by Lainy Lane
“I think I have every right after everything.” The attitude returns to Tristan’s voice.
“To be upset, yes. To be flat out rude to me, no.”
Tristan sighs, “Look, I’m just trying to understand all of this, Calandra. So much has changed, about you, about us. I just don’t get it. This isn’t you. This isn’t my Cali. My Cali is a good, sweet girl that knows the difference between right and wrong and always puts others before herself.”
“I’m sorry.” She realizes that she has said that every time she’s seen Tristan since their arrival and she feels stupid for it. Surely there has to be more she can say.
“Do you remember the kiss in the rain, outside of my car at your house?” Tristan smiles as he recalls the memory from several months back, before things had gotten complicated with another world, and back when Tristan was the center of her universe. “You had always wanted to have a romantic kiss in the rain like couples do in the movies, you said. So, when we got to your house and it started raining, I took the chance to fill that for you. But it was so awkward to have all the rain sloshing over us. We were cold, and all we could do was laugh. It may not have been the blockbuster romantic event you’d hoped for exactly, but it was one of the greatest nights I’ve ever had because it was genuine.”
“Tristan, don’t.” She puts her hand over his mouth to stop him from continuing the story.
“Talk to me, Calandra, please.” He looks desperate, he is begging and pleading with his eyes, so she gives in. She takes her mask off and holds it to her side.
“I’m fragile right now is all, in a bit of a damaged state.” The pain is clear in her eyes and Calandra takes a deep breath to push it away quickly. She feels powerful and resolved with the mask of blank emotions pulled back over her face, which is quite fitting at a Masquerade Ball.
“I guess you don’t even need that thing at all, do you?” Tristan points to the actual masquerade mask in her hand by her side. “Your powers give you a mask of your own apparently.” Feelings flash across Tristan’s face one by one; hurt, betrayal, confusion, and desperation. Calandra finds herself wondering what colors his eyes would flash for those emotions if he were Fae.
“Don’t—” Calandra replies simply, breathing harder to ensure her true emotions don’t come through.
“What, Cal? Don’t make you feel what you actually feel? Don’t remind you of who you really are? Don’t tell you what you actually believe? What you know deep down in your heart to be true? Don’t tell you that you’re ignoring every moral that your father worked so hard to instill in you? The morals that you used to know how to stand up for.” Every emotion but irritation drains from him immediately.
“I just can’t deal with my past right now, Tristan. I need to focus on my future. I need to focus on me for once.” The excuse even has her fooled, at least momentarily. She is taken aback at how easily she came up with it. It flows out of her mouth naturally, maybe a bit too naturally. Calandra looks away from him, pulls her gaze to the ground, ashamed, and looks back at him once she’s sure the emotion is gone.
Tristan unexpectedly pulls her to him with a desperate force behind it. She buries her head into him and nuzzles into his neck, doing her best to keep it together. It’s so easy to fall to pieces with Tristan, he knows exactly what to do when she needs it, but that’s not who she is anymore.
“You know that your past influences your future no matter how hard you try to fight it. What you know to be true will never fully leave you, Calandra, even if you try and force it to. The truth can’t suddenly become untrue,” Tristan whispers into her neck. The words touch her neck and she feels them against her skin before they register in her mind.
“You know that I love you, Tristan,” Calandra says softly, lifting her head and gazing off into the distance somewhere.
Tristan knows where this is going. He knows exactly why she’s suddenly confirming her feelings for him. She’s gone again and the rejection is coming once more. He takes in her scent again before he pulls away from her, readying himself for what is to come.
“I just can’t do this.” A tear threatens to fall and she quickly wipes it away before it has a chance.
“I miss you. I miss my Cali, and if she ever decides to come back, please let me know.” Tristan’s voice is intense, more so than Calandra’s ever heard it before.
“I’m right here,” Calandra replies simply.
“No, you’re not, you slipped away, long ago. The moment that it happened is etched into my memory forever and, at this point, I’m not sure you’ll ever be back again. Nothing will ever be the same because of it.”
Calandra starts to say something but stops herself. She is afraid of how much her comment would reveal, so she swallows it down instead. She stares at him in bewilderment and wonders how they managed to get to this point.
Tristan’s light touch is on her shoulder, tracing her mark and sending a shiver through her. “One side is blue and the other is purple.”
Calandra looks down at it and realizes she’s never noticed the contrast of the swirls in the wings. It’s like a ying yang with one side baby blue, the other lavender. She looks into the crowd and sees them off in the distance, standing on the same sides as they are represented in the mark. Jarreth is to the left and has his mask with baby blue swirls hanging at his side. Drake is on the right and his lavender eyes smolder into her. Calandra brings her gaze back to Tristan, who still stands in front of her waiting for her to piece his meaning together. And in that moment she realizes, there is no color to represent Tristan. He’s not a part of this and the truth that she’s been keeping buried deep down inside of her, unwilling to deal with, comes up suddenly. The tear escapes finally while she stares at Tristan and this time she doesn’t stop it.
