by Hanna Peach
“For a few minutes, yes. It was a long time ago.”
“Wait, did you say you got them? You have more than one?”
“I have scars on my side, stomach and chest.”
Her eyes widened. “Can I see them? Please?”
“You really want to?”
She nodded.
“Only if you tell me about your tattoos first.”
She hesitated. The Elders don’t rule you anymore. Alyx bit her lip. Something still held her back.
Israel stared at her. “What are you afraid of?”
“I’m afraid...that you’ll think it’s weird.”
“When have I ever said that anything about you was weird?”
Alyx paused. She thought about everything she had told him over the last few weeks, everything she had admitted to. He was right. He had never, not once, looked at her with disdain or judgment.
“Some of the Seraphim, the more pure-blooded, have gifts, different types of gifts. We call the gifted the Castus. As the bloodline becomes more diluted the magic dies out. Anyone born without powers is destined as a warrior.”
“Hang on a second. You’re telling me the gifted Seraphim don’t fight?”
“No. They barely leave our cities.”
“That’s stupid. It seems to me that the gifted ones should be the ones fighting.”
Alyx had never thought about it like that. The division between Castus and warrior had always been something that she had just accepted, had been taught to accept.
“I interrupted you,” Israel said. “Go on.”
“The blood of the Castus is drawn and distilled to become bloodink. Lightwarriors attain a mark when we prove that we can control a particular bloodink magic. When we tattoo bloodink onto our skin, we can draw upon that magic until it runs out.”
He stared at her arm. “So those marks aren’t filled with bloodink?”
Alyx shook her head. “Before I fled I took some bloodink in secret and hid those tattoos.” She lifted her shirt up her side to reveal her hidden bloodink tattoos.
Israel leaned closer, reached out to her. Alyx held her breath as he ran his thumb over her side, over the partial AirWhisperer and WaterBearer, then finally over the full DreamWalker tattoo. Her skin ignited under his fingers, the fire spreading across her body.
“What does this one do?” He sounded curious and not the least bit afraid.
Alyx let her breath out as he drew his hand back. She explained what each bloodink allowed her to do. Israel listened intently. Encouraged by his interest, she told him about how to control the different magics, what they felt like to use, how they felt drawing through her body, how they smelled, what they tasted like. Finally she finished speaking.
Israel shook his head, a smile on his face. “Man, I wish I could try it.”
Alyx smiled. “Me too.”
“What would happen if I used bloodink?”
Alyx frowned. “I don’t know. I don’t know if mortals can use bloodink.”
Israel took the hem of his shirt in his fingers. “I suppose it’s my turn?” He pulled the shirt over his head and down in front of him as if to shield himself. He seemed almost shy. Slowly Israel drew aside his shirt and turned his chest towards her. Her breath shook as it passed through her lips.
His skin was golden, like dark honey across a smooth neck, wide chest and flat stomach, decorated by three scars shaped like pale diamonds. One across his ribs, one high across his stomach and one across his heart.
Alyx leaned in, chewing her lip as she ran her eyes over each scar. “What happened to you?”
“I was stabbed. I was younger, maybe eight. It was just my aunt and me living in Port Safaga in Egypt. It was a robbery gone bad. I woke up to hear my aunt screaming, trying to fight off two men by herself just outside my door. They were hurting her. I threw myself at them. I don’t even remember doing it.” Israel fingered the scar on his chest. “One of them stabbed me while the other held her. I can still remember her screaming. I fell and split my lip open against my teeth. Then they left. I died for a few minutes but my aunt performed CPR on me, brought me back to life. She saved me.”
“You were lucky.”
“Luckier than you think. I have what’s called dextrocardia situs inversus. It means that my heart, rather than being on the left side, is on the right in a mirror image. He just missed my heart.”
He moved his fingers from the scar across to the right side of his chest. “It’s the only reason I’m even alive today. Ironic, isn’t it? That a defect saved my life.”
“It’s not a defect then, is it?”
Israel looked at her but he didn’t smile.
Alyx frowned as something occurred to her. “Israel, tell me again, when exactly did you start seeing their demon faces?”
Israel paused. “I’m not sure. I was young.”
“Could it have been soon after this robbery?”
“You think these things are related?”
“When mortals die they’re supposed to cross over to the celestial plain. This is the same plain as the demons exist in. I remember one of the Elders saying that the Seraphim can see the Darkened’s true face because there is a part of us that exists on the celestial plain. What if your death, even for a few minutes, caused a part of you to stay connected to the celestial plain−”
“−which is why I can see their demon faces,” Israel finished for her. “It’s a good theory.”
Alyx didn’t realize it but she was worrying her bottom lip with her teeth.
“You look like you want to say something.”
“What do they feel like, your scars?”
“You want to touch them?”
“Oh. I didn’t mean that, I just−”
“Go on.”
Alyx hesitated. Was this a good idea?
Israel scooted closer to her until the sides of their legs were touching. “I want you to.”
Alyx nodded. She lifted her hand towards his face until her fingers were close, so close she could feel his breath against them, rushing through her fingers in bursts.
