The Tangled Tree

by S. K Munt

  ‘Well do it quickly!’ Kohl spat as he melted out of my room and back into the hallway. ‘We haven’t a second to waste!’

  ‘Like I don’t know that?’ Kohén sneered, and I was dismayed to realise that they were back to bickering again, proving that their ceasefire was temporary at best, and volatile at worst. Realising that my actions would impact how long their truce lasted, I rushed forward, ripped the clean but damp pillow case off my bed and knelt at Kohén’s foot, catching the blood before it could stain my rug and indicating that he should sit down so that I could see to it- playing the devoted lover rather than the rebellious prisoner. He initially stiffened at my touch, but then sat down on the bed in front of me, lifting his foot off the ground so that I could inspect it for glass. To my surprise, he was trembling almost as much as I was.

  Oh my God, how am I going to handle this? And shit! I forgot to ask Satan if my mother truly gave birth to me or if-

  Do you believe that Sapphire Whittaker would have raised you, had you not come from her own womb? Please...

  I gasped gently, but Kohl mistook it for concern and assured me that it didn’t hurt as much as it looked like it did. So Satan couldn’t just hear my thoughts when I addressed her- but when I thought of her in any way. Geez, the Sheps warned us off using her name, but I had a feeling that they didn’t know just how disastrous using it could be!

  And that’s the way I like it.

  ‘Thank you,’ Kohén said softly, and his voice sounded strained. ‘I think. Larkin… what happened to your room? Did you do this?’ I sniffled, experienced a light bulb moment of my own- and then pointed up at the shattered and dark ceiling fixture, then to the mirror’s frame. He looked up at it and then sighed. ‘Oh. I did this?’ I nodded, hoping that my streaming tears would explain away my lack of speech, then pointed into the dark bathroom. ‘Both lights?’ I nodded again, and he cursed under his breath. ‘Damn. And here I was hoping that I’d controlled the surge enough to contain it to the one part of the harem. I suppose I’m going to have to check all of the other rooms now too, aren’t I?’ I nodded, too relieved that he’d bought my feeble excuse to do anything else.

  ‘Shit. Must have been a much larger surge than I thought, for the light to have shattered hard enough to break the mirror too! Oh! And you’re hurt as well! Baby…’ Kohén leaned forward and took my forearm, inspecting the tiny little cuts. ‘Oh well, we need to cover up my injury so no one knows I was here when this happened, but yours are too small to warrant medical attention and fit a story about you being locked in your room all morning, right?’

  I nodded again, got up, reached into the lower drawer on my bedside table and pulled out a pair of my sports socks. They were large enough to be stretched around his foot so I did the injured one first, then the other while Kohén watched.

  I’m doing this to save Kohl, and for no other reason! I said to myself firmly, though even that silent thought sounded like a lie to me. I could plead martyrdom for Kohl until I was blue in the face, but nothing would change the fact that I was helping both boys cover up a murder- a murder than I was now an accessory to.

  ‘Clever duck,’ Kohén said, ‘I mean; swan.’ He sighed sadly. ‘A power surge it is- one resulting in superficial injuries to you, and fatal ones for...’ He took my hand and lifted it, kissing my palm and staring at the blood on my arm with clouded eyes. ‘You should go and have a shower, hon. Resonah and Rosina will return soon enough, and when they do, they’ll find…’ he swallowed hard and lifted those eyes to me, their colour darkening to navy and finding clarity at last. ‘You know nothing, okay? You saw nothing- and heard nothing. You were sleeping when there was a power surge, and were unable to get out and cry for help, all right? Kohl and I will handle the rest.’

  I bit my lip hard enough to draw blood, but nodded. Not just for Kohén- but for Kohl.

  ‘Thank you. I…’ his voice trailed off and he sighed, sitting back down on the bed and pulling me into his arms so that he could kiss my shoulder. ‘God, Larkin…’ his voice was thick with the threat of tears. ‘What have I done?’