Tristan watches it trail down her face and knows she’s finally put two and two together in her mind and he can feel the loss that it leaves him in. He puts his plain black mask back on to cover his own emotions and uses his gloved hand to wipe the tear from of her face. “You can’t have one without the other, just like light can’t exist without the dark. One day you’ll understand that.”
“Don’t leave …” The words are barely audible as she fights to keep them from escaping.
“You know I’ll always be here for you.” Tristan looks at the ground as he says it. Then his gaze comes up through the mask, though his head doesn’t move from the ground. “But I’m part of the past that you can’t deal with tonight. This,” Tristan motions around him at the masquerade scene that surrounds them, “is the future you are focusing on and I’m not part of it, so I guess I’ll leave you to it.” He leans into her, one gloved hand on her cheek, and places a quick kiss on her other cheek. He catches the new tear tracking down her face in the process. “I’ll be … around, should you ever decide to go back to your roots again.” With that, he turns and walks away.
Her body tries to pull toward him. There is a gravity that is telling her to go after him, but with one quick breath she fights it down. Another breath brings in enough power to bring her emotions back under control. She pulls her masquerade mask back to her face and walks over to them. She stands in between her ying yang. Jarreth to one side, Drake to the other. Their masks are in place as well as they watch the ball unfold around them. Calandra takes one more look at her shoulder, and realizes that she is the body of the dragonfly while they are the wings.
The realization stuns her and leaves her hungry for Tristan’s place in it all. I’ll always need him. The words fill her head and she does her best to fight them back down. Jarreth reaches his arm out to her, inviting her for a dance, which is just the spell she needs to clear her mind and emotions. His eyes flash a cobalt blue before returning to baby blue. She turns and steals a glance at Drake; green crosses into his eyes before they fade back to lavender. She smiles wickedly as she turns back around and takes Jarreth’s hand, letting him lead her to the dance floor and losing herself in the bodies that swirl around them. Just like that, s
he’s forgotten about the good and bad and old beliefs talk from Tristan and given into what’s around her instead.
Tristan waits just outside of the field, hoping she is still coming after him. He believes that some part of what they used to share can fight through her newfound love of power and desires and that she’ll rush out to fix what has become of them. He knows that she has to know what is right and wrong. She has to know that she is falling into sin and temptation, all of the things that she’s been warned to stay away from. Even if she’s in another world, the same rules still apply. He resolves to do whatever it takes to remind her of the values and the God that she once dedicated her life to faithfully. After several minutes, he sighs, realizing he has indeed truly lost her completely and he leaves with a new level of hurt going through him.
Jarreth returns her to the concession table after their dance. Their fight has been completely forgotten. Calandra can’t remember exactly when she had decided to forgive him, but somewhere on the dance floor she found herself no longer mad or upset at all.
A strange mask catches her eye out on the dance floor. He is a tall, sturdy man and dressed in an all black suit with a matte finish. His hair is messily thrown about and a familiar shade of copper. His mask is what really sets him apart from the other people that crowd the field tonight. The mask is black, with eight points that come up over his head. The points make out what look like antlers that range in size. The longest ones are on the outside and the shortest on the inside. The eyeholes are not the same oblong shape as the other masks. Instead, they are squared on one side. The bottom of the mask has two more points that come down and cross over each other to make an X just under his mouth.
He is staring directly at Calandra and Jarreth. Between the shadow of his mask and the shadows of being in the dimly lit field at night, Calandra can’t make out his eyes. But even without seeing them, she can sense that he is staring at her and Jarreth. Something is vaguely familiar about him; his hair color and the way he stands. She feels as if she has seen him before, but she can’t place where. Maybe it is too many emotions mixing with too much dancing that is causing her to lack the sense to be able to put two and two together. Whatever it is, something deep down tells her that it is important she figures out who this man is.
She nudges Jarreth in the arm. “Who is that?” she asks, nodding her head in the direction of the man.
Jarreth looks bewildered and shrugs.
“He doesn’t look like good news if you ask me,” Drake says darkly from behind them.
Calandra turns to him and she senses that Drake somehow knows more than he is letting on, judging by the smirk on his face. Before she can push him for any answers, he winks and walks away into the night.
Chapter Twenty
True Colors
“You do know that I don’t believe you for a second, right?” she asks Drake as they walk through the town together.
