by Carol Oates
“You’ve already changed more than you realize,” Lofi argued softly.
“Not enough. None of us knows the future, but I don’t know if she is ever going to have a chance at something vaguely resembling something close to whatever normal is.” He pressed his cheek to the top of Lofi’s hair. Sebastian had never noticed before how Lofi smelled. Her fragrance was different from Candra’s, and he inhaled the comforting flowery scent. Sebastian frowned, wondering how much more of his feminine side he could expect love to bring forth. He softened more each day, and he couldn’t afford to be soft right now. “I need to do this.”
Lofi squeezed his arm. “I know. My little boy is growing up.”
He turned and kissed her hair. “Thanks.”
He was positive, despite his reservations about the side-effects of his decision, that it was the right one. “Do you think it will hurt?”
“Yes,” Lofi answered without missing a beat.
Sebastian’s phone vibrated in his pocket. He shifted and reached into his jeans to retrieve it, another thing he never used to do. Now he hung on every beep with the warm hope that it was Candra. A message flashed up on the screen. Sebastian read it and groaned as Lofi sheepishly untangled her arm from his.
“I really wish people would stop with all the secrets. For some reason, it’s always me they manage to bite on the ass.”
“You want to explain why the hell Candra met with Lilith in private?” Sebastian demanded.
Chapter Fifteen
LESS THAN AN HOUR LATER, Sebastian stood in the muted jewel-toned light coming in through the leaded windows in Draven’s library. He focused intently on a small soldered joint in the metal, trying his best not to think of any possible conversations Candra could have had with Lilith. Why would she keep the meeting from him? Although, he couldn’t take the moral high ground on this occasion.
Ananchel had promised she wouldn’t mention their phone conversation the night before, and that should have been enough for him, but it wasn’t. Nothing was ever enough when it came to Candra. He needed just a little more time and wished to pause his life right at that moment. He wasn’t ready to face whatever the future wanted to fire at them next.
“What do you think this means?” he asked aloud.
“Why would I know?” Draven replied from where he sat at one of the nearby matching desks, signing documents under lamplight.
He’d frowned and turned away when Sebastian had shared the contents of the text message he’d received from Lilith, goading him about a meeting with Candra. She’d obviously wanted to rile him, and it had worked.
“You should have sent someone to retrieve her sooner,” Sebastian spat, clenching his fist so tightly, his knuckles cracked.
Draven snorted. “She has free will, Sebastian. You know the rules. I can’t make her do anything.”
Sebastian threw his head back and turned to the insistent scraping of Draven’s pen over paper. “Damn free will. The girl will agree to anything if she thinks she can protect someone she cares about.”
Draven finally lifted his navy eyes and looked at Sebastian. A few weeks ago, standing in the same room would have been unimaginable. Now, Sebastian found himself willing to trust Draven in a way he couldn’t have conceived of before.
Draven’s dark hair fell across his forehead, and he threaded his fingers through it, pushing it away from his face. He seemed weary. The recent months had worn on them all. “If you damn free will, you damn us all. What are we striving for, if it isn’t that?”
“Always so philosophical,” Sebastian scoffed, thinking Draven had already begun to sound like Gabe, the person he considered a wise brother.
He ran his fingertips lightly over the desk, observed by Draven. The surface was flawless. Who would have known Sebastian had pounded his old rival into the dark wood just weeks ago?
“You’ve had it repaired,” Sebastian noted.
Draven put down his pen and proceeded to fix the cuff of his shirt, rolling it up his forearm. “Replaced. Some things are irreparable.”
“It looks just the same.”
“But I know it’s not the same.”
Sebastian tapped his index finger on the polished wood thoughtfully. Yes, it was a universal truth: some things, once broken, were broken forever—like trust. It might be patched up and smoothed over, but it would always be the thing that had once been shattered. Draven had told him before the ball that anything could be forgiven with time. Sebastian still wasn’t convinced. He wondered if Candra would ever forgive him for the choice he had made. It had been different in the beginning, before they had fallen in love; back then, she hadn’t trusted him anyway. Trust had grown over time and had now been ripped apart by both of them keeping secrets.
