, brain dead…”

  Her voice broke. There was a silence where all I could hear was her breathing.

  “Why?” she said. “Why didn’t you just kill me, Al?”

  Falling silent when I didn’t answer, she swallowed.

  “I would have killed you,” she said, lower. “Before ‘Dor started working with me, it was all I could think about. I wanted Lily back. I wanted to take her from you. I would have killed you in a heartbeat, Al. You and Revik both.”

  I kept my eyes fixed on the view port.

  My jaw hurt from clenching it.

  Revik’s mind rose.

  Hey, he sent. Baby, what’s going on? Are you okay?

  Pushing his light back somewhat from mine, I shook my head. I’m fine. Honestly, it’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.

  It doesn’t feel like nothing.

  Hearing a faint gasp from the other side of the cabin, I turned my head.

  I bit my tongue until it bled when I saw Cass crying. Arms folded under her breasts, she hunched into herself, tears running down her face. She wiped her eyes with the side of one hand, staring out her own view port on her side of the cabin. I felt pain coming off her, mixed with a self-loathing and grief so tangible, I couldn’t help but flinch.

  Somehow, my eyes got pulled to Feigran.

  Once again, he was grinning at me like a loon.

  Doing a double-take at the absurdity of his expression, I scowled at him.

  He grinned wider.

  “You love her,” he said, sing-song, his voice delighted. “Big warm fuzzy feelings. Pink hearts. Happy happy. Christmas trees and red and blue bicycles. Buddha stars. That’s why. That’s why. You love her. Big happy pink hearts…”

  I bit my lip until I really did taste blood.

  Looking away, I fought to close my heart. I folded my arms over my chest, trying to blank my mind, but the memories slid forward anyway.

  I remembered the pink hearts.

  It was not long after the first time she broke up with Jack. I’d done it to try and cheer her up, to make her laugh. She kept saying she’d never have love again after Jack.

  So I filled her locker, her room, and her car with a few hundred pink hearts. Glass hearts, paper hearts, hearts made out of papier mâché, hearts made out of ceramic and plastic and even a few I had my father carve for her out of wood.

  She laughed when she opened her locker and found all of them. She laughed harder when she saw what I’d done to her car. When she called me after she got home, she was crying though, after she saw what I’d snuck in and done to her room, skipping my first two periods of class.

  She told me she loved me, that she would be dead by now without me.

  Wiping tears angrily from my face, I got abruptly to my feet.

  I didn’t look at either of them, but walked straight through the cabin towards the bow, past the small kitchen and fridge to the door at the end of the common room. Reaching for the handle, I entered the boat’s only bedroom, which had been given to me and Revik.

  I shut the door behind me, and sat on the bed.

  Still wiping tears, I stared down at the blue bedspread.

  I remembered the Buddha star, too.

  The Buddha star was my mother’s doing.

  She’d been trying to make Cass feel more welcome, to feel like a part of our family. My mom didn’t know anything about Buddhism, but she loved Cass, and Cass was raised Buddhist. So my mom bought a little clay Buddha statue at a street market and glued it to the star we put on top of our Christmas tree.

  Cass cried when she saw that, too. I think she was maybe seven or eight years old.

  Back then, Buddhism was still important to her.

  I think she’d forgotten a few of the key tenets in the time since.

  Wiping my face again, I bit my lip, fighting to control my light.

  A part of me wanted to go back in there, to punch her in the face. A part of me wanted to go back and scream at her, but I had no idea what I even wanted to say.

  What good were words? What could words possibly do to help any of this?

  Hey. The voice was soft that time, tender. Hey, I’m coming down, okay?

  No. I wiped my face, shaking my head, even though he wouldn’t see it. It’s okay. Really. You’re busy. And I’m all right.

  I’m coming down, is all he said.

  26

  FOUNDATION

  I SNAPPED OUT, fighting to breathe.

  Like every night we’d been doing this, I couldn’t think past the pain in my light. I couldn’t think past how much my chest hurt, my whole body, even my skin.

  But it wasn’t just pain this time.

  It wasn’t only that.

  It wasn’t even that lost, confused feeling I remembered from other nights since we’d started this. I could feel so much of him. I could feel the Revik from now, the Revik I knew––and I felt the old version of him, a version I scarcely remembered, the one from Seattle and the Alaskan cruise and Seertown.

  I could feel the Revik I’d first slept with in that cabin in the Himalayas.

  That old one still had the ability to hurt me. In some ways, he was almost a stranger to me now, but I remembered how he made me feel. I remembered how much he’d confused me, how often I’d felt rejected by him, how often I’d felt shut out.

  I told myself the new version of Revik was the one who mattered.

  That first Revik I knew, he wasn’t even a whole person. He’d been a creation of Vash, of the Rooks, of Menlim, when they fractured his mind. The one I knew now was the real Revik, the one who mattered. He was the one who felt real to me. He felt like a whole person, so much larger, more three-dimensional than that other version I’d known.

