“Depends,” I challenged. “Do you want to walk out of here with all your bones intact?” I smiled sweetly, tossing a glance at Aries and Kes.
“Actually, yes.” He laughed, but pulled me closer. “You look amazing,” Xavier said so just I could hear. Or so he thought. “Your hair is different.”
“Yes, it is,” I said, stiffening, suddenly feeling insecure about the way I looked.
“It’s pretty,” he added quickly. He leaned in to whisper, “This is all weird. Sorry.”
“It is,” I agreed. I relaxed and kept swaying.
“Aries is terrifying,” he breathed. “And he will not stop watching you.”
I couldn’t explain the reasons why: what Kes had done for me, or that I had Aries’s blood in my skin and that his vow, his pledge, was making us both overemotional.
My blood wasn’t under Aries’s skin, but I was. Somehow, the pledge had burrowed into his flesh. His pink eyes watched us sway as he and Kes leaned back in their seats. Whatever had passed between them came and went as quickly as a storm that raced across the sky, pounded fat drops overhead, and skittered away before you had time to grab an umbrella, leaving nothing but gleaming, bright sunshine in its wake.
After storms like that, I always looked for rainbows. But there were only shadows here.
The musicians finished their song and discussed what they might play next. I took the opportunity to slip out of Xavier’s arms and walk back to the table.
Kes stood before I could sit back down. “Dance with me, sis?”
I nodded and smiled, finally feeling at ease. Aries wouldn’t hurt his own Guardian, especially one he favored as much as my brother. He trusted Kes. He trusted him enough to keep his body safe as he slept, and he trusted him just as much now that he’d woken.
I swayed with Kes as Aries leaned in to say something to Xavier. Xavier’s hands gripped the table edge. “What’s he saying to Xavier?”
“He’s asking about his intentions toward you. He shouldn’t have mentioned the hotel room situation.”
I cringed. “What is this – the last century? It’s none of his business, it’s mine. And Xavier has no intentions toward me. Especially not now.”
“Larken,” Kes said calmly.
“What?”
“Aries is protecting you.”
I groaned. “He’s butting into my non-existent love life. What did he say to you a few minutes ago? You looked like you were having an argument.”
“I’m afraid that was my doing,” he admitted, clasping my hand and rocking back and forth.
“What did you do?”
“I told him to put his tongue back in his mouth and that staring was impolite – especially when it came to my sister. And not for the first time, I reminded him that he pledged his protection and protection alone.”
A laugh bubbled out. “He probably wanted to tear your tongue out.”
“Oh, he did. Especially after I reminded him that brothers were bound to protect their sisters’ honor, even from the Zodia.”
“You threatened to kick his ass,” I asked, half smiling, half in awe. “Could you?”
“Not on your life. But I’d try, and I wouldn’t be subdued nearly as easily as a human.” He shrugged with a grin.
I shook my head. “You’re the best.”
I felt guilty for saying it, but it was true.
Pain washed across his face. “If I was the best, Mom and Dad would be safe, too.”
“You can only do what you’re allowed… but maybe we can find a way. I have a few questions for you sometime soon.”
His eyes flicked to Aries, who was watching us carefully as Xavier chattered about something.
“Soon,” Kes agreed. “But I’m not sure you’ll like the answers I likely have.”
The song ended and Xavier stood and came back to dance with me. Part of me was disappointed that Aries never asked to spin me around the room.
I wanted to talk to him, to watch how he moved, to feel how it was to move with him. I wanted him to curl a hand around my back and feel his claws atop the sequins. I wanted him...
But the feeling wasn’t mutual. He was content to let Xavier and me have our night. The gesture was nice, but the things I wanted before weren’t the things I wanted now.
I wondered what my life would have ended up like if they hadn’t woken up. Would I have graduated from college? Gotten married and settled down and had kids? Or would I have chosen to travel, stay single, and enjoy the world for a while?
I tried not to let the disappointment and hurt show. I tried to bury the emotions as earnestly as I’d been trying to bury my feelings for Aries. But I knew what a horrible job I’d done with the latter, since Kes kept warning me away from him.
Xavier and I danced for several more songs. Until the candles on the table burned to half-wick, until my feet began to ache in the kitten heels. I longed to unclasp them and kick them off.
Kes noticed my struggle and suggested that since it was getting late, Xavier might want to go home. His dwelling wasn’t especially close to the castle, and it would take him some time to walk home.
“Can’t you just take him?” I asked, forgetting how painful it was for Kes to make me disappear with him back home. He agreed, making me wince.
I watched as he placed a hand on Xavier’s shoulder. “Time to go,” he said to my prom date.
Xavier shot me a confused look but went with it. “Goodnight, Larken. I hope you enjoyed—” He disappeared, his garbled scream filling the room. The candle’s flames flickered in their wake.
Aries dismissed the Guardian musicians and nodded in their direction. “How do you recognize them apart from humans?” he asked, the slightest hint at curiosity lacing his deep tone.
“There is something about their eyes. They’re sharper, maybe. More aware, like they see more than most. They’re quiet; more perceptive and observant.”