Jarreth wasn’t particularly happy with the way she planned to try and get information out of Drake about the man in the pointed mask at the ball. But Calandra can’t seem to shake the felling that it is extremely vital they find out exactly who it was. Jarreth insisted that he at least accompany her to put her plan into action, but she knew that Drake would be much less accommodating with him around. Surprisingly, Jarreth hadn’t fought her on it, not as much as she had expected at least. Tristan had yet to show back up and Calandra had been fighting with her conscience, which was trying to remind her how much he meant to her and the huge apology that she owed him for the way she’s been treating him.
“Have you developed a lie detecting power as well?” Drake sneers.
“Perhaps I have.” She smiles at him, and then remembers that she is a horrible liar.
“Oh, my dear Calandra, you can’t be more cunning than me, so don’t even try!”
She feels slightly discouraged and wonders if her plan is actually going to get her anywhere. She had felt pretty confident when she left and headed over to Drake’s house. But somehow, when she’s not around Drake, she seems to forget just how good he is at deceiving and playing mind games. She has only just begun to learn to keep up in the Fae mind game department, and she is nowhere near the same level as Drake, or even Jarreth for that matter. She has a long ways to go in every aspect of this world, but something tells her that the mind game play is one talent she will never be able to learn to the same extent as Drake.
“Take me to the field,” she tells him, deciding not to go along with his previous comment.
“For?”
“I want to learn more about my powers.” She looks in front of her, trying to be sure that her eyes won’t give away her true intentions. “Jarreth still won’t show me much of anything.”
“Figured as much,” Drake mumbles and turns their direction toward the field. “Luckily I had a good bit of fun the last time we were there alone.” He winks at her. “I’m more than happy to return with you anytime you’d like.”
Calandra has to remember to keep her eye roll to herself and go along with the plan. She forces a smile and decides to kick things up a notch by taking his arm in hers as they walk. The field is back to normal without a single sign of the ball from a few nights ago. In a way, Calandra feels slightly disappointed to see it back in its original state. The lights had given it an extra boost of magic that had made it stunning. Although, she gets the feeling that the field would prefer to be in its current state than messed with in any way. Nature has a tendency to be vain, as Jarreth had explained to her after the ball.
Without even thinking about it or realizing what she was doing, Calandra walks straight over to the large tree in the field. Something about this tree always draws her in. She feels connected to it. It’s a sort of magnetic pull that she can’t, and doesn’t want to fight. She puts her hand on the tree and lets its magic course through her. Her eyes close instinctively. Drake’s hand is on her shoulder before she even realizes he is behind her.
“What is it?” she asks, once again feeling unable to form a coherent question. Luckily for her, it seems to be a faerie trait to read between the lines.
“Your draw to the tree?” Drake asks, leaning in much closer to her than he needs to.
Calandra nods. “It’s just a tree, how can I feel it?”
“Just a tree?” Drake sounds surprised. “Calandra, it’s not just a tree. It has a spirit. All plants do, they are living, breathing beings.”
Calandra turns around and gauges his expression to judge if he is being serious or not. Sure enough, there is no sign of sarcasm, which is certainly a rarity for Drake. “So why me?”
“Who says it’s just you?” Drake responds immediately, but a look flashes across his face and she wonders what it means.
“Is it?”
Drake shrugs, leaving Calandra wondering what he’s not telling her. “I guess you’d need another human around to ask that question wouldn’t you?” His sarcasm returns full force.
“So all of the humans left right after the ball?” she asks.
“Rules are rules,” Drake replies nonchalantly.
“What is it that you need them for exactly?” Calandra realizes as soon as she asks the question that she’s liable to regret it.
“Different things for different Fae, Calandra.” Drake leaves the question unanswered, and turns to walk a few feet away from her.
“Like?” Calandra presses further.
“Emotions.”
“I know that one already, what are some of the others?”
“Looks for some, morality for others, vanity, blood—” He barely speaks the last word audibly.
“Blood?”
Drake nods.
“Like a vampire?”
“Not in the least!” Drake responds; he is clearly offended at the comparison. “Vampires need blood for food, it’s their survival. Fae need it for … different reasons. We don’t partake of it in the same way, it’s more of a ritual for us.”
“So vampires are real?”
/> “That’s your question?” Drake arches an eyebrow at her.
Calandra shrugs, feeling embarrassed, and then giggles.
“You surprise me, Calandra.”
“Is that possible?”
“Of course it is, I can be … intrigued. My interest can be piqued. I’m not completely emotionless.”
“Is there a reason for the tree and me?” She changes back to the original line of questioning, sensing that he is avoiding the latest question for some reason.
“Yes,” he says simply.
“What is it?”
“That’s not for you to know just yet I don’t think.”
“You know I’ll just have Jarreth tell me,” she scoffs.
“How do you know that he knows? You seem to have some mistaken idea that Jarreth and I know the same things when it comes to you. I have to wonder what exactly gave you that impression.”