  Even so, I remembered all of that hurt.

  I remembered how alone I’d felt during those weeks and months.

  Enough crossover existed between the two versions, I felt like I was suffocating in him. I saw where the lines overlapped, where they grew meaningless. I tried to see the truth of where he lived, where we lived together.

  I saw him that night when we first consummated, in that cabin.

  He was so open… so fucking open, even then.

  The vulnerability there cut my breath. Truthfully, it terrified me.

  A part of me was still lost there, paralyzed by how differently I saw everything now, how different it was seeing that night through his eyes.

  I’d thought I’d be able to handle these memories easier. We were looking at the part of our marriage I remembered, that we experienced together. We were in the part of things where there should be the fewest shocks, the least number of surprises.

  This should be the easy part.

  Yet somehow, I found myself more confused, more afraid, more lost in denial and avoidance than I had been by anything else he’d shown me.

  I was still lying there, fighting to pull my mind back together, when he raised himself up off his side of the bed. Even the way he moved affected me. I remembered how I saw it back then, how alien it looked to me when we were first together, how intrinsically sexual.

  I stared at him now, watching him as I’d seen him then.

  He moved silently, animal-like, his muscles gliding under tattooed skin.

  He crawled over me. No, not crawled––crawled wasn’t the right word for what he did. He poured himself over me
, moving his whole weight sensually, inserting his leg between both of mine and wrapping his light into mine. He coiled his aleimi into me until my chest and belly hurt––so badly I couldn’t breathe.

  He did it all so fast, all I could do was watch him, feeling my heart leap to my throat.

  I couldn’t cry out, or tell him to stop.

  “Do you want me to stop?” he murmured.

  Looking up at him, I fought to think, to even see him.

  I tried to remember where we were, who I was now.

  I could feel the boat moving under my back, moving swiftly over and through the waves towards the Italian shores. I knew Balidor and the others must be sailing through the night, bringing us the rest of the way down the coast to Atwar’s allies in southern Italy, south of where surveillance began around the Myther camp in Rome.

  It was so hard to think about any of that now, though.

  The stars shone through the view ports on each side, illuminating Revik’s face, his neck, his bare chest, his arms as he hung over me.

  The pain in my gut worsened, forcing my eyes closed.

  I wanted him. I wanted him so badly I couldn’t think straight, but the thought of having sex with him right then terrified me. It made me doubt everything about myself. I remembered wanting him back then, too. I remembered not knowing if he wanted me, or why he wanted me, even when it was clear he did.

  I remembered feeling like I was always pulling on him, pressuring him, trying to keep him with me. I remembered how much shame accompanied that, how much guilt.

  I’d known what I was doing was wrong.

  Even knowing that, I never seemed quite able to stop myself.

  He caressed the hair out of my eyes, coiling his light into me further, still moving with that sensual grace. He didn’t speak, not even in our minds, but I felt his light warming mine, trying to coax me back to him, trying to coax me to open, to relax.

  I couldn’t relax, though. I couldn’t.

  My mind still fought with what he’d shown me, with everything I’d felt on his side while we were in that cabin in the Himalayas.

  He didn’t start there, of course.

  He started in Seertown, with that first kiss after he got back from Cairo. He took me through him finding out what Maygar had done, his trip to Sikkim with Balidor. He let me see his thoughts and feelings through all of it, including when he went to find me at Tarsi’s cave, including the whole time we spent at that cabin afterwards.

  I’d always thought I’d been the one pushing him. I think some part of me believed I’d talked him into even wanting to be married to me.

  Thinking about that now, tears ran down my face.

  I fought to think past it, past the pain in my chest.

  I fought to let it in, to really see the truth of how my mind interpreted that first year of our marriage––all those months and years of believing he’d come into it reluctantly.

  Some part of me had forgotten all that, without really forgetting any of it.

  Those beliefs colored how I interpreted everything with me and Revik.

  They colored how I’d seen him on the ship, the whole time I thought he was dead, maybe even until New York, where I still fought to convince myself he’d changed, that we’d both changed, that his feelings had changed, that we could finally be together as equals.

  Those early beliefs formed the bedrock of our marriage in my mind, a kind of core assumption about where things stood between us, where they always would stand.

  I’d known he loved me.

  I’d known that.

  But I’d never really believed he loved me as much as I loved him.

  The pain in my chest worsened as he hung over me, caressing my face with soft fingers. He didn’t speak, but lay on me entirely now, resting his weight as he opened his light.

  “I want to see yours,” he said, pain in his voice. “Can I see yours, Allie?”

  That fire-like shard in my chest closed my throat.

  Gods. I couldn’t show him that.

  Even after what he’d shown me, terror filled me at the thought of showing him that.

  “Allie.” He rested his chest on me, kissing my cheek. His voice grew lulling, his light warm, coiling around me, pulling me into him. “Allie, gaos. Please. Please trust me.”

