CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
A soft wind tore at my dress, wrapping the light fabric around my thighs and ruffling my curls that I had let loose. My eyes were still closed even after we left the inbetween, and Sairen's hand was still on my waist, guiding me.
The sound of crashing waves made my eyes fly open.
A wide expanse of deep blue stretched out before me, glittering under the sun and merging with the golden sand. The magnificent mountains encircled the bay, adding hues of green to the vibrant blues in which I spent a lot of my childhood. There were a few greying clouds scattered across the sky, but it added to the beautiful scenery rather than taint it.
On the weekends I would beg my mother or Aunt-Drea to bring me to the sea, and we'd take the early bus and reach before the sun was high in the sky. We'd spend the day here, I in the water, them reading or talking in the sand, and I was happy. It was some of the happiest days I'd had since we left home.
"There are dozens of beaches in Trinidad, how did you know to bring me to this one? "
Sai's hands found their way into his pockets and he shrugged. "It's me."
I smiled, "Well thank you, this means a lot."
"Aren't you going in?"
"I can't," I looked towards the sea with longing. It was Monday so there weren't many people around, but the few were having fun. "My monthly visitor is supposed to come any day now. If I go in the cold will kill me; the wind already has my stomach cramping up." I shrugged and took in a deep breath of peace. "I'm happy just taking in the view. "
"Do you want to head back?"
"Of course not!"
"Then you should keep warm," He said as he unbuttoned his shirt and held it open for me to slide my arms through. The entirety of his left chest and hand was covered with his Mark that entwined with the other swirling designs, cording around his other side and into the waistband of his pants.
I took the Seestone from the pocket, looking into its luminescent surface and to the image of Aunt-Drea lying peacefully asleep. I tucked it back into the shirt with a smile and took his hand. "Come on, let's take a walk."
"Did you call your grandfather?" I asked after a while of walking in companionable silence, taking in the scenery as we strolled alongside the shore.
"I tried, but the line was busy. I'll try again later."
I nodded and turned my attention to an older couple lounging in the sand, laughing at something the other said, and I pondered on whether to invade on his private life with the questions that had been irking me since we met. The right thing to do would be to keep my questions to my self considering I was sure he had questions about the secrets I'd been keeping as well, but Sairen was always better at controlling his curiosity than I was.
I stopped walking, forcing him to stop as well since we were still holding hands. "I'm going to ask you something and it's going to be a complete invasion of your privacy."
"Then I should thank you for the warning."
"You're welcome. What's with the bad blood between you and your grandfather?"
He laughed, throwing me completely off guard. "I was waiting to see how much longer you'd be able to hold out for. It was killing you wasn't it?"
"Immensely," I groaned.
"Well it's a really long story Sol."
I shrugged. "I have time if — and only if— you want to tell me." The last thing I wanted was for him to feel forced into telling me something he might not want to share; I wanted him to want to tell me— just like I wanted to tell him all of my secrets even though I physically couldn't.
Sairen puffed out a breath, and relaxed his shoulders. "You might want to take a seat, it really is long. It's not just one thing, it's countless things tied together that turned our relationship the way it is. "
I nudged his arm with my shoulder and took a seat in the sand. "I'm a good listener."
Siaren settled down beside me and began. "My mother worked in a weaponry in Eçalis; She used to enchant the weapons to make them easier to carry around and camouflage so it was only natural that she became fascinated with magic, and so she practiced it."
"My mother wanted a baby but she couldn't conceive, and my father gave up on the thought of having a child of his own, but she couldn't, so she did a spell and summoned the Goddess, asking for her blessing. The Goddess, Asirzye, granted her wish and my mother found out that she was pregnant a short while after. But her body was not meant to bear children so the pregnancy was difficult and she grew weaker as the months went on. The doctors told them that if she kept the baby it would be fatal to her, but she kept me anyway. "
He watched into the distance as he spoke, his eyes on the vast blue ahead. "When she was four months pregnant more complications arose and her doctor advised that it would be best for her to abort. She didn't listen, instead she called upon Asirzye again but something went wrong. Maybe it was because she was too weak, maybe it was just fate, but it wasn't The Goddess who answered her call."
"Then who did?"
