"Eat," he pressed, replacing the glass with the food. I hesitated. He growled, which seemed to reverberate around the arched ceilings.
I placed the entire cracker in my mouth, barely able to close my lips and said, "What?" Cheeks puffed out like a squirrel.
"Aetheros, I love you," he blurted, in a very un-Theo-like fashion.
Nico snorted. Aktor laughed. Isadora probably scowled, but I wasn't looking at her.
And Sonya remained unconscious.
But she wouldn't forever, so I took the next cracker and cheese offered, holding Theo's eyes and letting him know through my look and the fact that I was eating the very last cheese we would probably ever have, denying everyone else because he'd demanded it, that I loved him too.
By the time I'd finished the carbohydrates and was just downing the last of the tinned fruit, Mark staggered around the corner of a set of shelves, banging into them and making me wince, but nothing fell or rattled; too well protected.
"Did the wine come with the house?" I asked.
"Yes," Aktor replied from his spot by the fire. "The former owner was an entrepreneur or some such thing. Extradited to America to face a criminal lawsuit. His assets were frozen, but this property was held under a trust, and before the authorities could claim it too, he sold it lock, stock and barrel. To us. Rather nice find, I must say."
"You did well, Aktor," I agreed.
"Even if it no longer stands except for the booze," my brother said, slurring his words slightly.
He threw himself down on some pillows closer to us than Isadora, who was looking at him as though he was a bug. A very smelly bug, I had no trouble identifying the whiff as alcohol from here.
"What's wrong with you?" I demanded, feeling much more able to quarrel and my brother was the perfect target right now.
I couldn't start anything with Theo. He loved me. He'd just blurted that out for everyone to hear.
Mark snorted. Loudly. Then took a swig from his half empty bottle of wine. It would not have been his first, from the look of him.
"What's not wrong, sister?"
"Yeah, well, we're all in the same boat, so why the wine?" I shot back.
"I'm not whining. I'm drowning my sorrows. There's a difference," he pointed out.
"Not whine, you imbecile. But wine. W-I-N-E."
He sniggered. He'd known, he was just being a prick.
"It occurs to me," he started, sounding a little bit more focused all of a sudden. "That we still have two Genesis destructive episodes to survive."
"So you thought you'd get drunk?" I asked, eyebrows arched.
"Don't look at me like that," he snapped. Then realised there was still wine in his bottle and took another swig with much enthusiasm.
His eyes landed on Sonya.
"The next could be Water," he commented, in a subdued voice. And then more flippantly added, swinging the now near empty bottle out in an arc to make his point, "And all this could be drowned. I just thought enjoying it beforehand made sense."
No. Mark might have been a bit of a knuckle-head sometimes, but there was more.
"Where were you when Air hit?" I asked, as Theo reached out and rubbed my thigh, just above my knee. His timing was not by accident. "Where were you?" I asked again, voice soft.
Mark's eyes didn't leave Sonya.
Then he said, in a guilt laden voice, "I wasn't with Marin. That's where."
Silence filled the room. Even Isadora had her head turned towards my brother.
"And you should have been?" I queried. Had he been instructed to look after Sonya and been goofing off?
Finally he lifted wretched eyes to me.
"She's human, Case. She's fragile."
"I know," I said, my throat constricting familiarly on words I'd said to myself before.
"I should have been looking out for her. I should have been close enough to protect her. She's been in our lives for so long, she's part of the family and I wasn't there."
He sounded distraught. Not making any sense. Because I hadn't been there either.
"Mark, you weren't to know that Air would hit. Theo and I didn't sense it until it had already begun and we were outside."
"So was I," Mark mumbled, and I noticed Isadora begin to shift a little restlessly as though bored with the drama and just wanting to have some peace and quiet.
I frowned at her, but turned my attention back to my incomprehensible big brother.
"This is not your fault, Marcus," I pushed, going for the big guns, like Mum used to do.
