Risen (The Firebird Trilogy Book 2)

by Stephanie Harbon

  I felt relieved, “Good. I wouldn’t have let you pay for it yourself anyway.”

  “I wouldn’t have minded, if I had any money,” he said.

  “I know,” I replied. “And that’s exactly why I wouldn’t let you.”

  As we walked back to the Grand Hall I caught a glimpse of a load of people walking up the path towards the Palace; a lot of them dressed up. I turned to Jayson, who also looked confused, and I asked; “Who are they?”

  Jayson frowned, “I have no idea.”

  It was getting late now and as we entered the Grand Hall I was shocked to see it had transformed. Because only darkness seeped in through the windows, the great crystal chandeliers had been lit. Beautiful shards of light sprinkled across the decorated room; catching the curve of a marble statue and the gold paint on the walls. Everything had been polished and buffed. It looked stunning.

  There were also, curiously, tables and chairs set up with candles and expensive tableware. And loads of food and drink had been lavishly laid out at the other end of the room. Drummers and musicians were seated opposite the banquet; preparing their instruments. And in the centre of the commotion stood Chara, Nik, Adrian, Ebony, Flint and the rest of Jayson’s roommates. It was, quite obviously, a party.

  “Happy Birthday Ruby,” Chara shouted, a smile erupting across her features.

  I walked over in astonishment.

  “When did you do all this?” I wondered, awed.

  “Well I had a lot of help,” she nodded to Flint and Evelyn, who had been hiding out of the way. “And it’s for you both as well; as everyone who gets Bound has to have a party the night before. It’s as much to withhold tradition as anything.” She came over and gave me a hug, simultaneously whispering in my ear, “If you are seriously going through with this Ruby; it has to look like you’re seriously going through with this. Everything has to be done properly.”

  I nodded as she pulled away. So this was as much a way to prove I was being serious about my Chosen as it was a birthday present. It did sour the surprise slightly. Still, it was better than nothing. I’d been expecting nothing.

  It wasn’t long before I was all dressed up and what seemed like the whole of Forenna turned up on my doorstep. It wasn’t just the young and reckless friends of Nik, Flint and Jayson; it was also the Elders and the High Elders, important families and relations. Chara had deliberately invited anyone influential.

  Unfortunately that meant Silva had received an invitation.

  Silva came straight over to me as soon as she arrived, pulling me to one side and baring her sharp teeth as she hissed. “Why haven’t you done it yet?”

  My heartbeat flooded in my ears. Of course, I’d said I would have killed Acheron by tonight. “I’ve been busy,” I said lamely.

  “Look,” she snarled. “I don’t care about you. I would quite happily watch you die. It’s your choice whether you help me or not, but if you don’t do it by tomorrow I will out your secret in front of everyone at your own Binding Ceremony.”

  I stared at her in horror, was she really that cruel?

  “It’s your choice,” she spat before walking off and plastering a fake smile onto her icy features as she spoke to one of the Fire Elders.

  I stood there for a moment; my heart sinking. I knew I couldn’t do it. I knew that’s why I’d been avoiding even thinking about it. I couldn’t do it.

  But I had no choice, did I?

  “She’s a piece of work isn’t she?” I heard an unmistakable voice say.

  I turned in astonishment, my heart flying, to see Kieran behind me.

  “Where the hell have you been?!” I demanded, my emotions scattering. I took in his appearance. He was dirty and dishevelled, but whole and alive. There were a few cuts on his arms and face, but he didn’t seem particularly damaged; though there were deep lines carved under his eyes.

  “I went for a walk,” he said casually.

  “You went for a walk,” I repeated, slightly hysterically. “Everyone’s been worried sick.”

  “What about you?” he wondered bluntly.

  His question caught me off guard. “What?”

  “Have you been worried sick?” he asked.

  His question made me feel angry. He knew that I’d been worried; it was so obvious by my reaction to his arrival. He was just trying to make me say it to prove a point. To prove that I couldn’t live without him in my life; contradicting what I’d previously said. He’d been back thirty seconds and already I wanted him to leave.

