Everlasting

by Candace Knoebel

  It takes me a moment to sit up. When I do, lancing pain shoots through my ribs. I wasn’t ready for that. It shouldn’t have been so hard. I need more practice, more scenarios, and more beings to fight against. The need to bury myself further in pain swallows me whole. Inside of pain, I know I’m here. I’m present. I’m in control.

  Once the fog clears, I look up at Jaxen. He’s perched on one knee, right beside me, so close I could touch him, lose myself in him, but he’s scowling at Jezi, both staring each other down. The tension between them is unbearably thick. “You’ve been dying for this day, haven’t you? Are you happy now?” he asks her. He doesn’t sound angry with her. He sounds tired, tired because fighting against the truth takes every ounce of strength from you, and in the end, you will break. I think he’s slowly realizing that.

  “I couldn’t be further from happy,” she retorts, her eyes squinted at him.

  “Here we go again,” Gavin mutters under his breath.

  “Jax and I have only been on duty for six months,” Jezi continues, pacing in front of Jaxen. “And now we have to prepare her…a…a…fre…”

  “Don’t you dare say it,” Jaxen warns.

  She rolls her eyes. “We have to prepare someone who can’t even follow a simple command, like stay under the radar? How can we help someone who can’t follow the rules?” The way she speaks makes me feel like I’m not even here, like she doesn’t want me here.

  “I don’t think you’re seeing the point, Jezi. You never do,” Jaxen huffs out, rubbing his temples. “Most would kill for a chance like this.” He looks up her, unfazed by her glare. “She might not be ready now, but she will be if we stick by her. She could be the face of this Coven.”

  “Hold on a sec,” I start to say, but they don’t hear me. Face of the Coven? What is he talking about?

  She stops pacing and laughs bitterly, throwing her head back. The air thickens with animosity when she levels her gaze on him. “And pigs can now fly.” Her tone drops deathly low, the kind of low a woman takes when a man is treading dangerous waters. “Remember this, Jaxen Reade Gramm, as much as you’d like it to be, you are not a one man show. We are partners until one of us dies. Don’t forget that.”

  “Believe me, every breath I take is a reminder of that,” Jaxen says angrily, meeting her glare. His temper is visibly unraveling. All I can do is watch in horror as the thin strands of their relationship break one by one, leaving an awkward emptiness between us all.

  Jezi sucks in a shocked breath and spins, heading for the door. He grabs her arm. “I’m sorry, Jezi. Just take a deep breath,” he forces out, his face and voice constrained.

  She yanks her arm from him. “No, Jaxen. Not this time. We’re supposed to stick together, yet you want to walk this road alone, at least, you did.” Her hate-filled eyes cut over to me with enough implications to make me squirm on the spot. “You seem to forget that I can hear your thoughts,” she continues, looking back up at him. “Why can’t I be good enough for you? Why can’t I be the one? Why can’t you let it be my choice?” There’s so much pain in her voice, so much broken history. I feel like I’m prying in on them, like maybe they had an understanding and were finally at a point where things were working out, until I came along.

  Jaxen’s jaw goes tight. His muscles flex, and then his eyes land on mine across the room. I’m pinned in place under his gaze, almost forgetting that Jezi is standing there, waiting for an answer. Her head snaps around in my direction. An icy glare slices through me. She turns back to him and shoves him, her eyes slick with wetness.

  “You’re confusing infatuation with an affinity bond, you idiot. She’s a weakness, an obvious one.”

  He blinks a couple of times as if coming out of a daze, and looks down at her. “Jezi, I…”

  “I need some air.” The door slams behind her a moment later, leaving us all in a state of shock. His hands clench and unclench at his sides, each time, the shade of his skin turning a tone lighter.

  He turns on me, his eyes pulsing with hurt and anger. Her words shattered what little progress I’ve made with him. Her words stole everything that has happened up until this moment in an instant. Her words turned him on me.

  The sad part is…her words are true.

  “This is all your fault,” he starts in, his words filled with enough venom to take down an entire army. Something has broken inside of him. The emotional flood gate has been opened.