He bit down on the inside of his lip and tasted blood before he spun in the direction of the drinks cabinet. Sebastian poured two fingers of amber wine after covering the distance in a few long strides. He knocked the contents back, hoping to dull the edge of his frayed nerves, while still holding the crystal decanter in the other hand. The fiery liquid mixed with the salty, metallic tang in his mouth, and he swallowed hard.
“Help yourself,” Draven muttered, rolling up his other sleeve.
What is it about him and his rolled-up sleeves? Sebastian contemplated caustically…and the bare feet? Why did Draven hate wearing shoes so much? In an afterthought of courtesy, Sebastian held up the decanter, offering him a drink.
“If you can spare some,” Draven quipped dryly.
Sebastian had to get a grip, or he’d to ruin everything. He felt as though he stood on the very edge of a diving board over a half-emptied pool, ready to jump—anything could happen. He might crash into the tiled bottom and be pulverized beyond recognition. Perhaps the water would be enough to break his fall, and he’d get out of this with his life and everything he never dreamt of wanting. Potential was an amazing, exhilarating, and terrifying force.
He placed Draven’s glass on the desk with a little too much force, making the amber liquid slosh around inside the crystal. “Where are they? They should have been here by now.”
“They are en route.”
Something about Draven’s tone irritated Sebastian. It almost seemed as if Draven wasn’t fully paying attention to him. Sebastian was used to everyone paying attention to him. Until recently, he was used to whatever he had to say being most important. He was beginning to feel a little redundant since his agreement with Draven. He had been feeling redundant even before that, if he was honest. No one needed him to lead. No one should ever have trusted his decisions. He was as flawed and selfish as any human. Despite all this, Sebastian had no desire to expend the energy it would take to figure out what went on behind Draven’s chiseled bone structure, so he ignored him to go pour another drink. When that didn’t calm his nerves, he attempted to distract himself with the old gramophone Draven kept by the wall and began going through the old—easily breakable—shellac disks.
Although he preferred to keep his surroundings simple and familiar, he wondered why Draven still used this old thing. It was beautiful with its gleaming veneered wood and impressive polished brass horn, but the sound couldn’t compare to the crystal clarity of an MP3 player. He pulled a disk out of its sleeve carefully and held it by the edges between the flats of his palms, placing it on the player. He took a moment to steady his hand before he lifted the arm and deposited it on the outermost edge of the circular grooves covering the black surface. A crackling erupted from the speaker, followed shortly by beautiful piano music.
Sebastian let out a breath as if the room had been a vacuum, and suddenly sweet oxygen filled it. He didn’t resent the questionable sound quality of the music. In fact, contrary to what had been going through his head, the music transported him back in time.
He closed his eyes and was back to a simpler age. A time when he’d known who he was and what was expected of him, and he’d never questioned it. Long before he and Draven were forced into a shaky allegiance and h
is life had been turned upside down and inside out. Back then, the prospect of falling in love, let alone walking away from it, would have been incomprehensible to him. Maybe without realizing, he had found another way to grapple with his past, by simply keeping himself surrounded by it.
Time hadn’t meant anything much to Sebastian until recently. There was little point to altering anything when he himself did not change. His possessions lasted as long as they lasted, falling apart before he replaced them. What was the point when nothing endured as long as he did? He’d always thought it was a control thing, that he liked it simple. He hadn’t understood himself at all. It had always been fear that held him back and kept him from moving with the times. He had spent his entire existence standing still in the midst of an ever-changing cyclone of shifting life. Life moved forward without him while he just stood there, an ancient, immovable, practically indestructible object. Now, when he was finally ready to face the future, it threatened to rip the rug out from under him.
“They’re here.”