One side of his mouth lifted in a half-smile. “You call them observant, but no one else has ever been able to distinguish them.”
“Well, being able to tell them apart from humans won’t save me from a Zodia who wants me dead,” I blurted before thinking.
The musicians tucked their instruments back into their cases. Grabbing the handles, they picked them up and hurried from the room, their eyes flicking toward us warily.
“You don’t believe I can protect you,” he accused.
“If it comes down to a fight against one or two of them, yes. I believe you can fight and win against any of them. But what if they all come? What if they strike when neither of us expect it?” Like Pisces did today, I wanted to add. But he already knew what I was thinking.
“I shouldn’t have left you unguarded, even for a second,” he lamented. “I failed you.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“I did!” he suddenly shouted. “If Aquarius hadn’t followed her, if he…” Aries pinched his lips and his words were as severed as my air supply had been when Pisces held me under the surface of the water.
“I hate that he made you pledge to me,” I breathed.
“Why?”
Aries looked genuinely hurt as he waited for my answer. It took a moment for me to garner words to explain what I meant without hurting him again. “You are responsible for an entire group of people, but this pledge distracts you from them. I’m just one person. I shouldn’t matter this much.”
As he visibly fought for control, I saw what Kes warned me about. Aries wasn’t human. I couldn’t expect him to behave like it.
He swept the candelabra off the table and all the light in the room winked out, followed by the sound of dishes, silverware, and glasses crashing to the floor, splintered shards racing across the polished stone. My eyes adjusted to the darkness, helped by the single sconce that flickered from the hallway, illuminating the doorway. I saw t
he silhouette of Aries pacing a few feet away. Back and forth. Back and forth. Back and…
I was just about to apologize for upsetting him, but then I thought better of it. How dare he throw a tantrum just because I said what I felt! Did he consider for a moment that it was the pledge making him feel so off balance – even now?
He prowled toward me lithely. Dangerously. I backed up until my legs bumped the table, until the back of one of the chairs cut into my bruised side, making me wince.
He slid closer.
Closer still, until his tunic brushed the sequins on my dress.
Then he tenderly took the end of a strand of my hair, rubbing it between his thumb and forefinger.
“How is it possible,” he asked quietly, so softly it made my chest ache, “that you grow in beauty with each passing second? Or that my need for you doubles with every breath?”
I swallowed thickly.
“I tried to push you away tonight,” he admitted, his breath tickling the curve of my neck. “I tried to give you your prom, your boyfriend, the dinner you craved… I tried to push you toward Xavier. But you don’t want him, do you?”
“No.”
“Why?”
As my pulse raced, it seemed like he fed on the rush he caused. His pink eyes glowed in the darkness as he dragged them over my skin, over my shape, highlighted by my dress.
“Because he’s not enough,” I confided. No one was. Not since Aries awoke and became such a presence in my life. No one else could compare to him.
“And who do you want, Larken?” he asked, a smile teasing the corners of his lips as he leaned closer until his mouth hovered just over mine.
My lips brushed his when I finally answered, “You.”
I ran my nails through the hair at the nape of his neck, grabbing hold of it. A rumble came from his chest, vibrating through my skin, through my bones.
He let me bring him forward, closing the infinitesimal space between us. I pressed my lips to his and the taut band of tension between us snapped. He picked me up with no effort, slid me onto the table, and kissed me like he’d dreamed about it for a thousand years, like he might not be able to stop now that he started.
His lips trailed away from mine and blazed a path down my throat, where he nipped me and sent a rush of adrenaline coursing through my veins. My eyes popped open as the tip of his horn grazed my chest. A rumble came from his chest again, rushing over my skin.
“What are you doing?!” Kes suddenly screamed from behind Aries. “She’s my sister! I just finished telling you to keep your distance from her!”
Kes grabbed his shoulder and attempted to pull Aries backward, but the Zodia barely moved. Whirling around on Kes, a dangerous glint sparked in Aries’s eyes as he prowled toward my brother. I slid off the table, preparing to get between them. I’d done it once and had no problem doing it again.
“I kissed him, Kes.” If he wants to blame someone, it’ll have to be me.
He ticked his head to the side, his expression like that of someone placating a child. “You don’t know what you’re feeling; you’re so young. But you…” He glowered at Aries. “You promised to protect her. Not seduce her!”
Enough of this. “Kes, I am two and a half weeks away from being eighteen years old. If I want to kiss someone who also wants to kiss me, that’s my business, not yours!”
His eyes narrowed at me. “What did I warn you about?” That Aries wasn’t human. That I shouldn’t assume he’d behave the way one would, or the way I’d want him to. “You’re making a mistake.”
“Then let me!” I yelled, throwing my hands up. “It’s my mistake to make.”
“The consequences –”
“Also mine, Kes. I get it.”
He gritted his teeth and disappeared. As soon as he was gone, I leaned my head back and inhaled. The logical part of me – yes, contrary to popular belief, she existed – admitted Kes was probably right. He knew Aries better than anyone, and he loved me. He had always looked out for me.