He shrugged, glancing at me briefly. "We still don't know, but she was powerful;
she answered my mother's prayer for me to remain healthy and then she came to see me when I was born. We were never given an answer as to why she helped, but my mother remained strong for the rest of the pregnancy then she died as soon as the umbilical chord was cut. I was born with this mark on my forehead," He pushed the hair out of his face to show me the small dark crescent that laid there. "left by the witch; a sort of branding or signature. I drained everything I could from my mother and when I didn't need her anymore I killed her. "
"Don't say that Sairen!"
"Those are my father's words, not mine." He said flatly. " Everyone says that my mother's death broke him, that he was a completely different person when she was alive... It's a shame that I never met that version of my father. I didn't see him much while I grew up and the times I did I remember him being cold and harsh. The maid became my parent; she thought me to read, walk, fed me, changed me... Everything he should have done. Then when I was five, my father hanged himself."
The discovery was unexpected and painful. I had always assumed that Sairen's father had died in action, not something so... morbid. I took his hand in mine, weaving my fingers through his. "I'm sorry."
" Don't be. " The words were cold, colder than I ever heard him spoke. "I found him in his room. At first I thought he would come down and have dinner like he always did, so I left him there without calling for the maid— it wasn't the first time I saw him hanging. It was only as I got older I realized that he tried to kill himself on many other occasions."
"My grandfather didn't want me. He was too grief-stricken by his only son's death that he didn't care that a little kid was all alone with his grief, confused as to why his father wasn't coming home anymore. My aunt Josie lived on another continent and aunt Jules hadn't been in contact with him for years since he was an asshole to them as well, so my mother's brother took me in. I lived with him and his family until I was eight, then grandfather called and asked to see me so I stayed with him for a few months, but he was distant and mostly cruel. He didn't like that I looked so much like my father, made him remember, he said, but only a fool wouldn't know that he blamed me for their deaths. He kept me busy with my schooling and training so he wouldn't have to see me for longer than a few minutes at a time, and when he found out about my abilities he worked me harder until I couldn't take it anymore. "
He scoffed, rubbing his palms on his pants. "I escaped through an open portal and somehow ended up stranded in the cold somewhere in the Northern Lands. Believe it or not, wolves found me before I froze to death and brought me straight to my uncle's door. They fought, of course; my uncle was pissed at grandfather and didn't want me to go back there, but he begged for another chance. Grandfather didn't change much but they couldn't deprive him of his grandson unless they went through a custody battle which no one wanted . So I was drowned in books and lessons on every possible thing imaginable. I read every book in his study, then when that wasn't enough, every book in the Academy's library. You'd think that I'd never want to see another book in my lifetime, but they were all I had for company so I enjoyed it."
"What's ironic is that he did all that–all my training and studies– so that I'd be the best; some kind of trophy everyone could gawk at even though he couldn't even stand the sight of me. The only freedom I had was when I was with my uncle and his family. I'd been alternating between their houses until I was old enough to be on my own, and then I stopped most contact with my grandfather."
"You must've been so lonely,"
He leaned back into the sand, laying down, and I followed suit, turning on my side so that I could see him better. Even though we were on sand instead of grass, the scene reminded me of my dream and I kept my eyes on the horizon, waiting for the crimson clouds to roll our way.
"Not really," he smiled softly, "I had my mother's ghost to keep me company most of my childhood."
" What? " My face went slack with disbelief. " You see your mom's ghost?"
"Used to," he corrected. " I stopped seeing her some years back, and I would think that I'd just grown out of my overactive imagination if I didn't remember her so vividly. I think she knew that I needed the company so she visited often, she even helped me learn to control whatever power it is that I have."
"The shadows?"
"Yeah, the shadows. Now my grandfather is going through some kind of age related crisis that's making him want to mend all the bridges he burned himself—" The shrill tone of Sairen's phone cut his sentence in half and he pulled it out, his face hardening. He held the screen to my face, showing me an edited image of a man in his mid fifties with drawn on horns. "Speak of the devil. I have to take this,"
He stood and answered the phone, his tone instantly souring, and his conversation faded into the background as he walked away to take the call.
It was shocking how little I really knew about Sairen Arçenault, but we had met when we were children and our time had been focused solely on playing and getting accustomed to each other that it wasn't a priority to actually get to know each other. Besides, at the time we thought that we had all the time in the world to learn about the other, we didn't know that we'd be strangers again in the future.