"Why do you think the Alchemists are so hell bent on reuniting with the Ekmetalleftis?" he asked out of nowhere.
I felt Theo stiffen, but he managed to hide it by continuing to stroke my thigh. Nico glared outright at Mark, and Isadora had stopped squirming completely.
"Why?" I asked slowly, not sure I wanted to hear this.
"Because they knew Genesis was coming," Mark said with no small amount of passion.
Was this the side of my brother that made him a zealot similar to the Alchemists he was trained to be like?
"And they knew," Mark added, "that humans would be almost wiped out."
"How could they know that?" I asked, feeling numb. "Has this happened before?"
Mark shook his head and spun the empty wine bottle in his hands, between his legs.
"Not to this scale, but they have ways of reading these things. I don't know how, it's specialised training, and Gramps never thought I needed to know. But we were all taught, even secret Alchemists like me, that humans were the most important factor. Save the humans. Protect the humans. Advance the humans."
That last one sounded very much like the Alchemists I'd grown to hate.
"So, you feel responsible for Sonya because you weren't there to protect her, right when an Element spat the dummy and killed, I'm thinking, millions of humans all across the globe? Is that right?"
He nodded.
"I don't know how to tell you this, Mark. But you are not the only one capable of protecting Sonya. Even the big bad Ekmetalleftis would do it. Take one look at Aktor and Nico and tell me that isn't true."
"You don't get it. I've been trained..."
"To protect humanity. OK, I understand, but you can't take it all on yourself."
He made a low growling sound, unlike the sounds Athanatos make, but equally as angry.
Or guilty.
His eyes lifted to mine and he held my firm gaze determinedly, as though he wanted me to be looking at him when he spoke his next words.
"I know I'm not the only one, Case," he said softly. But it was a lethal kind of soft. Vibrating with what I think was self-hatred. "I know others would have tried to save her if they could."
He spoke as though she was already dead. I opened my mouth to refute it, but he rushed to talk over me.
"As the only Alchemist here she was my responsibility," he insisted and I threw up my hands in defeat.
Because he wasn't listening, he was determined to take the blame, and nothing I said would make a difference now.
Whatever. I was too tired for this. I hurt all over and Sonya had still not moved an inch. I brushed her hair aside and refused to look at Mark. When he got like this, it was just a waste of time. Time I didn't have to entertain his self-absorption anymore.
"Casey," he said, a snap of command that had me lifting my eyes even though I'd decided enough was enough. "I wasn't anywhere near her, I wasn't paying attention to what was happening and therefore didn't rush to protect her, because I was ignoring everything Gramps taught me. Everything he told me we stood for."
"Mark," I cried, just wanting him to calm the freaking hell down. "Chill, OK. It's not your fault."
He stood up abruptly, wine still in hand, which quickly left it as he hurled the bottle at the far wall making it shatter into a thousand tiny pieces of glass.
Theo had stood. Aktor and Isadora had as well. The latter actually walking over to my clearly enraged and out of his ever loving mind brother. I wanted to warn her to s
tay out of it, but the closer she got, the calmer he became. His breathing slowing, his fists unclenching, his face losing that desperate hatred he'd suddenly started displaying.
A hatred that was clearly for himself.
And as Dora placed a hand on his upper arm, and his shoulders eventually gave up the rigidity that had held them, I thought I might just have finally comprehended what he had been trying to tell me all along.
Mark's eyes came up to Isadora's; she held his gaze with a steady look. He shook his head, reminded of who she was by the Peters colourings. Brown hair, hazel eyes, golden tanned skin.
Then he wrenched his arm from her hold, took one last look at Sonya, and flicking his eyes to mine he quickly turned away.
"Run, then," Dora spat. "You're just a coward!"
"Isadora," Theo said. Clipped. Hard. Brooking no argument.
She ducked her head, a pain I had never thought I would see on her beautiful perfect statuette features flashing over her face, then walked off in the opposite direction and disappeared into the darkness by some shelves.