He glanced down at her fingers. They were shaking. Embarrassed, Alyx started to snatch her hand away, but he caught her fingers before she could. He guided her palm to his face and pressed it to his cheek. His eyes stayed on hers as his fingers drifted down to her wrist and along her forearm, leaving burning sensations along her skin, ferocious and sharp as ice, causing her to draw in too much breath all at once.
His fingers were trembling against her. Whatever this was that she was feeling, he was feeling it too. Her shyness began to fade. Alyx drew soft lines down his cheek with her fingertips, savoring the feel of his skin, soft and warm and smooth. She ran her fingers across his lips and finally, finally across his scar. It was rough and fibrous where the skin had stitched itself back together.
Israel’s eyelashes fluttered closed. Fueled by confidence now that she wasn’t being watched, Alyx moved her face forward to look closer at the scar at her fingertips. He opened his eyes, perhaps startled by her sudden movement. Their faces were so close now. So close.
He moved towards her, then paused, his eyes expectant. Your move, they seemed to say.
This was too close. She couldn’t. She shouldn’t. Alyx started to pull away. But her heart beat violently and a rush of anger spread across her. No. She got to choose now. Choose. She chose…
I choose this. I choose him.
Alyx traced her fingers across his top lip and pressed her mouth to it, soft like the first drops of spring rain, her thumb trapped between the corners of their mouths. A rush filled her head. He gasped. Or did she? She wasn’t sure.
She pulled back to look at him. The way he was looking at her was...like he was seeing the stars for the first time.
“Alyx...”
She kissed him again, cutting him off, her mouth moving out of instinct. The world around them dissolved like sandcastles until there were just his lips and his hands.
The sun rose over them
.
Alyx caught the glint of setting sun in her eyes and wondered how a day could just disappear like this. Time never seemed to follow any rules when she was around Israel.
“We should go back,” her voice was husky, foreign. She had never known her voice to sound like this.
Israel gazed at her for a moment, saying nothing. Then he nodded.
Back in the theater, Israel led Alyx to their room in the balcony box. Her head was spinning with want, with need. And terror. She could barely think about where she was going.
He seemed to feel her hesitance. He paused, turned, and cupped her face in his hands. Alyx let go and he held the weight of her head up. He kissed her, deep, needing, and she felt that uncontrolled tumbling again, of being filled up, of being consumed.
He pulled back, leaned his forehead down against hers. “We don’t have to, you know,” he said, his voice cracking.
Alyx felt her throat closing. “You don’t want to?”
“No. It’s not that. I want to.” He made a noise like a pained growl, deep in his throat. “Believe me, I want to. But I’m just saying that if we just lie here and hold each other, I would love that too.”
“You have before?”
“Yes. You?”
Alyx shook her head.
“Then you need to be sure.”
Alyx was still for a moment, trying to hear the music of her heart. From within the depths of her soul she heard:
It’s you.
I belong with you.
Alyx traced his collarbones with her fingers. “I am sure. I want you. And I want you to have me. All of me.”
Israel nodded. He kissed her again before pulling away. He slipped his fingers under her shirt, finding her skin. She lifted up her arms. He drew her shirt up off her, his hands dragging along her sides.
Alyx couldn’t meet his gaze. It was too much. She lowered her eyes as Israel dropped her shirt. She could feel him staring at her. She moved to cross her arms over herself but he caught her hands.
“You have no reason to hide,” he said. He leaned down to kiss her bare shoulder, then ran his lips along her neck up to her ear. “You are so...painfully beautiful.”
He pulled her hands to his chest, then dragged her palms down his stomach. He let her touch him, exploring his body, until he couldn’t stand it anymore.
His lips covered hers. This time he was rough with her. His hands gripped at her hair, holding her to him. Her fingertips sought out every knotted scar. He pulled his lips away from hers. “My dark angel.” His fingers escaped from her hair and ran down her back, hands resting at the base of her spine for a moment. Then he grabbed her, lifting her up and pulling her legs around him. Soon there was no space left between them. Only the exquisite agony of skin on skin.
Later she lay naked against his chest, his arm holding her to him, the rest of her body fitting against him. She felt an overwhelming release. A peace. A completeness she had never felt before.
His fingers traced her shoulder. His voice was so quiet she barely heard him. “Why do you fit so perfectly here?”
When I was made I was carved out from the space between your arms.
Instead she said, “I don’t know.”
Chapter 28
“Hello, Alyxandria,” came a familiar voice.
Alyx woke like she had been punched back into her body. She was lying on dirt, under a dirt ceiling, between brick walls that boxed her in. She leaped to her feet.
The walls stretched out on both sides of her, nothing but walls and dirt. The mortar that held each rough stone brick together was covered in moss. In some places the moss had taken siege across the brick as well. Dark green ferns, so dark they were almost black, grew out from cracks, reaching for her. Where was she?
“I’m so glad I finally found you,” the gravelly voice echoed around her.
That voice. The fear that shot through Alyx made her feel sick. “Michael.”
“That’s Elder Michael to you.”
Alyx spun again and again but she couldn’t see him anywhere. “What do you want?”
