Hollow of Treason

by Lainy Lane

  The shaded figures drew her down a hill and into a cave. It was dark, brown, and damp with green moss draping over most of the entrance. Calandra ducked down into it and felt the cool, oxygen deprived air surround her. The obscurities loomed inside and encompassed her, leaving her feeling complete. Unbroken, as if nothing could stop her like she was suddenly capable of fulfilling her destiny. There was something in the cave she was supposed to find. She felt something drawing her to it. Deep inside the cave was an answer to everything she had been looking for. Curiosity overtook her, and she took several steps further into the cave, desire burning deep inside of her.

  "Calandra," a voice whispered from just outside of the cave.

  Calandra ignored it and continued to walk deeper into the cave instead.

  "Calandra," the whisper came again.

  Calandra stared outside of the cave, pondering which move she should make next.

  "Calandra," a new voice came, this time from inside the cave where she wanted to explore, so she walked toward it.

  "Calandra." The voice outside the cave was louder this time, and there was a demand in it.

  Calandra stopped in her tracks and looked back toward the entrance of the cave. That voice wasn't going to be ignored, Calandra sighed. She turned and walked back out of the cave. She looked around and tried to see through the blanket of darkness surrounding her, but saw no one around.

  "Calandra."

  She searched the darkness for someone, but could see nothing other than empty shadows. She suddenly felt completely alone and lost. She began walking back up the hill again, looking for her way back and coming up short. Nothing seemed right, and she realized she couldn’t remember why she had come to the woods in the first place. She felt empty as if she had no emotions all of a sudden, they had left her entirely. Fear loomed into her being, lacing into every fiber of her and making itself comfortable. Goosebumps rose on her skin as she resisted the urge to look around, afraid of what she might find if she did. The pit of her stomach felt as if it had been filled with lead as anxiety took over any rational thought in her mind.

  Calandra sat straight up in bed and stumbled around for anything to assure her she wasn’t really alone. That thought seemed to be the worst possibility.

  "Cal?" Jarreth was sitting on the edge of the bed, looking at her with concern. He placed an arm around her.

  In her disorientation, it took her a minute to understand why Jarreth was there, then the previous night began to fall into place as she left the space between her dream and reality. Even if she hadn’t invited him to stay, he would’ve either way. He was like some kind of personal guard dog or something. He didn’t trust her being unattended with Kailen still acting fully unpredictable. Calandra doubted Kailen would ever be any more stable than he was now, so it seemed a moot point.

  He brushed his fingers along the base of her neck, sending tiny electric currents running under her skin. Her breathing steadied out with his touch, and her emotions returned to her instantaneously. Her heart slowed to a more human pace.

  "It's ok, it was just a dream." He pulled her to him and carefully lay them both gently on the bed. He pulled her body close to his and placed his arm over her stomach. His breathing slowly picked up as he dozed back to sleep without another word. Normally his embrace was enough to ease her nerves, it barely touched them tonight.

  Calandra attempted to go back to sleep, but saw nothing but spiraling shadows every time she closed her eyes. If she ignored the shadows and forced her eyes to remain closed against their will, she began to hear two different voices whispering her name from various places. She spent the rest of the night relishing in the electric current humming through her from Jarreth's touch.

  5:45

  5:46

  5:47

  Calandra watched the red glow from the large, digital numbers on the alarm clock change at an achingly slow pace. Each tick of the time change seemed to further her discomfort.

  5:48

  5:49

  Each time they turned it seemed to take longer than the last as if they were secretly messing with her head. She shook her head, willing the time to move forward quicker.

  5:50

  Calandra knew it had to have been longer than a minute since it had last changed.

  5:51

  She closed her eyes, but the shadows returned. She turned her head and placed it in Jarreth's shoulder hoping to shut everything out completely. She pushed her body into his as much as she could, while he remained sleeping peacefully and blissfully unaware of her struggle. She found her mind begging the electric currents Jarreth normally sparked under her skin to chase the darkness away. She was left with just the empty wishes instead. Flashbacks of what had woken her came in waves, threatening to drown her sanity. She shuddered at the thought of the shadows and the sense of insecurity that had filled her in the dream.

  She decided to get up and walk around; hoping to shake the eerie feeling it had left her in. The air coming in from the windows was crisp and too much like the air in her dream to allow her thoughts to clear. She could hear the voices whisper her name and couldn’t shake the feeling that she should know who they belonged to, yet they both still seemed unfamiliar. The side of her head began to pound as the lack of sleep and confusion mixed together, leaving her feeling groggy and irritated. She wanted to scream, which would wake Jarreth. Part of her wanted that, the other part reasoned the audacity of the desire. She wasn’t sure she had enough sense to care given her state of exhaustion.

  Coffee. Coffee was the only possible solution to this problem. After all, the sun wasn’t even out yet, meaning coffee was the only practical answer. She brewed a pot, staring blankly at the sink as the aroma filled the small cabin. The voices wouldn’t leave her mind, and her head throbbed at each and every replay coursing through her mind. She finally poured a cup of coffee and sat on the couch, staring at the hutch in the living room as she sipped the warm liquid.