  “Go and see Chara,” I snapped. “She wants to know if you’re alive or not. Though I don’t personally see why.”

  “I don’t want to see Chara,” he said. “I want to know if you will do it.”

  “Do what?” I demanded, my voice still as sharp as razors.

  “Kill Acheron.”

  I was speechless for a moment, because I didn’t know the answer myself.

  “Can you do it?” he asked firmly.

  I looked up into those blazing green eyes and turned away from him. I wouldn’t allow him to question me like this. I didn’t have to answer to him. I didn’t even have to tolerate him. He’d lost that privilege when he’d slept with those girls.

  “Go and see Chara,” I growled over my shoulder. “Let me sort out my own problems.”

  As I stomped away I heard him mutter, “That’s a no then.”

  Chapter Twenty Eight

  The evening didn’t exactly turn out to be the wonderful surprise I thought it would be. In reality it involved a lot of nauseating small talk with a load of pretentious aristocrats who I didn’t recognise. However as the night wore on -and the Elders and families left- leaving only the young and the drunk; the party took a different turn.

  It had become Flint’s usual definition of a ‘good’ party. There was a lot of drinking, slutty behaviour, and the occasional blast of violence. For the latter part of the night my mind was elsewhere, wondering what time would be good to sneak out after Acheron, who’d left hours ago. His face was fixed permanently in the back of my mind. As time aged I knew I needed help.

  Chara and Nik had gone home an hour ago, along with Kieran’s sister Ebony and their family, but Adrian and Kieran had still been around and Jayson had been with me. Now however, I seemed to have been ditched.

  It was one o’clock and the party was still in full swing, with people dancing to the loud music and generally having a good time; everyone except me, the host. Eventually I sat down and ate some of the unwanted, perishing leftovers that remained from earlier on. I was alone with my thoughts.

  After a while I knew what I had to do. I had to ask either Jayson or Kieran for help with the Acheron problem. Decided, I stood up and walked over to the nearest person who looked mostly sober. She was an Earthbird no older than sixteen, so I asked if she’d seen Kieran; thinking that she’d be more likely to know him than Jayson.

  She deliberated for a moment, as if I’d asked her something greatly important, then replied courteously, “I saw him a little while ago, talking to some girl. I think they went off on their own down there.” She pointed towards the northern door.

  Her words made my heart sink. So that was it then. Kieran really didn’t care about me at all. Right now he was probably off in room somewhere with a random girl who caught his eye. I asked her if she’d seen Jayson and she replied no. I tried asking others about Jayson, but nobody knew his location.

  I sighed irritably, and then went off towards the door the girl had originally pointed at; away from the music and loud, intoxicated people. As I entered the corridor that lead to a collection of guest bedrooms my ears rang shrilly from the blaring music in the hall. As I walked the hallway was eerily quiet, which made my thudding heartbeat sound even louder. I listened at each door, praying that I wouldn’t hear Kieran’s voice. Deep down I hoped the girl had been wrong.

  I went right to the bottom of the hallway and knew that each room had been empty. Despite myself, I breathed a sigh of relief. Kieran obviously
wasn’t down here with someone. Then I noticed something glint on the polished floor. I bent down to pick it up; it was a shirt button.

  That’s when I heard his voice.

  A searing pain lurched in my chest as I stepped closer to the sound, turning a corner and realising it was coming from the first door on the right. The walls of the corridor seemed to shrink around me and I felt sick instantly.

  I could hear him moaning. The tone of the sound was unforgettable and indisputable; a tone of ecstatic pleasure. A sound made during a fit of lust. He was in there with someone; and I knew exactly what he was doing.

  My body stepped closer before my head realised what it was doing. My shaking hand reached for the door handle; knowing I needed accurate confirmation. If I see it happen, if I have concrete evidence that he didn’t care anymore, then I might one day be able to get over him. It might cut me so deep that I could never forgive him.

