The Darkest of Dreams

by Emigh Cannaday

  Annika’s eyes widened. It felt like it had been ages since she’d thought of that day.

  “Yeah, I remember. I thought you were going to rip out all of your hair.”

  Finn laughed to himself and closed his eyes. He gave a soft sigh before resuming his tender gaze.

  “I have very little left to pull out,” he said, running his free hand along his short haircut. “Which is probably for the best, since this moment is not so very different from my experience with the sirens. Your voice is having quite a similar effect on me.”

  “My voice makes you want to rip out your hair and dive down into the bottom of the ocean and drown yourself?” she asked with a sarcastic smirk. Finn didn’t seem to mind.

  “It does…in the most wonderful way. I thought I was going to die of happiness when I heard you sing tonight. I imagined myself lying on a beach and letting your voice and your music crash my body against the surf until I was nothing but sea foam.”

  “That sounds intense.”

  “Oh, it was.”

  “You’re not in danger of drowning this time, though.”

  “Aren’t’ I?” He raised a dark brow at her and grinned. “I’ve already died once. I’ve nearly died so many more. I’m afraid it’s becoming a habit. You’ve already attended my funeral. You saw them bury my body. Perhaps this is the afterlife? Perhaps this is but a dream? My gods, Annika—I have dreamt of this moment so many times…yet this time you feel so different. Tell me, slunchitse…does it please you?”

  He smoothed her hair away from her cheek and then gently stroked her lips with his thumb. He bent down to press his mouth against hers, yet she found herself leaning away from his lips.

  “You need to let go of me.”

  He tilted his head and gave her a puzzled look.

  “Why? Am I holding you too tight?”

  “No.” He waited expectantly for a better explanation, but she gave none. All she did was breathe a little bit harder before whispering, “Yes.”

  “Well? Which one is it?” he teased in his deep voice and squeezed her tighter. It felt too good to be good for her, and she knew it was the truth. The truth was that her body craved to remain in the safety of his warm and powerful arms more than anything. The truth was that she longed to stay wrapped up together with him, to touch him and taste him and cry in relief that he still lived and breathed. But this answered prayer had come at such a horrible price. Every second of sweet solace he brought her carried with it the bitter aftertaste of darkness and despair. Her body felt his warmth, yet her mind saw his brother locked in a prison cell, cold and alone and shivering. She could almost imagine walking back on stage with Finn, this time with her audience waving pitchforks and torches around her, screaming how she didn’t deserve Talvi in the first place.

  All that time and energy she’d spent being angry and hurt and conflicted about her husband began to turn inward. Sharp as one of his knifes, the terrible sensation became a wretched sickness that anchored itself in the pit of her stomach. The time spent grieving over Finn simply amplified it by tenfold. Her infatuation with him in this moment amplified it by a hundred. Now that the truth was out that he was alive, it would be the worst betrayal imaginable to feel this much affection towards anyone else. She knew that her connection with Finn was real, and she knew it was strong, but she never imagined that the day would come when it might be tested again. Now here she was, sick to her stomach while craving his tender comfort, wanting him and yearning for him, yet hating this wondrous and magical new body of hers for feeling this way. Instead of hugging him back or leaning forward to kiss him, Annika clutched at his forearm and struggled for freedom.

  “Let me go, Finn. Please. Now!”

  Suddenly he blinked and turned his mouth away. The second he released his embrace, she stood up and took a nervous step away from him, and then another. The fist that still held onto his meteorite ring was now shaking. She used all of her strength to hand it back, and rather than put it on his finger, he placed it into his pocket instead.

  “It’s that unbreakable bond, isn’t it?”

  “I imagine so,” he quietly answered from his chair. He gave an exasperated sigh of frustration as he buried his face in his hands. Eventually they ran through what was left of his cropped off curls, and Annika was surprised by the amount of shame and chagrin left on his reddened face. His mouth twisted into an awkward shape that was nearly impossible to read. “I apologize for my inappropriate behavior. I thought enough time apart would’ve improved things for us both, but it appears that there is no fooling the neurochemical response occurring in our brains. If anything, the absence has made things worse. I had no idea that the physical experience would be this intense. It just goes to show that there’s only so much one can learn from a book.”

  Annika felt her shoulders sink.

  “Heron told me it would take a long time of being apart for things to fade, but I didn’t think it would be this bad to be together.”

  “Nor did I. When did you meet Heron?”

  “At your funeral,” she said, avoiding Finn’s eyes. She didn’t need him to see how badly they’d done at making initial small talk in the library. “I met all of your extended family. He was the only one who really spoke to me.”

  “It sounds as if you’ve told him about what happened, and about your true nature.” Finn hummed to himself in thought. “I’m glad to hear it went so well. He’s a bit…how shall I say this?”

  “Rough?” Annika suggested. She couldn’t help squirming slightly as her blood began to warm underneath her skin.

  “I was going to say he’s unrefined, although he’s clever enough to keep your secret safe. Why are you avoiding my gaze? Did something happen that you don’t want me to know about?”

