I absentmindedly traced a pattern on the tunnel wall. What did soul purification mean for a man like Alan? Would he have to die painfully for his soul to be cleansed?
A careful knock sounded on the wall several feet down from my position. In my dark corner, I hadn’t expected company. Nobody should have found me in the area where we hung the laundry.
Dorian stared at me, standing still and keeping distance between us.
“Can we talk?” he asked.
I silently looked back down the corridor at him for a moment. After my reaction to him earlier, I knew I should be cautious about the pain… but he was the person I most wanted to discuss everything with. Cautiously, I nodded.
Chapter Nineteen
“Great place for a chat,” I said, swatting one of the tattered sheets hanging on the line. We stood in a corridor lined with the uneven shapes of our scavenged clothes hanging to dry in the high mountain air.
Even if I didn’t know what he wanted to talk about, my skin prickled with goosebumps beneath Dorian’s intense stare. What are you thinking about? I bet it wasn’t laundry. Just two friends hanging out in a tunnel with nobody else around.
Dorian smirked, breaking the tension between us for a moment. “If we don’t talk here, everyone will think we’re up to something else,” Dorian said.
I bit back weary laughter. He was right.
We kept five feet between us by mutual, unspoken agreement. Part of me hated this distance, but another part of me was thankful for it. Would it help us, though? Dorian seemed hesitant to stick around, even after his cheeky comment. I leaned against the wall just in case, hoping the pain wouldn’t come back again. Perhaps the small bit of distance really was helping.
“What did you think about the conversation tonight?” Dorian asked.
I shrugged with a tired sigh. “The Vonn situation was awful. The twins give me the creeps sometimes, but I admit Myndra made me think,” I confessed. “It’s adding tension to the group, though. Oleah and Hart never help group cohesion either.”
He nodded with a tense look on his face. “Yes, the twins spoke honestly, but I can see how the altered dynamic due to the new vampires’ addition is making group politics difficult. Our discussion tonight was… tenser than I would’ve wanted.”
He had that right. Tension seemed like the only thing possible between humans and vampires cooped up together while on the run from the Bureau.
“Do you think what Laini said was right?” I asked. “I can tell Zach is worried about the idea of a war with the Bureau.”
“Laini is kind, but she is worried about our survival,” he said and paused. “It makes sense after everything that happened to our homeland.”
“Hard to explain when you’re watching Vonn tear a chunk out of someone’s neck,” I said.
“I understand,” he said.
His eyes softened. I knew that he wanted to say more, but it was too dangerous. We were already too close as it was. “We’re in a bit of a pickle.”
He stared at me, blankly. “A what?”
“It means you’re in a difficult situation with no good solutions,” I explained, then laughed, only this time it was genuine. “I guess it is kind of a weird phrase.”
He cracked a good-natured smile. “It is, but it’s accurate. Getting our groups to work together… it’s going to be tougher than I originally thought,” he said. “I’ll admit I hoped everyone would be able to get along better in light of our united struggle against the Bureau.”
“If we come up with a solid plan, maybe we can win people over,” I said. “If we can get everyone to listen to each other first. Though I think the human side is pretty done with Vonn at the moment.”
“We’ll figure it out,” he promised. His handsome face flickered with humor. “Even if we disagree on certain subjects. Like feeding.”
I could only shrug, suddenly exhausted by it all. Disagreement was an understatement, but I was grateful Laini shared my line of thinking. It gave me hope that other vampires might work with us someday. If the Immortal Plane didn’t swallow us all up first.
“We can support each other,” Dorian went on.
I enjoyed his confidence, but it was accompanied by a painful burn in my chest. Even with five feet between us, his words had stirred something. Support each other. As friends? Deep down, that wasn’t what I was hoping for, and some part of me knew it.
Guilt danced behind his eyes as he looked like he might reach out to me. He knew. We both knew.
“I’m only making it worse,” Dorian said bitterly, more to himself than to me.
I bit my lip as I waited for the pain to pass. It dampened slightly, enough for me to talk comfortably. “We just have to give it more time,” I said, not believing my own words.
Our friendship strategy had fallen apart in that cavern.
He shook his head. “This isn’t working,” he said.
The quiet admission hung between us.
“I know.”
Why had the pain come back? My brain was too tired and unwilling to brainstorm any other options. If trying to be friends didn’t change anything between us, then what would? If anything, trying to be friends had made the pain worse. We had no idea why this was happening.
“I don’t know how any of this works,” I blurted abruptly. “I’m worried about the Bureau and the Immortal Plane, but the situation between us is always in the back of my mind.” My hands fidgeted. Saying “us” made it feel real to me. Even if it was hard to admit what “it” was.
Dorian’s nostrils flared. He could sense my reluctance. I saw my hesitation mirrored in his face. I opened my mouth again, unable to stop the words from spilling out.
“We’re on the run from the law. Our groups are fighting with each other. Survival is our priority, yet… I can feel the connection between us. It’s not getting any weaker,” I said. A surprised breath caught in my throat as I swallowed my next words. I’d almost said I’d never felt this way before, but it was too much.