Draven’s voice snapped him back. Sebastian blinked a few times in an effort to shake off his thoughts. Thinking about it after he’d already accepted his fate would only serve to make it harder. Draven placed his phone back on the desk.
“Candra and Ananchel are here too. They’re on their way up.”
Sebastian rolled his shoulders back and stuffed his fists into his pockets. “I have to leave.”
Draven’s eyebrows rose suspiciously. “What?”
“I have to leave,” Sebastian repeated, rocking back on his heels.
Draven opened his mouth and then pressed his lips together and shook his head, as if he couldn’t be bothered to ask whatever question was on his mind.
“Say it,” Sebastian grunted, thinking his situation would all be so much easier afterward, once they got through this final obstacle and they could be rid of each other. They all still judged him. They observed and dissected every move he made, and nothing was ever the right decision for them. No doubt everyone in his circle would offer an opinion on his latest plans. He intended to make sure everything was in place before he faced them.
“Nothing,” Draven answered casually while shuffling the papers he had just signed. “It’s simply that you were the one who suggested we all meet here to work out a strategy, and now you are leaving as if a resolution doesn’t concern you.”
“Are you saying that you can’t handle one meeting?”
Draven’s eyes flashed to Sebastian, the color of a moonless night. His expression barely contained the lightning bolt of anger that fired through him at the suggestion. Sebastian didn’t care that it was a petty shot or that it was a distraction. He had never felt so sure and yet so afraid, and the last thing on his mind was sparing Draven’s sensibilities.
“No, I am not saying that,” Draven stated. “I simply don’t believe I could have misjudged you so dramatically. What is wrong with you anyway?”
“Wrong?” Sebastian parroted with a forced air of nonchalance and taking an unconscious step nearer to the liquor cabinet.
Draven leaned forward on the desk and crossed his arms. His long bangs fell across his forehead, casting his navy eyes in shadow and making it almost impossible for Sebastian to gauge what he was really thinking. He tilted his head to the side and lazily picked up the crystal tumbler, rolling it between his palms for a moment while he continued to examine Sebastian.
Sebastian’s muscles tensed further in reflex until the tendons in his neck strained as though they might snap at the lightest pressure. His instinct was to fight, since fleeing was not in his nature, and he resented being under a microscope to be scrutinized in such a manner. Finally, Draven knocked back the content of his glass in one loud go.
“You’re…” Draven paused for a moment and chewed the corner of his lip, apparently searching for the perfect word. “Twitchy.”
“Twitchy,” Sebastian scoffed and felt his forehead crease.
“Yes.” Draven stood. Once out from behind the confines of his desk, Sebastian observed he had no shoes on.
The peculiar nature of Draven’s little habits distracted Sebastian. Draven’s toes curled into the wooden floor as if gripping onto the surface with each step.
“You’re jittery,” Draven said thoughtfully. “More disagreeable than usual, and you haven’t been able to sit or stand still for longer than a few seconds.”
“And you continue as if nothing is going on,” Sebastian fired back at him, waving his hand in the direction of the neatly stacked papers on the desk.
Draven snorted, and his lips pulled up in an amused smirk. “What would you have me do, Sebastian? Give up? Presume all is lost when we have come so far?”
Sebastian scowled and let out a weary sigh. “It’s Lilith.” It was a half-lie.
“No.” Draven shook his head and narrowed his eyes. “It’s more than that. You are a warrior, created to be a protector and a leader. You should be riled up by the prospect of a war. Not too long ago, you would have been.”
“Maybe I’m out of practice, or maybe the idea of war is not as appetizing as it once was.”
Draven threaded his long fingers through his hair. The action revealed his eyes to the light and made the gold inside them spark. “War was never appetizing, but Lilith is here. You know as well as I do that if she is the threat, then a battle is inevitable now. War isn’t a last resort any longer. It is the only option left open to us. Payne warned us that our enemy will devour everything we’ve built here, everything we are trying to protect.”