  A flare of anger lashes through me. “My fault?” I say in shock as my heart quickens to the pace of an angry beat. “I didn’t ask to be this way, or for you and all your problems, for that matter.” I’m too angry to think, too angry to calculate what I should and shouldn’t say; what I know can’t be taken back.

  He stalks over to me, his eyes cold and penetrating. “But you’re still here aren’t you? No one’s stopping you from leaving.” I flinch from the sudden intensity of his voice. It steadily rises, right along with my temper. For some reason, he has a way of bringing out the unreserved side of me, the side that has been trained to stay put.

  “Jaxen!” Gavin barks, coming between us. “Take a deep breath. Don’t take this out on her, brother.” He puts his hand on Jaxen’s shoulder and squeezes rather hard.

  Jaxen turns on him and shoves him across the room. “What the hell do you know?” he shouts savagely. “Do you even realize what’s going on? How are we supposed to train someone who’s powers are out of control? Who’s a magnet for evil? Who’s a myth?”

  Gavin picks himself up off the ground and turns on Jaxen, his stride wide and out for blood. He looks at him hard as he gets right in Jaxen’s face. “You know what? I’ve had your back on a lot of shit, brother. And I mean a lot of shit. But not right now. Not about this.” He stops, breathes, and then shoves a hand through his hair. “Unlike you, I do know what’s going on here. You’re shutting down. You’re pushing away, like you always do when someone gets too close.” He gets closer, his voice dropping. “You’re acting like an ass nugget.”

  His mouth shuts tight and then opens, like he wants to say more, but he doesn’t. He sighs forcefully, shakes his head, and walks out of the room with Cassie on his heels.

  I want to scream. I want to shove Jaxen for hurting me with words. I want to shake him and yell in his face and make him feel the pain I’m feeling. I want to make him feel something, something other than denial and self-loathing.

  I know it won’t help. He doesn’t want my help, and I’m not going to beg. I stand up, grimacing from the pain. He stands with me. “It’s good to know how you really feel, Jaxen,” I say bitterly, wincing and leaning a little on my side to help the pain. “I’m done here.” I turn for the door. I know this is stupid. I know there is something between us, but I also know he has a Witch…and supposedly a curse, and he might not be ready to open up to me. And there is nothing more hopeless than a heart that chooses the mind over feeling.

  But then his hand catches mine, spinning me back around to face him. I’m putty in his hands. “Wait,” he says, almost desperately. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that, any of that. I just meant that you have to let this go, what’s happening here.”

  “Is that what this is really about?” I ask frankly. “Because I think you’re the one who can’t let it go.” I don’t know where my sudden courage has come from; maybe the anger, or maybe the fact that up until this moment, everything had been ripped away from me, piece by painful piece, and I had had enough. I had reached the end of my rope. I was sick of being lied to and sick of being treated like something less than what I was.

  His head whips in my direction, his eyes disappearing into slits. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  I take a step for him, determined to put an end to this. “Your job is to be ruthless when it comes to matters of the heart so you can be in control. Isn’t that what you said to me? And yet, here I stand…scaring you.” I cross my arms, glaring up at him.

  Waves of emotion rush over his face. “I never said I was scare
d of you,” Jaxen says, his voice ghostly low.

  I move closer, inches away from his face. “You sure are acting like it. But you know what? I don’t think it has anything to do with my magic being out of control or the fact that I’m a ‘myth’”

  “Then what is it?” he asks. He almost sounds like he’s begging for me to say it, like if I say it, then it would make the truth that much easier to swallow.

  “You know exactly what I’m saying,” I say, stepping closer to him. “Not everyone can shut down like you. I see how you are. I see the fear in your eyes when faced with anything that involves emotions, and, for some reason, I make you feel something and that scares you.”

  He looks down at me, and fire burns in his eyes. It scorches my skin, melting me into a puddle of understanding. He blinks, bites his lip, curses, and then looks away. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Defeat creeps in. “How long until you admit what you feel?” I ask, almost scared to hear the answer.