If I admitted that to Dorian…
I shivered at the memory of his cold face when he’d pushed me away. Would he turn against me again if I confessed my true feelings? A part of me doubted it—this wasn’t like before when we hadn’t really known each other. We had been through so much together since then. I liked him and cared about him, and his every action told me he felt something for me, too. It just seemed unfair that these emotions, which had developed between us so naturally, would lead to… this.
Not to mention the magnetism that always seemed to draw us back together. If anything wasn’t fair, it was how my body was punished for Dorian’s nearness yet remained aware of every move he made, still drawn to him so intensely.
I knew we had to focus on the situation at hand, but trying to push all this down was becoming a distraction. Surely, we would eventually figure something out about the strange pain. I wanted to be close to him. I’d never really wanted that with anyone before, and the arbitrariness of this punishment stung me more than I’d like to admit.
I never gave up on the battlefield, and I couldn’t imagine giving up in another part of my life. With a sense of courage blooming, I drew myself up straighter.
There had to be another way.
“I wonder if there’s… something else we can try for the pain,” I suggested, in a rush of daring energy. “What if… what if we tried to push past the pain?”
Dorian’s eyebrows had never shot up so quickly. “Past the pain?”
My heartburn flared wildly even from this distance as he shook his head but cast me an admiring look. It turned serious. “You ended up in a three-day coma. Less than a month ago. You’re… well, it’s impossible.” His face grew grave, his glacial eyes boring into mine. “How would you feel if it was your feelings for me that caused me incredible pain?”
But that didn’t make sense. “Why would it be your feelings?” I asked. “Aren’t my feelings an equal part in this? We don’t know what’s causing my pain.”
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br /> I only knew my own experience. Dorian could be experiencing discomfort beyond his guilt over my pain. Did he ever experience burning in his chest? Or other things he wasn’t telling me? With how he’d behaved before, I couldn’t be sure. I wanted to make these decisions about our situation, whatever we were going to call it, together.
Last time, my growing frustration at Dorian over this behavior had led me to kiss him in front of everyone in the Canyonlands. I might kiss him now. Even though it had nearly knocked me out again, the memory of that single, fervent kiss caused heat to stir in my belly. No, I reminded myself, right now even his handsome face couldn’t tempt me that much. Before I could proceed down that road, I needed to know we were working on this together.
Dorian averted his eyes for a moment, visibly bracing himself. And then he looked back at me, his gaze intense and honest. “I don’t know what you feel,” he said frankly. “I don’t know what goes on in your head. All I know is that when I feel admiration for you, when I feel protective of you, whenever I want you…” His teeth grazed his lower lip for a second, then he breathed out. “I watch you get hurt. I can see it happening. Every time. Cause and effect. It’s my feelings that cause you pain… and it kills me.”
I shivered at the boldness of his words, my face heating at the implications. Dorian’s openness in admitting these things drew me to him. Admiration. Protection. Want. We had never spoken so openly about this feeling that hovered between us, preferring to dance around the issue of attraction in order to skip forward and land on a solution. I reminded myself to breathe as his confident chin lifted, showing off the sharp lines of his face. But another part of me was angry. Here he went again, assuming things and making decisions without giving me the agency to be part of whatever our relationship was. I never wanted him to ice me out again after deciding something on his own. I need him to talk to me about these things. How can this ever work if we keep each other in the dark?
Dorian’s gaze never left my face, and I realized I hadn’t yet responded to what he’d said.
I breathed out. Deal with the communication first… or the attraction will overwhelm you. “Why didn’t you tell me this sooner?” I asked. Frustration wound around my neck, pulling the muscles tight. “It… hurts me when you keep things from me. I can’t read your mind.”
At this, Dorian did look away, his gaze finding his hands, and he began twisting a scrap of twine between his elegant fingers. “I did think about it. But there hasn’t been a good time, and honestly, I kept trying to push it down for the sake of the mission. In the ski resort, I came close to”—he glanced at my face again, and for a moment I saw a flicker of uncertainty —“trying to tell you, but I wasn’t sure enough. I’m only just figuring out how this works myself.”
I bit the edge of my tongue to keep from saying anything in response that came from hurt and anger.
A tough conversation about us. I could feel it, pressing us in from either side with familiar force. We spent a lot of tense moments together but rarely talked about them. Wasn’t that hopelessly screwed up? I liked Dorian a lot, but I felt like I was drowning. Were all these difficulties worth it? I wished I could turn off a switch on my attraction for him for the sake of making our lives easier. But every time I tried to push the feelings away, they only returned stronger. I admired him greatly for his strength, competence, and leadership, but he continued to try to handle things himself. He needed to open up and communicate with me about problems before they became bigger problems. And to be honest, he hadn’t been the only one to just try to bear it. I’d pushed these feelings aside for the sake of the mission too, promising myself I would simply soldier on.
Sitting in the tunnel, both of us became lost in thought about the other. My heartburn slowly dialed up, as if to confirm my guess. I pressed a hand against my chest to massage the area. Dorian’s gaze sharpened as he studied the gesture. Hiding pain from him was pointless at this stage. Everything was out in the open.