  I didn’t want to witness his pain or fear- I had too much of my own to deal with as it was, and the anguish in his voice and eyes was making it hard for me to breathe, because it was that lost little five-year old boy I was seeing again now- my best friend, not my captor.

  But he is! He is my captor now and I, his captive! Satan would normally encourage suicide to steal my soul by default, so she must have been telling the truth when she said that my death would bring about Kohl’s, as Kohén has threatened! So I have to find a way to live with this man somehow!

  ‘I love you, but I have to go in order to deal with this,’ Kohén whispered into my hair, and my skin crawled when I felt him slip the choker back around my neck, collaring me once more with the precious stones that he must have had to pry from Kelia’s dead fingers. ‘Kohl and I need an alibi after all so…’ I shivered violently when I heard the tiny lath click and felt the ice-cold stones settle around my tender throat. ‘Please don’t be mad at me for this, my love. Everything I do, I do for you. You know that, right Lark?’

  That was the last thing I needed to hear right then, so I wrenched myself out of his arms and stomped towards my bathroom door, slamming it shut behind me- and locking him out, grateful for the fact that the mirror was gone because I didn’t have to see my wretched face or the diamonds around my neck again.

  4.

  Kelia’s body was discovered by Elijah’s Companions two hours after her death, and though I’d heard the screams, my door was still locked so I could not get out of my room. I banged on the door, but it was five minutes before a red-faced and wet-eyed Cherry opened it and begged me to stay in my room, for something awful had happened, but she didn’t want to expose me to it until Prince Kohén had attended the scene first.

  When he did come, sweaty and with a racket in his hand, Kohén pretended to break the news to me and then led me out to see Kelia’s body- which they had tossed into the pool in order to stage her accident. I burst into tears without having to stage anything, because she was bloated and awful-looking by then, and knew from the way Cherry moved to comfort me but she didn’t suspect that I’d had anything to do with it. And why should she? I’d been locked inside my own cell the whole time.

  They knew that Kohl had been invited in to pay us a visit that morning, and that could have put him in a compromising position, but Kohén and Kohl had left the harem only minutes after Kelia’s death (once they’d made the necessary arrangements and had checked on me) and had walked out together after, heading straight for the Basket-Racket courts and arguing (loudly) about me and about how Kohl had to get over his (pointless) and completely unfounded crush. According to my healer, they’d started shoving one another and throwing punches, working out their issues as men do, and then had played a heated, fiercely competitive match in front of half a dozen witnesses that were now their alibis. I didn’t know how much of that interaction had been staged and how much had been for real (though I was sure that Kohl was humiliated to have Kohén write off his feelings as a one-sided crush in front of so many people!) but all that mattered was that the castle staff had seen them together away from the harem long before the older Companions had sounded the alarm.

  Kohén had won the match though, and I suspected that that part had not been staged or easily done. In fact, I suspected that quite a few of the rackets were in need of re-stringing by now! And poor Kohl was probably in need of a stiff drink and a psychologist. How was that sweet, honourable boy going to survive this week?

  Murder wasn’t a common occurrence in Arcadia let alone Eden, and because Kelia was notorious for being a dimwit, and had been found with her stereo in the pool with her, there had been no further investigation into her death beyond a Shepherd’s grimace. It was ruled rather swiftly that Kelia had dropped the appliance in the water while soaking her feet (a small, spilled bottle of nail polish had been on the ground beside the pool, giving her an a
genda and one that she was known to repeat often) and that the electric shock that she’d suffered had been enough to blow out all of the power sockets in that wing that had been switched on at the time, including my bedroom lights, but only mine, as every other room in the harem had been un-occupied at the time. Not only had the current liquefied her insides within seconds, but it had broken her arm (God forgive me) and to my horror- her neck- as she’d fallen into the shallow section of the unforgiving marble pool.

  I listened to this ruling with genuine tears rolling down my face, and genuine disbelief swelling up inside me, allowing Cherry to feather her warm pink light over my tiny cuts- erasing Satan’s touch on me, but not her influence. I tried to ignore Resonah and Rosina’s eyes on me from across the spring, but I felt their curiosity and their suspicion, and realised that I was suddenly looking forward to going back to my locked cell.

