Tears were burning the backs of my eyes but they wouldn’t fall. Not yet. Not until I had no more reason to hold them back.
“Elise?”
“Yeah,” I breathed, waiting for the response like my whole world hung on the answer.
“She said she had to. And that if you’d just done it maybe everything would be different. I’m not sure what she meant by that-”
I hung up as the world carved in two. I’d always known my mom wasn’t the best mother in the world, but I’d always thought she loved me. I’d never realised that was missing as well. But perhaps I’d always just let Gareth blind me to her with his excuses and reasoning and all the love he gave me made up the difference anyway. I didn’t know. And it didn’t even matter. All I knew now was that I truly was alone.
The night air was cold, my thin shirt was making me shiver despite the fact that I was numb.
I walked towards the door without seeing it. My fingers curling around the fat evidence bag stuffed with Gareth’s clothes and belongings as I hugged it to my chest, the only piece of him I had left.
I didn’t cry. I wasn’t even sure I had any tears left anymore. Or maybe they just weren’t enough to express the emptiness in me now. Even my rage was absent. I just felt…nothing.
The boathouse was cold and dark as I headed inside and I chewed on my lip as I made my way towards the upper level where I’d sat when I came here before.
I started walking across the wooden floor then pulled up short as I spotted Dante sitting in one of the rowing boats, leaning back against the side of it as it bobbed up and down in the water at the centre of the huge space. The lapping waves and wind outside had hidden his heartbeat from me and my own heart skittered with panic as I spotted him, wondering if he’d heard anything of the phone call I’d just made. What had I said? Anything damning? Anything about Gareth?
“What are you doing here?” I demanded, falling still.
“Aren’t you pleased to see me, bella?” he asked, arching a brow at me as he placed his hands behind his head. “You’re the one coming to my spot after all.”
“It’s not that,” I replied, shifting the thick black evidence bag in my hands. I hadn’t opened it yet. I didn’t want to go through Gareth’s things at the FIB offices and I wasn’t sure I could cope with doing it today anyway. But I had ripped off the label with his name which had been stamped to the front of it. I’d thrown that in the trash in the precinct before I’d even left.
Dante’s eyes dropped to the bag and he pushed himself upright. “Who?” he asked, his tone gentle as he clearly recognised what I was holding. “I’ve received a lot of those bags myself. Too many people die young in the Clan,” he explained.
I opened my mouth then closed it again. I didn’t want to lie to him, but I couldn’t tell him the truth either.
“The worst was when I had to collect my father’s,” he continued like I’d asked. “My mother…well she took a long time to come to terms with what had happened to him. He was her Elysian Mate, her pack leader, the father of their ten children, the centre of her world. Un vero amore. So I went in her place to collect that bag.”
Dante reached for me and I moved forward to take his hand, letting him pull me closer. I stepped into the rowing boat and it bobbed beneath my weight.
The base of it was empty but Dante had filled it with thick blankets and I moved down into them, curling against him as he pulled me close. I pushed the envelope filled with Gareth’s things behind my back and rested my head on Dante’s chest.
“Can I show you something, Elise?” he asked after a moment.
“Okay,” I breathed because the pain in me was still holding me captive and I wanted him to drive it out.
He lifted the arm that wasn’t holding me and directed a gust of air magic towards the head of the boat so that we started drifting away towards the opening which led out to the lake. We slipped out through the curtain of weeping willow fronds which covered the exit and they brushed over us lazily as we went.
I shivered as the cool air found me again and Dante pulled one of the blankets over us, creating a little cocoon just for the two of us as we drifted out into the centre of the lake.
My breathing was growing steadier the longer he held me and I closed my eyes as I concentrated on the steady thump of his heart beneath my ear.
“I’ve lost more people than I can count and my heart holds so many scars that sometimes I wonder how it manages to beat at all,” Dante breathed. “A morte e ritorno. But there is no coming back from death really.”
“Do you think they’re waiting for us beyond the veil?” I asked, that eternal question always haunting me. Was Gareth still out there somewhere, in some way? Or was he just gone? The best person I’d even know lost forever to a cruel twist of fate.
“Aspetterei per sempre quelli che amavo.”
A shiver ran down my spine at his words even though I didn’t understand them.
“I would wait forever for those I loved,” he supplied softly. “Open your eyes.”
I did as he’d commanded and turned my head to find the heavens looking down at us. The sky was alight with a blanket of a thousand stars and they all watched us from their perches out of reach.
The ache in my chest eased as I looked up at them and I found myself wanting to tell him about Gareth. I needed to speak about him, acknowledge him in my new reality even though I wouldn’t be able to tell him everything.
“My brother died,” I breathed slowly. “And I’m starting to think it was because of me.”
Dante’s grip tightened on me but he didn’t say anything, no contradictions or trite declarations of sympathy, nothing to belittle the emotions that were warring through me. He just held me beneath the stars and let me tell him what I wanted to and withhold what I needed to as well.