  His eyes grow wide, his mouth hanging slightly open, and then he shuts it. His face hardens back into stone. “As long as it takes for it to stop.”

  My heart stiffens like clay, ready to shatter at any moment. “So is that what your curse is? Denial?”

  He flinches at the question, and I almost falter where I stand.

  So then it’s true. He really is cursed. I didn’t mean for the words to come out like that. This wasn’t how I imagined asking.

  “What are you talking about?” he breathes out, his words trembling. His grip tightens around my wrist.

  I should say nothing. I know I should leave now, before I ruin everything, but pride holds me in place. It’s more than that. It’s desperation to understand, to know the truth. “You tell me, Jaxen. Be honest for once.”

  He curses under his breath again, looking off to the side but still clinging to my hand. The muscles along the line of his jaw harden and flex, and it takes every ounce of strength in me not to run my hands along his face and soothe the internal struggle I can so visibly see. When he looks back at me, his eyes are almost black, like deep pools of pain. “You really want to know?”

  I nod, my heart ripping in half and beating in ragged pieces.

  He braces his forehead with his other hand, hiding his face from me. He pulls in a long, labored breath and then speaks. “My bloodline is cursed, and has been for as long as anyone can remember. Every Hunter born into our family bears the curse.”

  He takes in another breath. I think I do too, but I can’t be sure. I can’t even feel my own heart beating.

  “The curse pertains to our affinity bond. We don’t know why, or who cursed us. It has been buried under years of rumors and heartache.”

  “Just tell me,” I hear myself say, though my voice doesn’t sound like my own. It sounds like the voice of someone scared.

  His hand falls from his face as his eyes bore through mine, freezing me in place. Shackles form around my heart, keeping it from beating. “If I fall in love with Jezi, she dies. If I don’t, I die. As a Hunter in my family, we will never know love, and if we do, we will lose it all. That’s my curse. That’s why she hates you. You have what I never offered her, and that’s exactly why I can’t be with you. It’s not right. It’s not fair to her.”

  Every word in his mouth had a noose wrapped around it, and when he spoke them, word by word, they jumped, free falling to their death, hanging any chance we had. I can’t think. I can’t even breathe. Die. He’s going to die. He pushed her away so he would die and not her. He is cursed. He will die.

  Die.

  “Jaxen…”

  “No!” he yells, pushing my hand away. His eyes dig into mine, pooled in pain and anger. His breath hitches in his throat, desperately dragging the air in. “We are Hunters, Faye. We don’t feel. We don’t fear. That is the definition of strength. That is what makes us, and being around you makes me not want that. You make me want to be someone else, someone free, and I can’t afford to be that way. My time is limited, and while it is, I must make use of it by devoting myself to the Coven. That’s what I must be until my last breath, because to truly let myself go, to let myself feel this…whatever it is between us, whatever it could be…I know it will be taken from me one day...” He stops, a shudder rippling from his shoulders to his legs. “I have to be strong.”

  My heart is torn into pieces that can never be put back together. My breathing is shallow and labored. He moves, leaving me, walking away from me. I can’t let that happen. He has to be wrong. He has to feel loved. He has to know.

  “What if we can find a way?”

  He stops, steps away from the door, his chest rising and falling heavily. A bitter laugh rips from his soul. “You think we haven’t tried over generations upon generations? There’s no way to undo it. Now you sound like Jezi.” He turns back for the door.

  “So you’re just going to walk away? Shut yourself off and never know love? Never know what your heart is truly capable of?”

  His head falls. “I have to.”

  And just like that, he leaves me standing there, lost and hollow. Just like that, he becomes a breeze, drifting past me. He’s untouchable and unattainable.

  He’s everything I’ll never have.

  I FIND MYSELF IN FRONT of Katie’s building. My head pounds, but I keep moving one foot in front of the other, desperate to find solace. The inside is nothing like I expect it to be. Novices scatter about, all heading either to their rooms or to their next class.

