Skye
I sleep through the night and wake to the grainy red numbers on the clock on Alex’s bedside reading 8:43 A.M.
I don’t normally sleep this late. I’m usually in my office by now, or in one of the lecture halls or research centers, but right now, I’m curled under a thick blanket that smells like Alex, resting my head on his pillow, watching the minutes tick by on his clock.
When I slide out of his bed, the door to his bedroom is ajar, but not by much. I realize with a small squeak that I’m in my underwear and the sweater I wore yesterday, but in the same instant, I notice the sweatpants and sweatshirt resting on the edge of the bed, neatly folded, with a new, sticky bandage for my knee on top.
So, this all really happened. It wasn’t a bad dream.
I killed my great-grandfather. My beloved great-grandmother is dead. I lost my bracelet, am now a murderer, all things considered, and crash-landed in Alex’s condo when he had no idea I could spirit across an entire kingdom without so much as lifting a finger.
And I was bleeding. Heavily. In the presence of a vampire.
I absolutely swim in the oversized hoodie. I roll up the waistband of the sweatpants and glance at myself in the mirror hanging over his dresser. I look like someone chewed me up and spit me out, but it doesn’t matter, does it? I can’t stay long. I need to go back. I need to go to Maatua, or Moonrise, where my dad is at the moment, and… I don’t know. I don’t actually know what needs to come next.
I step into the kitchen. Alex is leaning against the kitchen island with his laptop open, papers scattered across the smooth granite surface. He straightens, eyeing me with interest and a brush of concern, then looks back down at his computer with a sigh. “Hungry?” he asks.
“No. Not at all.”
He types something out at a great rate of speed before shutting the laptop and pivoting to face me, his arms crossed over his chest.
I hesitate before asking, “What?”
“Where are you going?”
“Home. I suppose. I didn’t mean to come here.”
“I’d like for you to stay. For a while, at least.”
“Why, Alex?” My voice cracks, but his eyes hold mine with an intensity strong enough to make the distance between us feel heavy and unbearable.
“Because something serious happened to you last night, and you came here–to me.”
“You’re not responsible for me.”
“What happened?” His tone leaves no room for argument.
When I sink onto the couch, he turns to the stove and sets a kettle on a burner. I don’t say a word until he places a cup of tea with milk and a whole hell of a lot of sugar on the coffee table in front of me, and even then, I can’t find the words to explain. I’m startled by the scrape of a chair being dragged across the floor and look up as he comes to a stop, straddling one of the bar stools, his eyes firmly fixed on mine.
I swallow past that annoying, lingering, unbreakable knot in my throat and instantly feel like I’m being interrogated. Maybe I am.
“I should go to my office.”
“There’s no point. The entire campus is locked down, remember? No classes, lectures, or lab access for a week, at least.”
I exhale, nostrils flaring. He arches a brow in challenge. He motions to the tea. I lift it, holding it between my hands to warm my aching, chilled fingers. “I can essentially teleport anywhere I want.”
“I noticed.”
I bite back a rather colorful retort in response to his entirely dry tone. “I got a call from my dad. My great-grandma was…. She hadn’t been feeling well recently, I guess, and never recovered. She died.” I can’t bring myself to meet his eyes. I take a sip of tea instead.
“You mentioned you killed someone.”
“Alex… I don’t know how to explain this to you.” Grief tangles in my chest.
“I want you to try.”
“Why? Why does it matter? Why do you even care?”
“Is it not obvious?” he asks, his voice strained. “Or do I need to spell this out for you in mathematical terms?”
“Can you?” I’m half joking. Goddess, if he could actually do that? Turn emotions and feelings into an equation I can easily understand and decipher? Everything would finally make sense. When he only fixes me with an expectant look, I cave, curling inward around my mug of tea. “I can do things with my powers, but you already know that. I can see thoughts, memories, desires….” I hold his gaze, wishing he could just look into my head and pull the truth from within like I can. Sniffling, I continue, “My great-grandfather is special, like me. His powers were gifted, however. At least, that’s what we think, and my great-grandmother was normal. A shifter who lived a long, beautiful life. She died, and my great-grandpa couldn’t go with her.” Tears fill my eyes, but they don’t fall this time. “He couldn’t go. He didn’t want to live without her but couldn’t leave our realm without help, and my dad… I think he refused him, but I… I did it. I pulled his lifeline from the tapestry, cut it to length with hers, and they died together. But it wasn’t his time. I forced it. I went against the Goddess’s plan and–” I bury my face in my hands.
Alex is suddenly in front of me, taking the mug off my lap and setting it on the table. I sense his proximity before he kneels, moving my hands away from my face.
“I know you can’t possibly understand,” I mumble, searching his eyes. “I know it sounds insane.”
“You did what you thought was right.”
“It was what he wanted, and he knew I’d do it.”
“And then you came here?”
I nod.
He nods as well, like all of this makes sense to him. “You didn’t murder him, Skye. What you did was merciful. It was right.”
“But I might as well have killed him in cold blood, just like the last time.”