“Maybe now’s not the best time to explore whatever we are,” I said, feeling my way to words. Trying to label what was happening between us was difficult, but I was going to push through and try. “Whatever feelings are between us, we’re still going to put them aside until we figure out how to survive. But there has to be a way around this pain. If only for the sake of working together and keeping our groups alive, we need to find something.”
“Well, if you really want to dissect it … like I said, I can only see you getting hurt when I realize that I’m feeling—” He paused, the ghost of a smirk on his face. “Attracted. To you.”
I like hearing him say it out loud. Did he think it was only his attraction for me that caused the pain? I wasn’t sure I understood his reasoning after our small trial had seemed to work for a moment. What if that had been some fluke, my only chance to feel his touch without pain?
And I’d wasted it trying to be friends.
“But it was working, for a while,” I argued, as much to keep my thoughts off that moment as to work things out in my head. That was the frustrating part—feeling we’d found a solution, only to have it snatched away. “Why do you think the pain would cut in and out like this?”
“I’m confused about that too,” he admitted. “I felt attraction to you just as strongly in the restaurant on our scavenging mission. It was even stronger in that moment, so it can’t be entirely about the strength of my emotion, can it?”
I blushed. The moment in the ski resort came back to my mind. It made my heart pound, a distinct difference from the burn. “Yet, just now in front of everyone, I nearly fell to my knees when you looked at me,” I said.
He crossed his arms in heavy reflection. “You passed out on the bill. That was the last major attack, so to say.”
“We spent considerable time apart before we tried to be friends,” I reminded him. “Perhaps the forced distance weakened the bond?” I don’t want to be far from him anymore. If the distance helped, then maybe it was for the best, but I couldn’t lie and say the prospect didn’t disappoint me.
“The restaurant was after our mission together, though,” Dorian countered. “We were as close as people could be. I felt a strong attraction toward you. What was the difference?”
Dorian’s pained face after the strange laser attack sprang into my mind. He was weak in that moment. It wasn’t until he fed that my pain returned, right? He’d had to feed after being injured in order to regain his strength.
I gasped. “Dorian, the vampires fed on you to cleanse you of the darkness from the Bureau weapon,” I said, tripping over the words in my rush. “I remember thinking you might be too weak to go on the scavenging mission, but you seemed okay.”
Dorian tensed, his thoughts clearly pouncing on my observation. “And today, I’ve fed,” he said. “Laini suggested it for my recovery. As soon as my strength returned, so did your pain.”
“Do you think that could be it?” I asked, trying to recall our times together during the trial. We’d kissed, only for a few moments, after he’d drunk the blood offered at the party we had at the facility, and before the terrible group separation that followed because I’d fallen into a coma. Had that small amount of extra feeding been what sent me to the hospital? It seemed crazy, but for the most part, our current theory seemed to line up with the timeline.
“I do,” he said firmly with a pleased expression, his eyes wandering as though his imagination was taking him to intriguing places. “Imagine the possibilities. We could lessen your pain if I lengthen my time between feedings.”
As much as the tone of his voice made my heart pound, something gnawed in my gut as I stared at the shadows beneath his skin in the low light. Dorian weakening himself during the height of our trouble with the Bureau? It was a terrible idea. He needs his strength in a time like this. If he weakened himself to keep me comfortable, it could mean disaster for a future battle with the Bureau if we ran into that.
“You can’t weaken yourself just to protect me,” I said firmly.
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His mouth twitched downward. “Aren’t you being hypocritical?” he asked. “One of us has to hurt. Why does it always have to be you?”
“You need your strength for facing the Bureau.” I took a slow breath, calming my worked-up nerves. My wounded pride knew Dorian was stronger than I was. His strength was vital. “Or anything else that might happen. You’re stronger than I am, Dorian. If it comes to another fight, we’ll be worse off without you than without me. Physically, at least.” I added the last part to cut him off when he made to object. “There is simply too much going on right now for you to allow yourself to become weak.”
Dorian’s face fell with disappointment, but I could see the logic working its way over him.
“Fine,” he said. “Our survival comes first. For now. I agree I need to be strong for it.”
Something in his tone made me suspect his compliance came too easily, but I didn’t want to argue anymore. I had to trust he wouldn’t do anything stupid.
“Good.” I kicked off the wall and grabbed one of the dry garments hanging on the line. “Want to fold some laundry? We might as well do something to keep our minds off the universe’s impending doom.”
Dorian chuckled and snatched a shirt from the line.
“I can’t wait until we can burn these,” he confessed with a scrunched-up face as he stared at one of the ugly neon sweatshirts.
“You don’t have to wear them,” I reminded him with a half-grin. “You should’ve seen the people in the nearby town staring at us. Hard to do a covert mission when your clothes are about a decade too old.”
“Humans change their styles too much,” Dorian said.
I raised an interested eyebrow. “You have something to say about human fashion? Vampires tend to creep around in cloaks.” I gestured to his thick black cloak, which swept the ground as he brought his arm out to show it off. “Not to mention your pirate vibes with the linen shirt.” He pressed an offended hand against the shirt beneath his cloak.
Darklight 2: Darkthirst Page 24