  "So what was that all about last night?" Jarreth asked. He had finally woken from his perfectly restful slumber and noisily dragged hiself downstairs, making dramatic noises akin to a teenage girl along the way. His eyes were wide as he began looking around for Calandra.

  "Just a bad dream I guess." Calandra shrugged it off, wanting nothing more than to forget the experience altogether. She found herself still thoroughly annoyed that Jarreth had been able to fall back to sleep without questioning her wellbeing further. She was sure it was an irrational emotion, but that didn’t help it to die down.

  "You seemed pretty shook up." Jarreth ran his hand along her cheek gently.

  "I just— I felt nothing."

  "What do you mean nothing?" His voice cracked.

  "My emotions disappeared during it, I was empty...void," she replied, shaking off the feeling as the mention of it made it attempt to return.

  Jarreth's eyes widened in disbelief, and then turned darker than their usual baby blue shade. "Anything else?"

  "Voices, there were two of them. I was in a cave, and there was a voice inside and outside, both of them were calling my name." The voices she mentioned sounded off in her head once more, and she fought to ignore them.

  "You didn't recognize them?" He looked surprised, and Calandra wondered why. Wasn’t it normal to not fully understand dreams upon waking? She felt more juvenile than ever as he stared at her. Her lack of ability to make sense of her dream seemed palpable in the tension sitting between them.

  Calandra shook her head. "I didn't see anyone either, it was just a voice."

  "Maybe you should think before you drink like you did last night before going to bed." Jarreth chuckled and ran a finger along her nose.

  Jarreth had the irritating habit of encouraging her to drink most nights and then try to flip the tables and shame her for it the next day. He, of course, never brought up the fact that he drank even more than she did, lacing his own drinks with his emotion concoction liquid. The magenta swirling liquid of emotions that fed his Faerie needs h
ad become a sore spot for their relationship. She chose, for arguments sake, to ignore it when he brought it out. His irritability levels had been through the roof of late and Calandra had enough on her mind to add pointless fights to the agenda.

  She rolled her eyes in irritation, but gave in and shrugged a forced agreement. "Maybe," Calandra agreed with him, but she knew that it couldn’t be that simple, nothing in her life was ever that simple anymore.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Heirloom

  "Just because you have the powers doesn't mean you need to use them." Jarreth's tone was serious, more so than she had heard it in a long while. Sarcasm laced his voice, and it sent irritation through Calandra in the process.

  "Just because you have hungers doesn't mean you need to feed them." Calandra matched his tone as she pretended to wash dishes in the sink. She swallowed the desire to throw an insult at him, the situation at hand was bad enough without her throwing embers into his fire.

  The tree house had become her home. Calandra hadn't meant for it to happen, but she couldn't seem to bear the thought of leaving it. Something felt like it was calling her there and the place brought her such a sense of peace that the idea of staying anywhere else literally scared her. In his overprotectiveness, it had also become Jarreth’s place of residence for the most part too. When he had first showed her the home that had once been her mother’s, he informed her he wanted her to have a place she could have to herself. She’d yet to have it to herself for more than an hour at a time. Jarreth seemed to be manstrating today leaving her wishing she could find the words to tell him to go back to his own house and stay there for a while.

  "That's entirely different, and you know it." Jarreth paced in the living area. He was liable to burn a hole in her beautiful rug if he kept up his back and forth walking.

  "Is it?" Calandra scoffed.

  "Calandra." His tone was a warning now, she was pushing her luck, and she knew it. Normally his tone would cause her to back of, today however she didn’t plan on stopping.

  "Just go!" She gave in finally.

  "And you'll, what? Run straight to Drake when I leave?"

  "Seriously Jarreth, that's where you want to go with this?" Calandra finally abandoned the act of doing anything useful with the dishes and walked over to him.

  She stood in front of him and blocked him from walking further. His eyes were crimson, and she knew she had pressed him to a place beyond what she ever had before. They flashed green for a split second before turning back to their normal, soft, opaque baby blue that still melted her heart, even in the heat of the moment. Jarreth stood almost a foot over her, with hair that framed his face in the front with longer layers in the back. Even for a Faerie, he was a beautiful man, and his eyes caused his beauty seem beyond heartbreaking. The tension that always seemed to build between them rose to an uncomfortable level. Their relationship had headed straight into difficulty since he had formed a protection barrier around her, leaving her with no privacy. It was an odd setup that made the romance she had expected to flourish feel forced and expected.

  "When was the last time I saw Drake?" she countered.

  "Beside the point." He pouted slightly and her last shred of crossness melted away against her will.

  Calandra reached out and seized his hand and breathed in the comfort from the icy hot shock that his touch always sent through her. She still couldn’t explain the vibrations that his touch sent through her, and she had decided a while back that she didn’t want to. The only thing she knew concerning it for certain, was that she didn’t want it to ever stop.

  "No, it is the point, Jarreth. Go do your stuff, I'll stay here." She softened her voice as much as she could, hoping the fight would finally end. They hadn’t fully fought before, and she was more disturbed by it than she expected. Something about seeing him so upset with her had her heart teetering on the edge of her comfort level.