My fingers are chilled to the bone as a childhood memory sweeps through me. I can smell the familiar air of that townhouse in Moonrise like I’m there, and Alex’s couch is my childhood bed. His voice, calm and soothing, is replaced by Mom’s screams of pain and the crunching echo of a fist meeting her chest and stomach over and over again.
“I wanted him to stop hurting her,” I say, but my voice is cold and distant. “So I stopped him.”
Alex stares at me, not understanding. Maybe he doesn’t understand any of this. Maybe this is useless, and I’m just a murderous freak of nature–like I’ve believed myself to be all my life.
“Show me,” Alex says under his breath.
“What?”
He takes my hand and slowly rests the tip of my fingers against his cheek. “Show me.”
“I could hurt you.”
“You won’t. Do it.” He grips my fingers.
I take a breath and let go. My powers are unrestrained for the first time in many, many years. Since I was a little girl, actually. When I still had the freedom to dream–or have vivid, terrifying nightmares and prophecies that rendered me speechless.
Using my gifts like this is like stepping into a movie of my memories. It’s one-sided, of course. My perspective of events that I was too young to understand. I let him see it all, showing him things I can’t put into words. That day, when I was seven or so, when my dad sat in the backyard of that townhouse and taught me how to use my powers to pick out the agates in that big bucket of rockets I used to hide behind the tree. I didn’t know him as my dad. I just knew my mom was happier around him and felt safe with him, and that made me trust him right away. My child-brain wanted my mom to feel safe and happy, and Blake made her feel that. I liked him. I wanted him to stay and play with me.
My thoughts move to the day I threw coins in that fountain in the temple that no longer exists, while my parents reunited after seven years apart. I show him the lake in Moonrise, and the sun glimmering on the rocks on the beach, my old room, the bed where I killed a man with my mind and nearly killed myself in the process.
And when I show him that memory, his grip tightens on my fingers, and I feel the tension in my chest loosen for the first time in… weeks. Maybe years. Maybe for the first time in my entire life.
My mind drifts, on its own accord, like pages being flipped in a book. Suddenly, we’re in the recent past, in Maatua. Rain is thundering across the roof while my great-grandfather looks me in the eyes and tells me to do it, and I do.
I flinch, but Alex grips my hand in solidarity, in a silent command to continue.
I could show him my entire life. It’s possible. I could just let my memories flow like opening a tap. But my memories scatter, the more present ones slipping out of reach. He catches glimpses of himself through my point of view–pieces of my thoughts when I’d found out he was a vampire, my overwhelming and incessant desire to be bitten, and how I still haven’t quite come to terms with why I want it so badly. My confusion. Our emotionally charged fight in his office after Laney was murdered. The fact that I’m teetering on the edge of what I feel like is oblivion when it comes to him. How I want him. Not like we are, but more. Something big and stupid and real–because he’s the only person I’ve ever known who sees me behind my tangled thoughts that don’t match my facial expressions. He’s the only person who gets it.
He said it. I didn’t want to believe him. So I shoved him as far away as I could.
There was one person who got me, especially when I was young. My parents don’t count. Sure, my dad knew me like the back of his hand because he and I are one and the same, but Posey got it. I would beg and plead to be allowed to go visit her in Veiled Valley. Alex sees this new line of thought and the memories it brings up–me, in the dark, gothic castle babysitting their eldest son, Fennec, Fen for short, when their second son was born. Me, sitting in Posey’s alchemy room, talking about my first crushes and new friends while she made new charms for the bracelet I just lost.
“It stops me from dreaming like I used to,” I admit, testing the new charms against the weight of the old ones.
Posey purses her lips, eyeing me like she can see right into my mind, and gosh, I wish she could. “You’re confident now in your training and powers to not wear it anymore, if you want. You’re fifteen, Skye. I made this for you when you were only nine. You don’t need it. It’s a crutch, but you’re stronger than that now.”
Another memory bursts through, popping the image like a bubble, and suddenly, I’m in the observatory, as a child, sitting in those familiar scratchy chairs, but I’m not looking up at the simulated stars and planets.
I’ve always wondered why I used to have visions about that place. I’d come to the conclusion that it was just visions of my future. That’s the easy answer, isn’t it?
“I’m going to cure her,” he says, clutching his brand new science kit like it’s the most beautiful, most prized possession he has.
I look at the boy from my memories and see him clearly for the first time.
I tear my hand away from Alex’s face and stare at him. He slowly opens his eyes, taking a ragged, heavy breath before meeting my startled gaze.
“You,” I choke out, confused, alarmed, I think, at this strange connection. “You’ve–how–”
“I don’t know,” he says quietly, but he doesn’t seem shocked at all.
“You knew? You–you remembered me?”
“I knew who you were the moment I got a good look at you at that party at the beginning of the semester.”
I rise, and he follows, towering over me. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“What could I have said? That I used to have weird dreams as a little boy about a shifter girl? That I woke up one day, and those dreams stopped? You were a figment of my imagination, Skye, until a few weeks ago.”
And look at us now. Somewhere, in the aether, our tethers have crossed. Him, a vampire. And me…
I rise on my toes and press my lips to his. He tugs me close, a silent, unwavering confirmation that he’s been waiting for this moment, his lips parting to breathe my name.