  My sweaty fingers were convulsing vigorously as I carefully turned the handle. I was terrified. Tears filled my eyes as another deep moan of lust came from Kieran’s mouth on the other side of the door. I felt betrayed, utterly devastated and acutely embarrassed that I’d ever thought he actually cared. I swung open the door, my heart stopping momentarily.

  It took me a few seconds to make sense of the scene before me.

  The first thing I noticed was the darkly tanned fingers that clung tightly to another’s body; clutching their skin in a rough, desperate embrace. Then I saw that the other person’s body was oddly pale to be matched with those cinnamon fingers and that their naked back was awfully wide and muscular to be female. The two people in the bed, locked in a passionate embrace, froze as I stepped through the doorway, but it was only when they turned around, their face’s astounded and fearful, that I understood what was happening.

  It hadn’t been Kieran’s voice I’d heard. It had been Adrian’s.

  I had forgotten how similar their voices were; virtually identical in tone and texture. It was usually only Adrian’s tendency to grunt words rather than pronounce them that made his voice distinguishable from Kieran’s. Relief didn’t have time to register in my system, as I was too astonished by the second figure staring at me from the bed; his amber eyes, like liquid honey, were wide and glazed with horror.

  “Jayson?” I asked, my throat scoffing air in disbelief.

  He was still practically on top of Adrian; having barely moved an inch since I walked through the door. Adrian still had his long arms wrapped around Jayson’s back and Jayson had one hand propped on the bed for support and the other touched Adrian’s bare chest, his fingers spread wide over his heart. Both of them were breathing heavily as they automatically backed away from each other.

  Instantly Jayson got out of bed. He was completely naked, shoving jeans on faster than I’d thought possible. He left the rest of his clothes and walked towards me, his hands stretched out, palms facing me, as if to calm me down. “Ruby,” he said my name slowly on purpose. “It’s not what it looks like.”

  My mouth dropped open even further. Seriously? He was going to try that? There was no other explanation than the one that had first sprung to my mind. There was no way I would be convinced that what I’d seen was something other than a passionate exchange between two lovers.

  Jayson checked that there was nobody outside before he quickly shut the door. Then he turned to me and grasped both of my hands in his. His hands were hot and sweaty. I pulled away from them but he repeated, “It’s not what it looks like, Ruby.”

  I looked from him to Adrian, who was also shoving on jeans, and then back to Jayson again. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Jayson looked flabbergasted by my response. I expect he thought I’d be disgusted and angry as well as shocked and speechless; but I just couldn’t take it in fast enough to feel anything other than astonishment. Jayson was gay. And so was Adrian. Suddenly a lot of things made sense.

  Like when I’d listened to Kieran and Jayson talking outside of the tent on the way back from the caves. Jayson had said: It’s to do with me, isn’t it? Me and the person I love. He had said person. Not girl. Person. And how he said Kieran would never click on. Kieran would never click onto the fact that he and Adrian were together.

  And that night, when I’d slept in his bedroom to avoid Kieran, Jayson had said, The Ashaiks are a rare breed of heartless thugs. They’ll use you and leave you. He was talking about Adrian. About what Adrian did to him. And then after that, when I’d asked if he’d ever been in love, he’d said: Yes, but they were stolen away by Kieran. I’d thought he’d meant me, but he didn’t at all. He meant Adrian. Kieran had stolen Adrian away when they left Kariak.

  Things now made sense about Adrian too. Like that weird interaction between him and Jayson when he’d accidentally called him Jay. And why Adrian had randomly disappeared upstairs, not into his own apartment, the morning we went with Blaze, despite the fact he’d said he’d left his blade. He’d gone up to say goodbye to Jayson. That’s why it had been awkward when Adrian had asked about Jayson and I getting Bound.

  Now I thought about it there were several occasions when I’d thought that the relationship between them was just odd.

  And of course, that was what had happened between them. That was why Jayson was so upset when Adrian left Kariak, without a word, all that time ago. That’s why he sent Lynk after them; thinking that Lynk would just bring them back and punish them. Adrian had broken his heart.

  Jayson had loved him.