I busied myself with the sand, engraving the incantation on its surface. The past week had been a constant trial and error with the binding spell. When I had saved Kali's baby I had given it some of my essence to feed off of to survive, I figured the spell Achar used was similar in nature and decided to experiment. I had gotten close but it wasn't exact and unfortunately my close wasn't close enough; I still wasn't able to fully track the spell. I would get a feeling, a pull, then I would loose it. I changed a word and tried, changed a phrase and tried, and yet the result remained the same; none.
"What are you doing?"
"Trying to get this spell down right."
"How's that going?"
"I'm close. I can feel it." I dusted my sandy hand on my dress and watched as the letters got lost in a sudden sharp gust of wind. The grey clouds were closer now, more concentrated, and I felt the chill in the air that signaled rain. "Is everything alright? What did he want to talk about?"
"He said that he has something important to tell me, but he wants to speak in person so I told him I'll be in Eçalis next week and we'll talk then."
"You do know that the deadline is in six days and that next week may not happen, right?"
He nodded. "I do."
"Does he know that?"
"He does. I heard him muttering obscenities under his breath but he agreed anyway." He smiled, pleased with himself. "He also said that he'll try to get K.O.A.C to spare some more soldiers, though it might not be much since their hands are full with all the extra activity going on."
"That was nice of him,"
Sairen rolled his eyes and tucked the phone back into his pocket. "I think a personality switch comes with the mid life crisis."
"How old is your grandfather anyway?"
"Almost three-hundred, and after all those years he's finally trying to be a decent person. He might be dying. "
"Don't be morbid. He's still young, maybe he just had an epiphany. "
I couldn't help but imagine how much a person sees having lived for nearly three centuries. If only time wasn't breathing down my back I'd allow myself to think about a future like that for myself; Deçalthians weren't immortal, but we had long lifespans—unless you're K.O.A.C, then your life cycle significantly decreases. We stop aging like humans do when we turn twenty five, then we physically age a year every ten years; but even if I only had one lifetime to live it'd be enough because if everything goes smoothly by the week's end, everything will be back to normal and everyone's lives will carry on — Sairen's life will carry on, and he'll grow old, maybe get married, maybe have kids.... And I'd be long buried.
" Sai, I.... " I was never the best with expressing my feelings vocally, especially in tough or overwhelming situations; I could never get the words out even though I had entire paragraphs memorized in my head, waiting to be spoken, so my mother made me write down everything that I wanted to say but couldn't. I didn't have any paper now, but even if I did, and even if I was the bravest, most outgoing person out there, words wouldn't do justice to what I wanted to say, so I kissed him.
The moment my lips met his something inside me woke, some burning, electrifying current that sent a sharp heat throughout my body, raising every pore on my skin.
I drew back, analyzing his features, seeing if I made a mistake— if I misread the fine print between the lines. He stared at me with wide, clouded eyes, his lips slightly parted and my heart sank, its beating frantic and weary at the same time... but then his hand grabbed the back of my neck and his lips found mine.
His fingers kneaded my hair as his mouth moulded over mine in a way that left me wanting; wanting more and every bit of him even though we were already so close that we were practically welded together on the sand. My hands came up to his head, trying to pull him closer, but there wasn't closer to go so I just held on as he consumed me.
He groaned lightly as I tugged a little too harshly on his hair and his teeth came down on my lip as retaliation. He tugged at my hair, tilting my head back to kiss me harder, and his grip tightened on my waist, searing my skin through the thin fabric, and I felt every desire between us; I felt our tongues clashing, our ragged breaths, and our chests as they moved in an unsteady rhythm, uncaring about the rain that had began falling. I felt that tingling heat as it travelled through our bodies, burning so hotly that we could have made glass just laying on the sand. I felt something fall into place as the stars aligned.
Our lips parted slowly, reluctantly, and our eyes never left each other. And even with the pouring rain that obscured our view, I took in every speck of gold in his jade eye and how the grey seemed a clear blue. Sai leaned over me, his wet hair falling in tendrils that brushed my face and his lips met mine again, softer this time, and it felt like everything had stopped to give us a little more time.