  "And you'll behave?" He raised an eyebrow.

  "Of course." She smiled sweetly, resisting the urge to cross her fingers behind her back. He had an uncanny ability of making her feel like a child. Despite the fact that he was centuries old while she was barely eighteen, meaning she was practically a child comparatively, she hated when he treated her as if she was a misbehaved child in need of discipline.

  "Hmm." He smirked mischievously, his eyes still reserved.

  Calandra stood on her toes so she could meet his lips and pressed a firm kiss into him.

  "I'll be back in a few hours." He was still a little upset, but he also hadn't fed his emotions in a few days, so Calandra couldn’t really expect any less than for him to be on edge.

  Different types of Faeries had different needs; Jarreth's was emotions. Ever since the fallout in Faerie with the humans, which Calandra's father, Kailen, was responsible for, they had been forced to find new ways to satisfy their hungers. Jarreth relied on the bottled emotions he could get at The Athirst, the bar in town. Usually, he kept a bottle around the house as well, but he had emptied it a few days ago and hadn't trusted leaving Calandra alone with her powers for long enough to replenish his stash.

  Calandra was still learning about her new limited powers since coming to Faerie and being marked as the destined human to be able to balance the world back out. Jarreth refused to help her discover how to use her powers, so she had gone behind his back several times and attempted to figure it out on her own, which had caused her a bit of trouble. Since she was supposed to only be part Fae and part human, she technically wasn't supposed to be able to be as strong as she was and no one knew how she had managed to gain as many powers as she had. She could feel her powers surging through her, and the temptation to use them became practically unbearable from time to time, especially when Jarreth wasn't around to keep her in check.

  Once he was gone, Calandra decided she should find a way to distract herself from the desire to go outside and see what she could do. Drake crossed into her mind since the several times that she had really tested out her powers behind Jarreth's back had been with him. For a split second, she considered going to see him, but her conscience immediately reminded her just how bad of an idea that would be. As much as she tried to ignore it, she was also drawn to Drake, despite knowing she shouldn’t allow herself to be. Drake was the embodiment of sin and temptation, a mixture she knew would leave her burned in the end.

  Since deciding to stay at the tree house her mother had resided in during her short time in Faerie, Calandra had rearranged a few things and added her own touch to the downstairs. The rug in the living room was now a new floral and vine printed rug she had found at a shop in town. She was able to find a modern style leather sofa to replace the tiny blue one. Jarreth had added a few paintings he hadn’t put up in his own cabin yet to the living room and kitchen, which broke up the wood of the interior a bit. The only room she hadn't touched was the small bedroom upstairs. She had bought a new comforter set for the bed, but hadn’t been able to bring herself to put it on; it had been sitting on the floor next to the bed since she had bought it two weeks ago. Calandra stood next to the bed with the comforter in her hand and stared at the bed. It currently had a blue and purple quilt, and for some reason, the thought of removing it literally made her chest ache.

  Calandra resolved that replacing the quilt simply wasn't an option even if it was nowhere near something that fit in with her own taste. She walked to the end of the bed where the large, chestnut leather chest sat and opened it to put the comforter she had decided she would never use inside. The comforter dropped to the floor and she knelt down in front of the chest to further examine its contents. The chest was mostly empty, holding only a few small items. Calandra looked around the room as if she was doing something forbidden and in a way, she felt as if she was.

  Calandra pulled out a small leather bound diary, and as she did so, something caught her eye in the bottom of the chest, a flash of silver sparkled. She stared at the little book; it was old and tattered with a piece of twine tying it shut. She turne
d it over to inspect it and noticed the pages had yellowed. Calandra had never been much of a reader, but this particular book seemed to be calling to her. She felt as if her very essence depended on what lay within these pages. A thud from downstairs broke her from her trance.

  "Cal?" Jarreth called from the living room.

  What was he doing back already? It hadn't even been long enough for him to get out of the woods that surrounded the house, let alone get to town and back. She closed the chest as quietly as she could, ensuring he couldn’t hear that she had been looking through it.

  "Coming!" she called evenly, praying he would remain down there. She didn’t need him coming up to see what she was doing.

  She looked at the diary again trying to decide on a whim what to do with it. Something about it felt forbidden in a way. Her better instincts told her not to lie to Jarreth, especially right now. He had already been on edge so much lately with his lack of feeding, she knew how big of a risk pissing him off could be at the moment. Despite her better instincts, she also knew he would likely overreact and take it from her without allowing her to read it. Once she realized it was a lose-lose situation, she decided to keep it to herself, at least until after she read it. She tucked it into the backside of the waistband of her pants. Luckily the leather was flexible, and she was able to convince herself that it was completely hidden. She walked downstairs hoping she was able to manage a conversation without sounding guilty. She knew that looking into his beautiful opaque baby blues would be the real test, and she would most likely fail.

  "Jarreth?" She questioned, even though she saw him standing in the living room once she had climbed down the stairs.