  “Does Kieran know?” I asked, looking up seriously at the both of them.

  Jayson sighed, knowing that there was no way he could lie his way through this, and said, surrendering, “No. Nobody knows. You’re the first.”

  Kieran still thinks that Jayson loves me. It was morbidly amusing.

  “But what about all that with Briseis?” I demanded to Adrian. I then looked at Jayson and asked, “And what about all of that with me, Jayson?”

  Jayson sighed, rubbing his face tiredly. When he removed his hand his expression was deeply apologetic, “I had to try and move on Ruby.”

  “All this time I thought you liked me,” I said. “I felt so guilty, especially when you found out about me and Kieran. And yet you’ve been doing this behind my back?” I was honestly upset. I thought I could trust Jayson with my life. It was horrible he didn’t even trust me enough to know he was gay.

  “You don’t understand Ruby,” Jayson said, looking seriously into my eyes. “In your mind this is acceptable. But the reality is, if we were found out, we wouldn’t just be cursed and killed. Think of it; the human Ashaik and a male Firebird. We would be made into the biggest example Kariak had ever seen; who knows what they’d do to us.” He shuddered at the possibilities. “I don’t want to know what they’d do.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me though?” I asked, upset. “I wouldn’t have been bothered if you told me you were gay.”

  “I’m not gay,” Jayson said; his face stern. I raised an eyebrow dubiously but his expression remained serious. “I have never even looked at another man in my life. I love women, I truly do,” he said honestly, then glanced at Adrian with a pained half-smile, “It’s just him. I can’t help it. I always come back to him.”

  Adrian returned the gaze, his eyes guarded, and then he turned to me. “You don’t know what it’s like, Ruby,” he said. “We could never tell anyone.”

  “You think I don’t know what it’s like?” I demanded, amazed that he would say such a thing. “I know exactly what it feels like to hope for someone you can never be with.” I stared at Jayson, “And I know exactly what it’s like to have them break you.” I lowered my head miserably; I knew all too well.

  Jayson pulled me in to a hug and stroked my hair soothingly. Why was it me who was suddenly such a state? I felt tears roll down my cheeks.

  “We don’t choose how we feel Ruby,” Jayson murmured gently into my ear. “We are born, and this is what we are. You cannot hope to change anything, but at least now we bot
h know. We are together in this, and I am still your best friend.”

  I nodded, eventually letting him go and shaking myself off.

  “So what now?” I wondered finally.

  “Everything continues as normal.” Jayson said. “Tomorrow we will go through with the ceremony as planned.”

  “But what about you two?” I asked them.

  It was Adrian who answered. “It continues as normal,” he repeated Jayson’s words with a hard sadness.

  Jayson glanced up at him, his eyes flashing like a cat.

  “No,” he growled angrily, “I know exactly what you mean by that Adrian and I won’t do it anymore. You can’t shut me out for weeks and then expect me to keep coming back to you. I can’t keep forgiving you.”

  “I don’t expect you to,” Adrain said curtly. “I expect you to stay away.”

  “You know I can’t do that,” Jayson snapped, his bare chest abruptly heaving with emotion. “You know how I feel.”

  Adrian got up, ignoring Jayson and picking up his shirt from off the floor. He pulled it over his head. His expression was hard and devoid of life as he stepped closer to us. He stood before Jayson and was his usual empty, emotionless self as he said, “I can’t accept it Jayson. It disgusts me.”

  Jayson’s features solidified into something hard and infuriated. “You mean I disgust you,” he stated sternly, pain in his eyes. “You find it disgusting that I love you; that I want you physically. It disgusts you that I need you to love me.”

  Adrian didn’t glance away. He stared straight into Jayson’s eyes as he coldly answered, “Yes. It does. And it disgusts me that I do.”

  And with that he opened the door and left us both.

  Jayson walked over to the bed and sat down, placing his head in his hands. I sat beside him and heard him mutter, “One day, I think I might kill him.”

  I lay my head against his shoulder and murmured, “You were right. They are both heartless.”