His voice became sickly sweet like poisoned nectar. It sent a shiver down Alyx’s spine. “Come home, Alyxandria. We know it’s all just a big misunderstanding. You won’t be punished. Everyone just misses you.”
“You’re lying.”
“I spoke to Symon. He told me you didn’t take the Amulet piece. I believe him. Just come home.”
“I know better than to trust you.”
“Don’t be silly, Alyxandria, I am here to protect you, guide you−”
“Like you protected my parents?”
There was a pause. “Even a healthy tree sometimes has diseased branches. They must be removed quickly so they don’t infect the rest of the tree.”
“Are you calling my parents a disease?”
“Your parents,” disgust was starting to trickle back into his voice, “disobeyed the Elders, your Elders.” There was another pause while he seemed to compose himself. “I had hoped, my dear, you would not prove to take after them. It’s not too late to return and atone for your sins.”
“I thought you said you believed I didn’t take your stupid Amulet?”
There was a silence.
“Come home.”
“Never.”
“Where are you, Alyxandria?” he sang out. “Where are resting your little head? Where are you sleeping? Where, my dear, where?”
Her mind turned to the theater that she now called home. The blank walls started to shift. Her thoughts were leaking out from her and Michael was using them to redraw the DreamScape. “No,” choked from her mouth.
Alyx tried not to think of Israel lying naked next to her in the theater. But he took over her mind. His lips on her skin. His hips against hers. His voice in her ear. The harder she tried, the more the thoughts of him crowded her. The walls around her kept changing.
She needed to get out of here. She tried to fly but the air seemed so heavy she could barely lift off the ground. So she ran.
Laughter rang off the wall. “You can run, my pretty. But eventually you will get tired. Then I will find you.”
The gray walls of this twisted maze shifted and changed around her. Walls appeared in front of her where there were none before. She slammed into them, cutting her hands open on the rough bricks. She had to bite her lip to stop from crying out.
She kept running.
The change spread out from where her feet landed. It traveled along the ground and up the walls like a rabid vine, the gray brick changing into the faded insides of the abandoned theater.
She ran faster.
Soon her legs burned and her lungs were heaving. Alyx turned left and right but kept coming up against more walls. Her heart started to sink as she realized the truth. There was no end to this maze.
“You seem tired, my pretty. Are you finally slowing down?” His laughter echoed off the walls as they continued to shift and close around her.
“Help me!” Alyx screamed to no one.
The earth started to shake under her feet. The path started to break apart, shards of dirt and rock stabbing up out of the ground. She stumbled to the ground.
“Alyx.”
She clambered back to her feet. Her heart was pounding, urging her along even as her legs screamed for her to stop. She dodged falling bricks. Jumped over cracks in the earth. A large piece of wall tilted over in front of her. She screamed and tried to move out of its way.
It was too late. She fell under the weight of the thick wall. She was pinned to the ground, grit pressing into the backs of her arms and legs. She tried to push the wall off her, desperate, frantic, trying to slip out from under it. It was too heavy.
Again the voice called her name. Again, again. The ground under her trembled as it changed into faded red carpet. Around her the bricks turned to crumbling white plaster and exploded into dust as it hit the ground.
She needed to warn Israel. She couldn’t give him away. But now it seemed that even he
was appearing before her. Soon she would give everything away.
The world fell apart around her.
Chapter 29
“Alyx.”
Her eyes blinked open. Israel’s face was close to hers. They were in their small room overlooking the theater. She could see his worried eyes and the pinch of his scar as he held his lips in a rigid press. Although his hands stopped shaking her shoulders he didn’t loosen his grip. A huge breath of relief exhaled through his lips. “I couldn’t wake you. I was shaking and calling you for ages.”
Alyx tried to speak, but a small cry escaped from her instead. She threw her arms around him and buried her face in his neck.
He wrapped her up in his arms. “It’s okay. It’s over now. You’re okay.”
She let him hold her, let him rub his hand along her bare back. She stopped shaking and her breath slowed.
Israel pulled back from her and brushed the wayward strands of hair off her cheek. “It was just a nightmare. But you’re okay now.”
Alyx shuddered as she recalled it. “It wasn’t just a nightmare. Elder Michael trapped me in a DreamScape.”
“What’s that?”
“We go to the DreamPlain when we sleep, even mortals, even demons. When we dream we create a DreamScape around us. Elder Michael is a DreamWalker. He can enter the plain at will, can create and manipulate the Scapes. Think of the DreamPlain like space, and everyone’s subconscious is like the stars. There are so many stars that it’s usually difficult to find someone.”
“So how did he find you?”
“If the DreamWalker knows you and can recognize your energy, it’s easier. If they hold something of yours it’s also easier. When I fled Michaelea I left behind a whole pod of things: clothes, weapons, books. Michael could be using any number of them.”
Israel tucked a lock of her hair behind her ear. “It’s over. You’re okay now.”
“No.” Alyx’s fingers gripped at Israel’s shoulders. “Michael was trying to get me to reveal to him where I was by letting my thoughts change the setting of the Scape. I may have given our location away. Israel, I may have given you away. We need to get out of here. Now.”