Silence for a suspended moment and then a small, weak voice said from the couch, "Did Mark bag that? Because, man, he's got some balls."
I spun around to look down at Sonya, but she'd closed her eyes and gone back to sleep again. Breaths even and deeper than before. Colour suffusing her pretty face. My gaze met Nico's; his expression said it all.
Joy. Relief.
Hope.
Chapter 22
What's So Funny?
An uncomfortable silence followed all of that, and it wasn't long before Theo was insisting I take a break from Sonya duty, handing over the reins to an able bodied Aktor - Nico refused to move at all - and drawing me towards the brazier for some optimistic but misplaced Fire fuelling.
Hope. It was an unusual thing. I wanted to find my wayward brother and tell him Sonya had spoken, because I was sure he'd missed her words when he'd practically run off like the coward Isadora had accused him of being. But although I'm sure he could have done with a boost in hope on hearing she'd come to, even if only briefly, I was too exhausted to go hunting for him, in the back of the cellar, in amongst all the dust and darkness.
I let Theo guide me over to a pile of cushions, and place me between his spread legs, my back to his chest, as he leaned against the table and wrapped his arms around my waist. We stared into the flames for several seconds before either of us spoke.
"So, Isadora and Mark," I said, as Theo announced, "We need a plan."
His chest rumbled invitingly behind me and he ran a hand though my hair, laying a soft kiss on my temple.
"You should be pleased, Oraia," he murmured. "Her attentions have moved elsewhere."
"I don't trust that for one little bit," I replied steadily. You don't pine after someone for a couple thousand years and move on to a "human" that easily.
"She's not as bad as you think," Theo pointed out.
I just snorted. That did not require a reply.
"All right," he said with an edge of laughter in his tone. "How about we just stay out of it and let it go where it may?"
"My brother needs his head read," I offered.
"Is that so? Are you insinuating anyone who befriends Isadora is crazy?"
"You could take it like that, if you choose."
"So, that would make me crazy, because she is still my friend."
"My point exactly."
His chest rose and fell harder.
"Cassandra, you cannot be jealous of her still?"
"How do you know I was jealous of her at all? Have you got your memory back?" I demanded.
"Isadora told me."
I sat up straighter. "And you believed her?"
"I've known her for close to two thousand years," came his oh so aggravating reply.
"But not for the past one year," I said deliberately.
"No," he agreed slowly. "But I cannot believe she would..."
"Don't," I said softly. "Just... don't. OK? It's hard enough you don't remember me, but to be reminded that you don't even remember all the crap she caused and so are still under her wicked spell is just too much right now. We've got a Genesis to deal with. Stoicheio to find. And... and a world to right."
I was no longer going to add "a Thisavros connection to re-establish." I was done holding out for that.
"OK," Theo said softly. "The Stoicheio," he offered, pulling my reluctant body back against his chest. He sighed when I complied, and then started running his hand absently through my hair.
"The Stoicheio," I agreed, capitulating to his tender care.
"We know they are still there, even though it injures us to reach for them. We also know you can refuel somehow, but we cannot, it seems," he summarised.
"That about covers it."
"Let's break it down. What did you feel when you reached for Gi?"
I tried to think back, but all I remembered was the splitting headache that I'd been certain was not from Earth but from Aetheros himself, trying to communicate his despair. At the time, I was sure my skull would fracture, brain seeping out all over the ground at my feet. But could I have gotten that wrong? Was the headache from my Gi not the god?
"The worst ever headache," I advised Theo. "I thought it was Aetheros talking to me. I felt like he was too big for the space inside my mind."
"Maybe," Theo conceded. "Anything else?"
"Earth was silent and then I blacked out."
He was quiet a moment, letting that memory settle again.
"Dora said she felt like her blood was on fire," he announced suddenly.
"And Mark drowned," I offered, finishing off what we knew about the efforts to reach our Stoicheio to date.