However, I told her to shut her fat mouth, because I also knew Aries was someone Kes respected greatly for him to trust him enough to protect me. And if I wanted to kiss him, and he obviously wanted to kiss me, what was the harm?
There was none.
The kiss was toe-curling. Delicious. Exactly what I needed. Full of need and want and everything that haunted in between. It was a release after so much tension had lingered between me and Aries. Even if the pledge was the culprit behind our passion, who cared? The emotion behind it was there, regardless of the cause.
And it felt right. Kissing him felt like the first right thing that had happened since the world crumbled.
A kiss with Xavier would’ve been nice, but meaningless.
Kissing Aries meant something.
It made me feel alive, a little reckless but not to the point of being dangerous. It made me feel beautiful and wanted, like I had a measure of power when otherwise I felt completely vulnerable. It felt like choice, something that had been erased in an instant. It felt like freedom.
“You are upset,” Aries supplied, studying me in that intense way of his.
“I’m… I don’t know what I am.” I left the awkward tension between us to walk back to my room. Once there, I flopped onto my bed and stared up at the fake, golden stars. There was beauty in their imperfect strokes, exquisiteness in the flaws.
I’d studied them long enough to know them by heart, but it never seemed like enough. Like the sky itself, I never bored of looking up. When I was a kid, Dad would point to one of them on the ceiling after he read me a story and tell me to make a wish. He’d do the same from the balcony. It didn’t matter if the star was real, as long as the wish was, he’d say.
While Aries paced outside my door, I flung my arm over my eyes and wondered what I would wish for if I was sure the wish would come true. Would I wish for things to go back to how they were the morning the Zodia woke? Or would I wish for Mom to be free of Libra and Dad to be free of Taurus, free to come here and live, and for the world to stay as it was?
ARIES
No matter what I did, I couldn’t calm down. I spent hours quietly pacing outside the door to Larken’s room.
She was upset. Not over the kiss itself, but over the feelings it elicited. Kes’s anger didn’t help matters. Admittedly, I understood his position and his objections to the pair of us.
I’d thought the same thing to myself, over and over and over again. But no amount of logic or rational thinking could squash or even quell the feelings I had for her. She was the breath in my lungs and the blood in my veins. She was the whisper on the wind. She was the cool mountain air mixed with the sun’s warmth on my skin. All things beautiful and good in the world.
Kes appeared after Larken finally fell asleep, her breathing steady and calm. His eyes pleaded with me before he spoke. “Please, Aries. You cannot do this with her.”
“Why is it so bad that I have feelings for her?”
He looked at the wall as if he could see Larken asleep on the other side. “Think of how it will feel, Aries, if Taurus and the others succeed? Think of what that would do to you.”
I opened my mouth to assure him – again – that no harm would befall Larken. I would protect her. But he raised his hand and stopped me.
“Virgo did not think Lager would ever be harmed. She thought the very same thing that you are thinking. She believed that her strength, her love, and the pledge would keep him safe. She was wrong, Aries. And you might be, too. Just… for one second, please consider that something might happen that would compromise her safety.” He swallowed thickly. “I don’t want to imagine it either,” he rasped. “But if something happened to her, with the way you feel about her now, what would you want to do?”
“I would want to shred the world.”
“And if your feelings continue to develop and gro
w? If what you feel now deepens…”
I tilted my head. “You aren’t worried about me weakening?”
“Virgo weakened, because that is her way. She fell completely apart and allowed despair to claim her. You are not Virgo, Aries. I cannot imagine you acting as she did. She is all we have to compare to, but I know you. However, I fear that if something happened to Larken… nothing in the world would be safe from your wrath.”
His fears were not invalid.
I was not Virgo.
I may not react as she did. I had a temper that she certainly did not possess.
“Maybe it was not the broken pledge that weakened her,” Kes offered. “Maybe it was love.” The hallway went quiet. “And maybe love would turn you into a monster.”
I swallowed thickly. Perhaps he was right.
Perhaps, other than the Zodia, there were other things that should stay buried, like one’s feelings.
15
The next morning, I woke up grumpy. Still tired after having a crappy night’s sleep, I quickly dressed in leggings and a thick, mustard-yellow hoodie. I tugged on my sneakers and made a quick trip to the restroom, taming my hair and brushing my teeth as I tried to ignore the ridiculously hot, horned Zodia brooding outside.
I needed air. I needed space. Room to think – and my mind was clearest when I ran.
“Where are you going?” he asked as I stepped into the hall.
“For a run.”
His brow popped.
“I can’t stay cooped up in here all the time. I’ll go crazy.”
His dark brows furrowed. “This isn’t a prison, and we only guard you to keep you safe.”
“I need this,” I told him.
He nodded respectfully. “Would you allow Kes to accompany you?”
I was ninety-nine percent sure Kes was still pissed at me for kissing Aries, or pissed at Aries for kissing me. Or both. But he showed up when Aries called him. He took one look at me and told me he’d be right back, then reappeared tugging a pair of gloves on. Aries watched us walk out of the labyrinth that was his castle, jogging toward the mountains behind it.
Things That Should Stay Buried Page 15