  And Karol thought I was paranoid to believe that someone had masterminded Martya’s death? Ha! Their ability to make an entire human being literally disappear is staggering! Why fear letting a dark Nephilim like Satan into Eden’s walls, when light ones like Kohén and Kohl are capable of being this destructive?

  I hated them for killing her- both of them- but only because they’d done it for me. I was glad that Kohl would be safe. I was glad that they’d gotten away with it, because neither boy had a murderer’s soul, I was glad that Kelia had not had the opportunity to throw my carcass at Karol’s royal boots, and I was glad that she’d been taken from a world that had caused her so much grief…

  But I would never know peace again now that two Given girls had died in the name of protecting me either for my benefit, or from myself, so when Resonah came over and offered me a small pill that she said that she sometimes used to help her sleep at night, I took it gladly, and then washed it down with a bottle of champagne the moment I was back in the privacy of my cell.

  *

  Kohén returned to me after dinner on Wednesday evening, waking me from a deep slumber that I’d fallen into before sunset by lighting the candles he’d brought with him on my nightstand (electricians hadn’t yet come to fix my lights), and trembled as he held me tightly against him, apologising over and over again for the part he had played in Kelia’s eroded mental state and her death.

  He drank port as he spoke, more than I’d ever seen him drink before, and as he grew more and more lucid, his nervous chatter morphed into a confession of sorts, and I knew that he’d been bottling up everything he felt inside him that day, and was only just now getting the chance to pour his emotions out- drowning me in them. It agitated me to think that he expected comforting from the last person on earth that he had a right to lean upon, but then again, I was relieved to know that he hadn’t committed the heinous crime lightly.

  Kohén admitted that he’d disliked Kelia intensely for quite some time, had never understood my connection with her and had only used her to get back at me because he’d known that she was the only girl in the Harem that would readily lie about having sexual relations with him. She had been a smokescreen, keeping me fooled into believing that he was over me (and as he hoped- jealous) and the other girls from questioning why he wasn’t coming to them anymore.

  He swore black and blue that although he’d tried to take her the way she’d said, the fact that he hadn’t been able to get hard had handicapped him even before my interruption had that night in Caldera. He’d gotten no satisfaction from the orgy at all, but he admitted that Kelia had orgasmed from the way his body had brushed up against hers when he’d attempted to enter her that awful night, and because she’d never experienced that sort of euphoria before- not even with herself- she had sought him and his odd little electric hum out since, begging for him to try again, or even just to lie on top of her. He swore to God that he had not, and though she had pouted and whined, Kelia had been contented enough with their intrigues and the trinkets he’d gifted her to keep that fact to herself. Not only to keep their lack of relations to herself- but to twist the story around and broadcast it loudly whenever the rest of us were in earshot to make me jealous.

  She’d told me otherwise of course, and thought it might sound foolish- I believed Kohén. There is a way that people act around one another when they have been truly intimate, and I hadn’t seen any evidence of a connection between them- emotional or physical. Whenever they’d been together, he’d had a habit of leaning away from her, the way people do when conversing with someone with bad breath, and not once had I seen his eyes follow her across a room with the slightest bit of interest. Besides, if he couldn’t get hard for Emmerly or Lette, who were both sensual and engaging, how should I believe that he had been drawn in by Kelia’s irritating nature?

  Naturally there was still a chance that he was deceiving me, but I was trying to numb myself to my new lot in life so it wouldn’t hurt so bad, so forcing myself to believe in the good in Kohén was just one of those things that I was going to have to get into the habit of doing. That, and drinking. Naïve, stupid, drunk and appreciative of pretty things- that was what a Companion had to be in order to endure it, and I had to endure this for Kohl.

  Kohén babbled on about Kelia, his inner turmoil and his fear of losing me for hours, but didn’t seem to notice that I wasn’t responding to him verbally until close to midnight. I waited tensely for him to look at my throat and find some imagined evidence of Satan’s hold on me, but instead of assailing me with questions, he assailed me with more apologies instead.

