"No. Just that there had been. One chosen from an Ekmetalleftis already born."
Mark nodded, but I don't think it was in agreement. It just didn't have that type of conviction to it. Seemed more a movement for the sake of moving and nothing else.
"What do you know?" I asked, when he didn't say anything.
"Well," he said, lifting his face to the raindrops again, as though he couldn't help himself. "I know that an Alchemist has been one before."
My mouth fell open.
"No way!" I breathed out.
"Yes way," came his typical reply. "A very long time ago when Alchemists and Athanatos worked together."
"They didn't work with the Athanatos, they took whatever knowledge they could get and then abused it."
"Some did, yeah," Mark conceded. "And then things kind of went downhill. But at one stage the Alchemists worshipped Aetheros."
"That's bullshit," I exclaimed. "They worshipped the power they could get from the Elements. Furthering their own kind at the detriment of the Ekmetalleftis."
"Look," Mark said, breaking into my tirade. "There are two sides to every story, right? Mistakes were made by everyone concerned, but what I do know, is that at some time in the past we were all one happy family. The Athanatos: The children of Aetheros. The Alchemists: The followers of Aetheros' religion."
"How do you know it's true? It could all be Alchemist propaganda."
"How do you know what the Athanatos think is not a form of brainwashing by their elders?" he shot back.
And oh, there was a ring of truth to those words. Hadn't Aktor said, when we first learned that I was an Aether, that their education was incomplete? Potentially done on purpose by the council members.
I stared out into the rain and let that thought sink in. I didn't like the feel of it.
"So, what you're saying is... what exactly?" I finally asked.
Mark held his hand out and started catching raindrops in his cupped palm.
"What I'm saying, Case, is there was a time when Alchemists served the Athanatos because they believed them to be the children of a god."
"They are the children of a god," I whispered, as the water started to dance in his hand. I couldn't tell if that was just the force with which it fell, or if he was attempting to reach the Stoicheio he normally could tap into.
"Yes," he replied steadily. "Just like the Alchemists were once followers of Aetheros. And part of their role was to record history, preserve it, and when it repeated itself be there to guide the Athanatos to the other side."
"Alchemists are some sort of religious guides?" I asked, dumbfounded.
"Without which the Ekmetalleftis will not be able to ride out this storm, this new Genesis and whatever else comes," Mark concluded.
Then his eyes flashed briefly ice blue, immediately paling, as he collapsed to the ground, frothing at the mouth and gurgling through a torrent of water as it poured out between his bluing lips.
Chapter Seventeen
I Don't Suppose You Can Pretend We're On A Desert Island And It's Just The Two Of Us, Could You?
I screamed. It was instinctive. A loud, high-pitched, frightened call for help. And then my body kicked into gear. Turning Mark onto his side, slapping his back in an effort to get the water that was drowning him out of his lungs. It poured out over the dirt between the raised roots, pooling in an ominous puddle before his slack mouth.
"What happened?" Theo shouted as he ran from the new front door towards where I worked on Mark. Nico hot on his trail.
My eyes flicked back to the limp form before me, not bothering to waste time answering Theo. The water had stopped flowing, but my brother wasn't breathing.
Unlike an Athanatos an Alchemist is still human, just a little hardier, a little longer lived, and able to steal Elements from time to time. I was sure without breathing, though, he would die.
I checked for a pulse, thankfully finding a thready one in his neck, and leaned down to offer mouth-to-mouth.
"Bloody hell," Theo exclaimed when he saw what I was doing and realised what exactly was going on. He fell to his knees opposite as Nico stood above us and watched on.
"Check his chest," Nico suggested after several fraught moments.
I pulled back and waited to see if Mark's chest inflated. It took only a second, but it felt like a lifetime. A shallow indrawn breath.
"Thank God," I said, falling back on my butt utterly shaken.
"Let's get him inside," Theo suggested, moving to take his shoulders as Nico gripped Mark's legs. "And you had better be ready to explain yourselves," he shot at me over Mark's still unconscious body, determination and anger mixing with disappointment and concern.
It was a strange combination of emotions to see across his handsome face, because although the anger should have been the one I most hated, it was the disappointment that really made me feel like crap.
I followed behind them, past a frantic Sonya and worried looking Aktor, towards the room Isadora had just vacated. I watched from the far side of the space as Theo and Nico placed my brother down on the mattress, and then Nico escaped out of the door without making any eye contact.
Leaving me alone with an irate Athanatos.
"OK," Theo said softly, deadly softly. "Explain."
My eyes stayed glued to Mark's chest, watching it rise and fall rhythmically, deeper now than before. I couldn't look Theo in the face. I hadn't broken my promise. I hadn't. But somehow I'd scared him half to death anyway.
"Mark wanted to reach Water," I said in a whisper, my voice cracking slightly at the thought of my brother drowning.
My knees suddenly gave out and I only just made it a chair in the corner of the room before collapsing. Theo remained where he stood, watching impassively from beside Mark's silent form. There'd be no brotherly intervention to protect me from Theo's rage this time.
I hadn't realised how normal that had felt. Mark and me against the world, like it had been growing up.