"Maybe your reaction was hidden in the quake itself," Theo suggested. "Maybe you would have been swallowed by the ground if it hadn't already been shaking, counteracting the reaction unintentionally."
"We could go around in circles with this," I pointed out softly. I wasn't trying to throw up a wall at every suggestion, but we were just guessing. Nothing solid to go on for now.
Silence for a while.
Then, "You didn't try to reach for Aeras?"
"I knew better."
I could feel his smile against the top of my head.
"Bloody hell," he muttered. "She does heed advice."
I elbowed him in the stomach.
He grunted but didn't otherwise complain.
"I think we really have only one choice," he said into the warm, comfortable silence that had enveloped us.
I tipped my head up and tried to determine his expression, because the words had sounded innocuous, but the tone was hesitant, unsure. Not Theo.
"Go on," I encouraged.
"You were right," he admitted, but I wasn't sure which pearl of wisdom of mine he was referring to. He ducked his chin so he could look me in the eyes. He looked chagrined. "We need to test this further. We can't risk sitting around and waiting for it to right itself."
I frowned.
"Test what? How?"
"Our Stoicheio."
I arched my brow. "The exact thing you made me promise not to do."
"No need to point that out. I am well aware of the fact."
I sniggered. He gave me a good glare. Then tightened his arms as though he thought I'd run from him because of it.
I turned to look back at the fire, feeling the warmth and welcome in the heat.
"There's no other way," I agreed.
"No, and with two Genesis events passed, we have weakened. If this continues, we may not survive."
I closed my eyes, let the image of Mark drowning and Isadora's silent internal agony wash my mind. I still felt the headache and seizure were from Aetheros, and maybe that had masked what Gi would have done, but I wasn't sure. I just didn't know. And I'd have to attempt to reach it all over again.
"So, how do we do this? On the sly, away from everyone else? Or group effort?"
Theo let a long breath of air out. "It is traumat
ic to watch, but I would prefer we had everyone available in case things go wrong."
And the potential for things to go wrong was definitely there.
"OK. When?" I asked.
"We've eaten and rested. Sonya has given us a boost. I think now."
"What about Mark and Isadora?"
He made a little grumbling sound, which was really quite cute. "I would prefer they are included, but rounding them up may be difficult and Mark..."
"May be quite drunk by now," I offered.
"Yes."
I shook my head at my stupid, idiotic big brother and then decided as he was my sibling, I'd have to be the one to sober him up.
"All right," I said, getting to my feet in a surprisingly smooth move. That food and fire session really must have made a difference. Or maybe, just Theo's arms.
He stood in a glide next to me.
"I'll go in search of Dora," he suggested, and I immediately corrected with a snapped, "Isadora."
His smile was wide.
"How cute. Is that the first time you have corrected me?" he asked casually.
I rolled my eyes. He may not have remembered the past year, but he knew I would have said that more than once.
"Watch yourself, Pyrkagia," I muttered, attempting to step away.
In an instant I was spun back into his arms, my breasts crushed against his hard chest.
"Or what?" he whispered in my ear and then gently bit. "You'll remind me why I love you and not her?"
It was all I needed to hear. That was probably why he said it. I melted against him, my arms winding around his back as his lips kissed their way toward my mouth.
"Later," he murmured against me, kissing once softly and then pulling away.
Hunger and desire burned in his eyes. I let my gaze wander down his body, soaking him all up, wetting my lips with anticipation and then smiling triumphantly at the bulge that had appeared in his pants.
"You may go on your search now," I declared regally.
"You do vex me sometimes," he murmured, but laughter shone in his eyes as he sauntered away.
I spun around, looked over Aktor, Nico and Sonya quickly, to determine nothing had changed. Nico and Aktor were talking quietly, as one softly stroked her hair and the other massaged her knees and ankles alternately. I hoped in her sleep she was feeling loved, because it was obvious she was very much indeed.
The Chilling Change Of Air (Elemental Awakening, Book 3) Page 21