  I found myself clutching his hair, his arms, looking up at him.

  My light opened more.

  I felt the ask in that.

  Shame filled me at the thought. I felt the avoidance there, the wanting to change the subject. I couldn’t help wanting it anyway, wanting sex, wanting him––even knowing it went against everything we’d both said we were trying to do.

  It hit me that he wasn’t the only one who used sex to avoid thinking about unpleasant truths between us. I’d always thought that was something he did, a kind of sex-addict compulsion of his, to fix things by fucking––but I realized now, I was maybe more guilty of it than he was.

  His pain sharpened, closing his eyes.

  His jaw tightened, but he shook his head.

  “I’m not going to have sex with you, Allie,” he said. “Show me. Please show me. Or tell me why you don’t want to.”

  Feeling my pain worsen at his words, I bit my lip, fighting the impulse to try to convince him for real.

  He took my wrists when I reached for him, pinning me firmly to the mattress.

  Shaking his head a second time, he met my gaze, his crystal-like eyes glazed.

  “The sooner we finish, the sooner we can,” he said. “If you don’t want to show me that, can you tell me why?”

  Biting my lip, I thought about his words.

  I knew he was right. I knew he was doing this the right way, that I was doing it wrong. It hit me that I still believed that old narrative, even after seeing it exposed for what it was. I still believed it, still clung to it, in a sense, maybe just to avoid being hurt.

  At the same time, I didn’t want it confirmed.

  I desperately, desperately didn’t want it confirmed.

  Because of that, some part of me was still avoiding, afraid to find out something I already, deep in my heart, believed. That same part of me thought we would watch this together and I’d see everything I ever feared about the two of us. I’d see me loving him more, him wanting me less, me pushing him into this, me pushing him into our marriage.

  Some part of me couldn’t bear to have that confirmed.

  I wish I could say all of that was for ethical reasons… or even shame.

  It wasn’t, though. A lot of it was just me, protecting myself from knowing something I knew would break my heart, that had maybe been breaking my heart quietly ever since I’d met him.

  Thinking about that, I realized what a coward I was.

  I bit my lip and nodded, reluctant.

  When I looked up next, he was watching me, his crystal-like eyes completely still, animal-like in their stillness. He didn’t move, didn’t change expression enough for me to have any idea what he was thinking, but somehow, I knew that he’d heard me.

  Seeing the look there, I swallowed, nodding again.

  “Okay,” I said, resigned. “Okay, Revik. I’ll show you.”

  His expression didn’t change. Even so, I felt a heated plume of relief leave his light, strong enough that I avoided his gaze.

  Caressing my hair back from my face, he kissed my throat, working his way sensually up to my jaw. Still pulling on me with my light, still caressing me with warm fingers, with his lips and cheek and hands, he clutched my hair tighter.

  “Don’t be afraid, Allie,” he said.

  That time, I couldn’t answer.

  27

  GAME FACE

  I STEPPED OUT of the cabin, gazing west at the setting moon.

  It was early still. We had a few hours before we would reach the Italian shores west of Rome, where we’d finally return to land.

  A day and a half had gone by since we’d gotten on the boats.

  Like everyone, I’d spent the ac
tual daylight part of that day and a half in the cabin while we were docked at Sicily.

  Most of the seers came downstairs from the boat deck and ate voraciously, crammed around the table in the ship’s only cabin. They ate half our food stores, drank their weight in fresh water, then slept, taking up the majority of the cabin after they pulled out the fold-out bed and sprawled in a pile of limbs and torsos on the bench-like couches.

  Luckily, the table lowered, forming a makeshift bed frame that turned the two opposite benches into a single mattress that took up the width of the cabin.

  Revik slept, too.

  I slept with him for most of it, since we’d both been up the entire previous night.

  We got grief for that, too, over breakfast.

  Even Balidor grumbled about how we’d “flooded the construct with our damned sex pain and Barrier fucking for hours.” From what I could tell, half the seers on the boat were frustrated and annoyed with us, not to mention borderline resentful that we’d used our private cabin to torture the rest of them while they stayed up all night and worked.

  I couldn’t exactly blame them.

  About two hours before the sun set, everyone was roused back awake.

  Pulling themselves apart like a litter of puppies who’d crashed on the same pillow bed, they’d made another meal from the stores the Croatian seers brought and ate just as energetically as they had that morning. Even then, Atwar and his partner made a few cracks about how they never should have let me and Revik have the ship’s only real bed.

  Once the sun went down, we were underway again.

  I could have gone back to sleep, like Cass and Feigran, but I didn’t.

  Fighting to get my head back into the game, at least marginally back into strategic mode, I projected three-dimensional maps out on the bedspread, studying them against the security specs Dante sent us via the handhelds. I laid Atwar’s maps over Dante’s best guess as to the location of the Rome hotspot, trying to get a sense of where and how they matched up.