Sebastian said nothing. There was nothing he could say to explain away his actions. Draven had once told him the cost of peace was a high and one he may not be prepared to pay in the end. He was wrong. They stood in silence for a moment. Draven seemed to be waiting for him to change his mind. It wasn’t going to happen.
“Okay,” Draven agreed at last and turned from Sebastian as if his disappointment was too great to look at him.
Sebastian left quickly, hoping he wouldn’t run into any of his family on the way out.
Chapter Sixteen
THE SMELL OF MOLD, glue paste, and damp permeated the frigid air in the dark alleyway. Layer after layer of posters, some barely hanging and some almost rotted away to pulp, lined the brick walls. Here and there, someone had done a bad job of sloshing paste around in a lackluster attempt to get another one to stick. They rolled away like wilted flowers lacking the vitality to stay put. Rancid garbage overflowed from rusted metal dumpsters. Sebastian didn’t want to think about the other fragrances lingering in the air and going into his lungs.
Hardly any traffic passed on the narrow street end. A twenty-foot-high metal fence topped with barbed wire blocked the other. This was a bad part of town to be hanging around dark crevices and was practically an invitation to the scum that survived in the underworld of Acheron. They were like vampires, sucking the life out of the city and its residents. The meanest, most violent criminals, junkies, and prostitutes occupied these buildings. It was the one place in the city he could go to and know he wasn’t followed. Even Watchers didn’t come here. The dwellers didn’t want to be saved. Unfortunately, the malevolence surging through the city was no longer confined to just here.
Sebastian accidently kicked a discarded can, and a rat scurried across the broken concrete at his feet. He had been pacing for thirty minutes. His stomach tumbled continuously as he wiped his sweaty palms on his jeans, despite the chill soaking through his clothes and sinking into his bones. His entire body shivered, and his muscles cramped painfully. He worried about his presence drawing out unwelcome elements and imagined this was what an addict experienced, waiting to score a fix from their dealer.
“Do you come here often?” Ananchel’s sultry voice teased from behind him at the end of the alley.
Sebastian wheeled and turned mid-stride to see Ananchel posturing casually, hand on hip and illuminated by the blinking streetlight behind her. He let out a relieved breath and took a few steps
toward her.
“I didn’t know if you would come,” he admitted, realizing he had been the master of his own torment and torturing himself with reasons why she wouldn’t.
“I couldn’t just leave. How would it look, both of us sneaking off together? People might talk. Besides, when have I ever not shown?”
“What happened?”
Ananchel shrugged. “If you were so concerned, you would have stayed.” Obviously noting Sebastian’s glower, she went on without a verbal prompt. “Your precious little flightless bird was defiant as ever. She swears she met Lilith with the intention of gaining information but garnered none.”
“You believe her?” he asked.
Another shrug. “Candra is her father’s daughter, Sebastian. Don’t be so quick to judge others by your less-than-moral standards. I believe she was more than a little disappointed by your absence.” She sauntered forward gracefully, placing one foot in front of the other, as if walking an invisible line on the ground. “I must say, I didn’t expect your call so soon.”
Sebastian stood very still, his hands by his side clenched tightly into fists as Ananchel made her way toward him. Her dark eyes and ruby lips gleamed, and her hair moved around her face like a halo of burning light. Ananchel’s obvious amusement at Sebastian calling on her forced him to fight the shudder that would otherwise have wracked his body. She approached with the arrogance of a large cat prowling after prey and never believing for an instant that she would lose her target.
Ananchel lifted her hand and touched Sebastian’s shoulder so lightly that he barely registered it at first. Neither of them said a word, and Sebastian’s breathing grew louder in the quiet. Her touch felt foreign and intrusive now, as if a complete stranger was grazing her fingertips across his collarbone under his jacket. Ananchel circled him, continuing her languid caresses of his upper body, and he caught her scent, rich and heavy…almost musky. Ananchel smelled of sex and all the depraved acts he had once conceded to with her.