  I try to blend in and find my way, but after my display in the dining hall last night, I don’t think blending in is an option for me any longer. The eyes of every novice penetrate my thin exterior. I’m aware of every hair on my body, every move I make, and it makes my insides overheat. I want to glare at all of them, yell and scream to make them stop, but instead, I avoid eye contact and continue forward.

  My breath rushes out when I reach Katie’s room. I dab at the sweat on my forehead and knock on her door. She opens it a moment later, but the look on her face makes me shrink even further in place. She stands, holding the door, her eyes narrowed on me. “Yeah?”

  I haven’t heard this tone from her before, at least not directed toward me. “Can I come in?” I ask, pulling the collar back on my jacket. I feel like it’s suffocating me, inch by leathery inch.

  She sighs forcefully, and then steps aside. A book rests open on the desk, the pages blank. She has two photos on the wall, one of her and her family, and one of us standing together on graduation day. My heart forms into mush.

  “So,” she says in a tone as cold as the early November air outside. She folds her arms across her chest. She’s wearing black jeans and a black long sleeve shirt. Her auburn hair is pulled back with a pencil, the same way my mother always wore hers. The knot in my stomach pulls tighter.

  “Katie, I…”

  “You what? Ruined everything?” she spouts off, her arms falling to her side in long, rigid lines. “You think you’re so cool, don’t you?”

  My heart speeds up, racing to catch my mind up with what’s happening. “What are you talking about?” I ask slowly, carefully.

  She drags a hand through her hair, the pencil falling to the ground. Curls spill down her back. “What am I talking about?” she asks animatedly. “What do you mean, what am I talking about? Bypassing the rules? Using your powers in the dining hall? Were you just trying to show off?” Her voice is octaves higher now, her face a mottled shade of red.

  “Katie, I was only trying to help you. Chett was…”

  “I already told you, Chett’s my problem to deal with, not yours. Got it? I can take care of myself. I could have handled it, and now, now he’s being punished! Do you know what that means?!”

  “You won’t get slapped around anymore?” I ask through my teeth. The pulse in my wrists is pounding and making my hands shake.

  She flinches as if my words have slapped her. Disgust curls her features. “How dare you?” she seethes.

  I
take a step for her. I don’t understand where this is coming from, why she’s acting like this. “Katie…”

  “No, Faye. We knew this day would come, the day where we reach a fork in our friendship. It came, only you’re here at the Academy and you’ve done nothing but screw everything up. You’ve left me powerless! I can’t even train, Faye, not without Chett. I don’t even know when he’ll be back, but when he comes back, he’s going to be so pissed. Not to mention that everyone thinks I’m some weak little Witch.”

  “They’re wrong…”

  “No, you were wrong! You shouldn’t have done that. I asked you not to and you didn’t listen. You don’t understand how this Coven works, do you? You can’t just parade around flaunting your powers like that. Despite being,” she pauses, looking me up and down as if I’m contagious, “whatever you are, you can’t do whatever you want.”

  “Is that what’s bothering you? Really? Or is it the fact that I’m not poor and helpless anymore? Is it because you thought you were the shining star, off to the Academy, while poor old Faye was stuck as a Defect in college? Is it because I don’t need you anymore?” I stop as soon as the last sentence slips out, sucking in a huge breath. Wet warmth covers my cheeks.

  “Leave,” she says, her words low and almost inaudible. She looks off to the side. Tears slip down her cheeks.

  It takes everything in me not to flip on her. It takes everything in me not to scream in her face and shake sense into her. It takes everything in me not to beg for forgiveness. I know she’s upset, and I get that it’s because she’s powerless, but somewhere inside of her, there has to be the Katie I know, the one that puts friends above anything else and promised we would stick together no matter what.

  “I’m so sorry, Kat,” I whisper hugging an arm across my chest. “I don’t want to fight with you. You’re my best friend, my sister. I never meant to hurt you.”

  “Leave!” she screams, her hands in fists at her sides.

  I flinch back, hearing all the hurt in her tone, the hurt that I’ve caused, and walk out without another word.