  ‘I can’t bear you being this angry with me!’ he cried, rolling on top of me and taking my face in his hands, forcing me to stare into his wet and red eyes. ‘Larkin I love you, and I’m sorry for all the hurt I’ve caused you… but you shouldn’t have fallen for him! You were mine! You were my everything and instead of being happy about that, you went behind my back with my brothers! You should have come to me about Lindy- I would have helped you! You should have told me that you were attracted to Kohl, so I could have fought for your interest more than I believed I needed to!’ I nodded mutely and stared into his eyes, apologising for those things as much as I could without saying a word, but that wasn’t enough for him and he let out a moan of frustration before slanting his mouth across mine. I tasted his tears on my lips and felt his fingers tangle in my hair as he murmured his love and sorrow and regrets to me over and over again, punctuating each with a kiss. I still had nothing to say and was terrified that he’d realise that my silence was magically-induced, not a sign of anger, and so I kissed him back, distracting him as best as I could, and melting when he practically whooped with delight and claimed my mouth more savagely than he ever had before, even the previous night.

  It didn’t take long for me to become as distracted by our kisses as he. I was angry and scared and depressed, but my soul and body and mind were all too weak against his sultry Nephilim advances, so it was only moments before I was gasping beneath him- tilting my hips so that his erection would hum against my groin, while he clawed my nightgown out of the way and massaged my breasts with his warm, glowing hands. He tasted like summer fruits and kissed me like he needed my breath in his lungs in order to survive, and though I don’t think either of us ever stopped weeping through the experience, it didn’t take long for my thighs to part around his hips, or his hands to slice my nightgown down the middle.

  I deserve this! I told myself as Kohén reared up over me and tore his own shirt over his head, trying to ignore how nervous I was growing beneath him. The last time I had done this, I had been too drunk and too shocked to understand what was happening- of how intimate this was. This is my penance for all of the sins that I have committed against him!

  I’d tried telling myself that a few times that day, but it had been hard to believe when I’d wanted to kill him for weeping over Kelia, and it was even harder to believe once he was naked from the waist up, firm, golden and glowing, but for different reasons. This was a punishment? This was torture? I knew nothing of either, not in that moment, and my sex tightened and
throbbed in silent agreement. He was perfect, physically at least, I was out of my mind with lust, and when he reached forward to caress the place where my nerves knotted between my parted thighs, I practically bucked in pleasure.

  ‘How could you have ever doubted this connection?’ Kohén asked, his voice low and rough and hardening as I balled my fists in the sheets and fought against the pleasure threatening to annihilate me. I shook my head and he bit his lip, sliding a finger under the edge of my panties and pulling the fabric out of the way so that he could stare at me. ‘You didn’t?’ he asked, gently pressing the tip of his finger into the slick, heated slit between my labia, and I shuddered, shaking my head again. ‘It was always me you wanted more?’

  I turned my face away and sobbed soundlessly, hating him for trying to turn the screws like this on me in such a moment, but hating him more for delaying my pleasure. No, no Kohl had never gotten me heated to the point where I’d lost my mind and all sense of self-preservation, but then again, Kohl had never made me despise him like this either! To be a lover- a soul mate- there had to be both elements present, didn’t there? Someone that you could get lost in, but only because you trusted them to protect you in the interim? Kohén filled one side of the criteria and Kohl filled the other, and never would either boy get the chance to prove that they could be both to me again.

  ‘Larkin…?’ Kohén’s voice was breathless and low as he pressed his finger into me and tenderly coaxed me open. I tore at the sheets, but could say nothing, and so he retracted and rubbed my clit with the pad of his thumb again. ‘Larkin… answer me. Tell me that I’m the only man that can do this to you.’

  I didn’t know that for sure and never would and I was furious with him for that, and yet the truth was that he was the only man that could do this to me because I was his fucking captive and hadn’t the free will to find out otherwise. Using the method acting approach to pad my self-esteem, and reminding myself again silently that I deserved this, I nodded the half-truth.