"It almost killed him," I said through trembling lips. "A Stoicheio he'd used before turned against him." I couldn't get my head around it.
"Do you realise now why I didn't want you doing this?" Theo asked quietly.
I nodded, unable to voice a reply.
Theo sighed but still didn't approach. "Cassandra, I understand your desire to reconnect, we all feel it. But the consequences are too grave."
"I know that now," I mumbled.
"But it had to take your brother being harmed for that to happen. You couldn't see what had transpired with Isadora and leave it there. You had to keep pushing."
"I get it," I offered, numbly.
"You're an intelligent woman," Theo went on, and I realised he might be on a rant himself. I leaned back in the chair and closed my eyes, but I could only see Mark drowning behind my lids. "I can't comprehend why you insist on being so stubborn. Any other sane person would have taken one look at Isadora and realised the futility of what you and Mark just did."
"I realise it now," I murmured, feeling lost and alone and impotent.
"You insist on doing things your own way," Theo continued, ignoring my utter capitulation in this. "You forget we have far more experience, have lived far longer, and therefore, more often than not, have seen it all before. Yet you refuse to take our direction."
"Have you seen this?" I asked. He wasn't listening.
"I have a right mind to tie you to our bed," - and he wasn't talking in a kinky way here - "keep you safe and away from danger, but you'd probably try to set the binds on fire or get a tree root to bust you out of prison."
I groaned. He ignored that too.
"But you know what really upsets me?" he said, voice whisper quiet all of a sudden.
My eyes opened to see where he was, the volume had made it difficult to tell if he had moved closer or not. He hadn't, he was looking down at my still out of it brother, a contemplative and resigned look on his face.
"I actually admire your spirit," he added. "I feel drawn to your
resolve. I am inexplicably curious to see what you'll do next. You make me feel so very young again. And it's an addiction I know I have already succumbed to. But at the same time I have never been so frightened in all my vast years to be attracted to a woman before. This need, it is beyond normal, it is definitely not what I would call healthy. I can't explain it, I just know that I would die if you did. And I would lay down my life to save yours."
His eyes finally came up to hold my gaze, intense hazel stared back at me. The look one I would have normally expected to see in gold. His hunger as potent as when he could reach Fire.
"I may not remember our past," he whispered in an emotion-laden rough voice. "I may not remember making you my Thisavros. But there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that you are. What I feel is so foreign, yet so right. And it is a part of me, deep down, that even memory loss cannot erase. You are mine, Casey Eden. Before Pyrkagia. During Pyrkagia. And now after Pyrkagia, you still remain mine."
I saw the truth, right there, on his stoic face, in his pleading eyes, resounding in every rasped word he spoke. Just as our Stoicheio were still there, but somehow cut off to us, our Thisavros connection was still there as well. Just cut off to us. I didn't have an answer on how to reach either, I just knew that we hadn't lost them. They hadn't been stolen or given away. They still existed.
Isadora's efforts were proof of that.
We just had to believe we'd reach them and we would.
"Do you have nothing to say?" Theo asked, his entire frame held rigid.
I looked from his tense waiting face to my brother's relaxed unconscious one, and knew no matter what, I'd be trying again. Maybe not quite so recklessly, I'd have to think of something to soften the throwback of attempting to reach a Stoicheio, but I would do it again.
Theo had got one thing very, very right. I was resolved to fix this.
But he'd also hit the nail on the head of another valid point. No matter what had happened, or would happen, we were Thisavros, even when we weren't.
I let a long breath of air out and pushed up from my chair, relieved my legs held my weight. Theo kept his eyes on mine as I slowly approached, looking a little like a man about to be punched in the stomach. I could tell he was holding himself taut, muscles flexed but tightly controlled, breaths all but disappeared. I think he might have even started sweating, but I was too busy drowning in the hazel that should have been gold.
I stopped just before him, head tipped back so I could look him in the face, my chest rising and falling steadily, even though it felt like I was sucking in desperate gulps of air.
"I have loved you since the moment you walked into my store," I said softly, my voice only slightly warbling. "I loved you still when you threatened to take my head." His lips twitched. "I loved you when your father held a knife to my throat and you risked your life in more ways than one to fight him for me." The lips turned down in a frown. "I loved you," I had to take a breath then, before I could go on, "when I thought you'd died trying to keep me from the Gi."
Pain flared in his eyes, mirroring mine.
"I continued to love you when you were thought dead," I pushed on. "It was all that got me through the Gi torture. I kept loving you when we were on the run from the Basilissa. I loved you more when we faced the Aeras shaman and found out just what might be in store. I loved you, completely, utterly, when we faced your father and thought Aktor had betrayed us, and you stayed so strong. I loved you throughout my time on that table in the Rigas' lab."
"Casey," he whispered, voice broken.
"I loved you then. I love you still. And even when you couldn't remember me, you no longer loved me, I loved you enough for both of us."
"Oraia," he breathed, swaying slightly as though he longed to reach out. But Theo was leaving this entirely up to me. My move. My decision. He stood tall and waited for me to reach for him.