  “I just…I just…I wasn’t expecting him to look so much like you and Talvi,” she stammered. “It was like seeing a ghost. And now here you are, and I’m totally unprepared for this reaction. Does this mean we can’t even be in a room together without wanting to make out?”

  “Without wanting to make what?”

  “To make out. It means kissing,” she explained while fanning the back of her neck, which had grown uncomfortably warm. “It’s usually the hot and heavy type.”

  “Oh…well, from what I’ve gathered, it can be managed…as long as we abstain from prolonged physical contact,” he agreed, still blushing. “It’s probably best if we avoid it altogether. I never should’ve held you, but dammit—I’ve missed you!”

  Annika stopped fanning herself and turned around, trying to hide the depth of her irritation at their circumstances. She placed her hands on her hips while tapping the toe of her hot pink high heel. It struck her as uncanny how much the blood in her veins began to cool down the further that she remained outside of Finn’s reach. His unabashed male gaze, however, was harder to escape. It seemed that it was now programmed to follow her every move. She watched in the mirror as his brown eyes went straight to her fingertips, calculating the angles upon which they rested over her lovely ilium. He didn’t leer, although he did study her ass with more than a little interest. The way he was looking at her made her wonder if he’d ever seen a woman in black skinny jeans before. Suddenly his eyes darted up to hers in the reflection.

  “I’ve seen a woman in black trousers before,” he replied, having heard her thoughts. “You look different…that’s all. Perhaps I’m imagining it.”

  “Imagining what, exactly?” she asked and whirled around to face him.

  He bit down on his lip and looked away. Then he sighed and shook his head. He couldn’t lie to her, no matter how hard he wanted to.

  “Your waist seems smaller, and I don’t recall your bottom being quite so…pert.”

  Annika tried to hold back her smile as she recalled standing in front of her bedroom mirror and lamenting over her flat ass. Apparently all those Romanian deadlifts and jogging had made a difference.

  “It’s not ever going to go away, is it? Not until we both g
et bonded to other people. Until that happens, we’re going to be preoccupied with each other whenever we’re together.”

  Finn busied himself with smoothing out a wrinkle in his chinos.

  “That’s about the sum of it, yes.”

  Annika glanced over her shoulder at the makeup and half-empty drinks sitting on the counter, at the guitar cases on the floor and the drumsticks lying nearby. She grabbed her carry-on bag and brought it over to the counter where her makeup and toiletries were laid out.

  “Then I guess it’s going to be pretty annoying to travel together,” she said while yanking it open and shoving her belongings inside. “We’ll just have to do the best we can.” Finn’s dark brows knitted into a crooked line of confusion.

  “Where exactly are you planning for us to go?”

  “To get Talvi out of prison, obviously,” she said with an air of disbelief. “Tonight was the last show of my tour. We can leave first thing in the morning—maybe even earlier if the guys don’t mind dealing with my gear. I’m sure your family would like to know you’re still alive.”

  14

  So Close, Yet So Far Away

  Annika tucked her credit card back into her black glitter wristlet and handed two of the newly-purchased airport coffees to Tripp.

  “I’ll meet you back at the gate in a minute. I just need some sugar and cream for these two,” she said and picked up the remaining two cups.

  “I’ll wait.”

  “I won’t be long.” She scurried over to the counter and grabbed ahold of the pitcher of cream. Tripp was right by her side, like a shadow she’d never be free of.

  “Then I won’t be waiting long, either. We’re not at the grocery store back in Portland, hon. We’re at Narita International Airport. It would only take a second for a little thing like you to disappear from a place like this, and our flight leaves in less than an hour,” he reminded her. His brown eyes scanned the crowds around them inside the shopping area of the terminal, which was mostly Japanese people interspersed with a sprinkling of other nationalities, colors, shapes and sizes. He turned back to Annika, whose bright red hair and bright pink sweater were hard to miss. “There’s no point in getting sloppy now. Thanks for springing for first class, by the way. I’ve never had a window seat before.”

  “It’s the least I can do for my super-size entourage.” She tore open a few sugar packets and emptied them into each cup, then gave them a stir before squishing the lids back into place. “Did you get ahold of Cyril?”

  “I did. He wants us to come straight to the office. He said he’s not leaving until we get there. I warned him that we’d be coming in hot.”

  “More like death warmed over,” she yawned, and started walking back to where she’d left her bag with Adams and Finn. “I’ve only had about an hour of sleep in the past two days. My brain feels like it’s turning to mush.”

  “It’s twelve hours to London. You can sleep as long as you want on the plane.”

  They made their way through the crowd, Tripp walking with purpose while Annika drifted like a sleepwalker along the shiny white tiled floor that led to their group of seats near their departure gate. Adams was instructing Finn on how to use his cell phone, although his fascination with the object turned to disinterest the moment Annika came into his field of vision. His eyes focused on the front of her sweater for a brief moment before he forced them to turn their attention back to the cell phone.

  “Whatcha reading?” She sank down into the seat next to him and leaned closer.

  “An article about a starburst galaxy with the prospect of gravitational waves,” he replied without looking up.