"I can't stop loving you," I whispered, tears filling my eyes. "But I also can't stop trying to fix what is wrong in this world." His eyelids closed and his head tipped back, face to the ceiling, his chest rising and falling abruptly. "I'm not sure if this is just the person I am, or if it is some sort of compulsion tied in to being Aether. But this is who I am now."
His head tipped down and there was such pain and heartache and fear in his eyes it almost made me take the words back, reach out and soothe him, tell him I'd tie myself to the bed, just to stop seeing that haunted look on his face.
"I'm telling you," I croaked, "that I love you, no matter what. From the beginning. Through any hell we have to traverse. Until the end of time."
His lips parted as a panted breath of air escaped. I reached up and held a finger to them, before he said whatever he was preparing to say.
"I'm asking you to do the same for me," I whispered, the words barely audible now, my throat constricted with emotion to such a degree, I could barely talk. "No matter what hell we have to traverse until the end of time."
That was it. I was done. A hitched and painful sound left my lips as my body shook and the tears fell down my face. I couldn't do this alone. And I'd realised I couldn't do this without him. But I had to do it. If he asked me to pick him over this battle stretching out indefinitely before us, I'm not entirely sure what my answer would be.
I just prayed it wasn't a question he asked of me. I just prayed he loved me no matter what.
"My sweet, sweet little Gi," he rasped, husky and sexy even if it was from the type of emotion that did not lead to those illicit thoughts. "Don't you realise," he added. "I have loved you even when I couldn't remember you. I've loved through my own type of hell. And I will love you for eternity."
"Even if I do monumentally stupid and dangerous things against all reasonable Athanatos advice?"
He started chuckling, a rumble emerging from his chest.
"Especially then."
"Really?"
"Really."
"Does that mean you'll help me?" I needed him. There was no denying it now. I needed him with me if I was going to do this.
"Aetheros," he breathed. "You drive me crazy. You make me feel emotions I haven't felt before. Good, bad, frightful, alarming. You never stop pushing for more and I will never stop giving it to you."
"Ah, was that a yes?"
"Yes, it's a yes," he growled, finally reaching across that last distance between us and hauling me into his arms. His lips smashed down onto mine, his hand fisted in my hair tipping my head at exactly the right angle, his tongue delved in and took control, directing me, feeding me, lighting me on fire.
Then against my mouth, when he had me at his complete and utter mercy, he whispered, "But, you will promise me you will do these monumentally stupid and dangerous things only with me at your side."
He pulled back and looked down into my eyes, daring me to argue.
Silly man. That's exactly what I'd been after all along.
"I promise," I whispered in reply.
"Why is it I think you had this all planned?" he muttered.
"Maybe because you're a very astute Athanatos who has, more often than not, seen it all before."
"Oraia," he drawled. "You took me completely by surprise and continue to do so every single day."
"And don't you forget it," I shot back. "I wouldn't want you to get bored in your old age."
"Oh, my old age, is it? Well, in that case allow me to demonstrate my youthful prowess." His face fell into the curve of my neck and shoulder, his lips tickling me enough to make me laugh. Then he walked me back towards the wall beside the fireplace and penned me in with his hands up beside my head and his body pressed against me and his lips and tongue sending me into another dimension and making me forget completely where we were.
"Mmm," he purred against me. "Convinced yet?"
"No," I breathed as his lips dipped lower and my t-shirt collar stretched as he moved his attention to the upper curve of my breast.
"Yet?" he breathed, licking a trail up my cleavage.
"Ah," I managed as his hi
ps rocked against my centre and I melted against the wall.
"How about now?"
"Um." My leg somehow found its way around his hip, my centre seeking more delicious friction as I arched my back and rubbed when he thrust, making more unintelligible sounds emerge from my lips.
"Casey," Theo pleaded.
Yes. Yes, it was time. I needed this. We needed this. Despite everything we'd been through, despite everyone who had come against us, despite a world on the brink of annihilation, I was still his and he was still mine. And I wanted what was mine now.
"Yes," I breathed. "Please," I begged.
Theo made a sexy growling sound as his hands finally moved from their position beside my head, flat against the wall, and shifted to my rear, lifting me up and wrapping both legs around his waist, as he rocked forward, his teeth nibbling at my nipple through my t-shirt, making me throw my head back, my body quake, and my breaths to come in little pants.
"Theo," I begged.
"Yes," he agreed, sounding as on edge as me. "I've got you. I'll take care of you. Oh, Oraia, I need this."
We both did. It was time.
"Now," I demanded as his hand went to the buttons on my jeans and he deftly undid them and pulled the zip down.
"Aetheros," he breathed against my lips, kissing me passionately, putting everything into the moment to show me how much he wanted me, how much he was going to give me, how good it was going to be.
He pulled back only long enough to kiss my cheeks, my jaw, my throat and begin to pull my jeans and underwear down.
I could feel him straining in his trousers, feel the hot, hard ridge of his erection just there. Feel the heat flow off his body, feel the trembling in his fingers. I could scent his arousal. I could hear his harsh gasps for air. I could see his determination and the lust and love that showed in his eyes.
It consumed me. Filled me. And he hadn't even entered me yet. But I knew if he didn't I would surely die.
"Mine," he rasped against my shoulder while unfastening his trousers.
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