  “Neat,” she said without a shred of genuine interest and handed him his coffee. He took it without saying a word, which wasn’t like him. She kept waiting for him to spew out facts about starburst galaxies and gravitational waves and how they worked. Instead, he continued to read in silence on Adams’s phone until it was time to board the plane.

  The first class section consisted of two aisles, with a single row of seats running along each side of the plane and then a pair of seats running down the center. Every chair offered all the leg room one could want, and all the personal space one could hope for. Personal space, however, was the last thing that Annika wanted for the next twelve hours. There was too much to talk to Finn about. Tripp took his place by the window, and Adams walked to the other window seat.

  “You two can have the middle,” he said, much to Annika’s delight. “That way you can catch up.”

  She tossed her overnight bag under the seat and sat down. There was a divider that could be raised to block Finn from her view, although she kept it lowered. After believing him to be dead for so long, she longed to see his face as much as possible.

  “You’ve been kind of quiet today,” she observed once he took his place next to her.

  “I have a lot on my mind,” he said while he reached for the in-flight magazine.

  “Me too,” she sighed. “You go first.”

  “I really don’t care to discuss it,” he said and turned a page.

  “Fine. I’ll just get inside your head once you fall asleep,” she threatened playfully. Finn’s brown eyes darted up to meet hers.

  “You stay out of there,” he warned in such a way that she couldn’t tell if he was joking or dead serious. “I’ve spent the past four months trying to keep you out.”

  “Oh yeah?” Annika sat up straighter in her chair and leaned on the armrest on her side of the small privacy screen. “Well, I’ve spent the past four months bawling my eyes out over how much I missed you, and crying because of how angry I was at you for attacking Talvi, and trying to forget how much I hated him for killing you! Now I find out that it was all for nothing? I’ve wasted so much time hating his guts when I should’ve been writing him letters…or something! I need to find a way to make it up to him.”

  “The best thing you can do for Talvi is to be there for him however you can,” Finn gently suggested. “He’s always been a social animal; if he’s in solitary confinement like you say he is, then he’s probably going stark-raving mad by now. He likes to think he’s a lone wolf, but he’s a social butterfly with an equally fragile ego. Write to him, or better still, try reaching out to him with your mind the same way you reached out to me.”

  “Like that’s going to work,” Annika huffed as the flight attendant stopped by to remind her to fasten her seatbelt. She groped around until she found it, then quickly pulled it snug across her lap. “I was reaching out to you because I was in denial that you were actually dead.”

  “Then why shouldn’t that same methodology work for Talvi, who is still alive? Your ability to find me is what brought me out of the monastery to see you perform.”

  “That’s different,” she argued. “You and I have that stupid unbreakable bond now.”

  “It’s not stupid,” he reasoned. “Perhaps inconvenient more often than not, but it’s not stupid. If it weren’t for this inconvenient bond then I wouldn’t have heard you and sought you out. If it weren’t for our bond, you might’ve left Japan and gone back to scrubbing everything from tiles to toilets with a toothbrush to escape your anger and your grief.”

  “How do you know about that?”

  “Your friend James told me before we left,” he said, and smiled to himself. “He told me a great deal of choice words, although I can’t say I blame him for thinking I’m a scoundrel. He’s a good friend for you to have. And a sharp wit. I can see why he got on so well with Talvi.”

  “What did James say to you?” she asked, growing more intrigued by the second.

  “It doesn’t matter what he said.” Finn raised a brow at her, and she knew that he’d never repeat whatever words had been exchanged between the two men. “What matters is that he knows you and I are making a united effort to resolve things with your husband. Now, getting back to what you were saying about our bond, I think you’re forgetting that you have a physical connection with Talvi as well.”

>   “How so? The last time I checked, he wasn’t the one I was with in Paris.”

  The plane began to taxi towards the runway, and Annika imagined that James and Charlie were already in the air by now, headed in the opposite direction across the Pacific. They hadn’t been too excited about returning home with all of their gear and more than half of their crew unavailable to help lug it home. Even though Annika had upgraded their seats to first class as a consolation prize, there were some things that money couldn’t buy.

  “Talvi opened his veins for you,” Finn reminded her. “He gave you his blood on the day you were married. You did the same thing for him. The two of you are bonded by your rings and by your blood.”

  Annika glanced down at the platinum band that was permanently fused to her finger and turned it just enough to capture the overhead light. She remembered the morning of their handfasting; it was almost a year ago when she and Talvi had knelt down in that pile of pillows in the woods, surrounded by flickering candlelight. They had both cut their palms with his black-handled knife and pressed them together, bleeding into each other and becoming one. In some ways, for the very first time…in others, it felt like the last time. She gazed at the ring Talvi had made for her, a perfect, smaller replica of the one he wore. Even after all that had happened, it twinkled so brightly, shining with endurance and brimming full of promise. It seemed an awful lot to expect from such a small thing.

  “If I have a physical bond with both of you, then how come the bond I have with Talvi is so weak compared to ours?”

  Finn sighed, racking his brain for a way to explain the difference.

  “I think it’s only weak in the way that an unused muscle is weak. You might try exercising it more often to make it stronger. It’ll be easier if I’m not standing in the way.”