“And I just found out that my mom…that she…offered to sell me to pay her debts.” I didn’t know why I was telling him this but I just had to tell someone, I needed to say it out loud if I wanted any chance of accepting it myself.
A deep growl resounded through Dante’s chest and he shifted, rolling onto his side so that he could look down at me with the stars shining brightly behind him.
“Hai la forza di tutte le stelle e lo spirito di un guerriero, amore mio. Non hai bisogno di nessuno. Neanche tua madre. Ma tu hai me,” he looked deep into my eyes and the need to be closer to him reared up in me with a fierce desperation as the passion of his words fell over me.
I couldn’t kiss him with the new rules that he and Ryder had placed on us, but I could show him how I felt in another way.
I reached up to touch his cheek, peeling back the barrier which contained my magic as I urged my power to merge with his.
Dante dropped his own walls instantly and the pure, electric heat of his power washed through my body in a flood of euphoria. I gasped, my back arching as it raced to fill every corner of my body and Dante groaned as he leaned down to touch his forehead to mine.
I wasn’t sure how long we stayed pressed together with our magic flowing between us but when Dante lay down beside me again and our powers slowly withdrew, I found the raw edges of my heart hurt a little less.
“Can we stay here tonight?” I whispered. It wasn’t his bunk so we weren’t breaking any stupid rules if we did.
“Sto cadendo sotto il tuo incantesimo, Elise. We can do whatever you like.”
I smiled as he drew me closer again and let my gaze drift over the stars as I stole strength from the comfort of his arms. It didn’t fix any of the things I’d lost. But at least for now, I felt a little less alone.
I gazed down into the water inside the obsidian scrying bowl in Arcane Arts. The classroom was perhaps the most enchanting one on campus. A tunnel beyond The Capella Observatory led all the way deep under the lake. Up a silver staircase, you arrived in the Arcane Sphere. A perfectly circular bubble of glass at the base of Tempest Lake.
The water was dark and deepest blue and the lakebed was thick with tall weeds reach
ing up toward the surface nearly half a mile above us. Barely any sunlight penetrated the glass walls, its entire design meant to amplify the celestial signals which carried through the atmosphere, making it easier to capture predictions. Every Fae in Solaria was able to learn to make simple forecasts through objects like crystals and scrying bowls, but for someone like me with the gift of The Sight this place was bliss. Though my visions were never any easier to wrangle, they were always clearer here. And Professor Mystice let me use it sometimes for extra study.
Everyone sat on square pillows before our bowls while Mystice lit sage and hummed to himself. His hair was a short afro and his shirt was off, revealing his dark chest and the bunches of charms he wore around his neck. His hands were covered in silver rings and he had a hoop in his left ear. His dark green trousers hung low on his hips and his feet were bare beneath them.
“Today we’ll be practising the art of scrying,” he said in his deep, melodic tone. He waved a hand and lit the candles in the jars sitting beside each scrying bowl with his fire magic before switching off the lights.
I turned my head, stealing a look at Elise a few rows behind me in the dark. The flames flickered in her eyes as she stared down thoughtfully into her bowl. Ryder sat behind her, his hand resting over his candle jar so the flames licked his skin, his eyes firmly on Elise’s back.
Looking at her made me think of my morning horoscope. I had to read them because I knew they gave me clues into the day’s events, but lately they were become repetitive. Torturous.
Good morning Scorpio.
The stars have spoken about your day!
The stars are aligned and waiting, all you need to do is let go of the binds that tie you. But with a great burden weighing on you, this may be a challenging task. With the planets constantly shifting and the complications surrounding you, the time may never seem right. And depending on which way the wind blows, it may never be.
Thanks stars, just another little chip off my soul. Why can’t you ever just be straight with me? Give me a fucking solution.
I turned away from Elise, focusing on Mystice as he turned on some soft meditation music to help us concentrate and I shut my eyes to try and block out any distractions. The Libra tattoo on my chest was itching and I pressed my lips together as I attempted to ignore it.
“We’ll try to see into the future, to glimpse any event that might occur before the week is out,” Mystice explained. “If I tap you on the shoulder you are to stand and swap with the other person who has been tapped. As usual, keep your eyes closed and concentrate on the celestial signals flowing into the chamber of your mind. Only open them if you feel a tap.”
I fell into the meditative state as Mystice rearranged the class in his usual way, using the stars to feel out who would best be suited to work together for this lesson. I focused on my breathing and the way my chest slowly rose and fell and definitely not on the tattoo that was driving me to fucking insanity with its incessant itching.
Movement sounded around me and I sensed the person beside me getting up. A tug in my gut and the scent of cherries preceded her arrival. I knew it like the stars knew it. Eyes closed or not. Elise and I had just been paired and the barely concealed sigh she released told me exactly what she thought of that.
Give me a break, stars. I told you, I am not bowing to your fucking will this time.
After another few minutes, Mystice directed everyone to open their eyes and I kept my expression neutral as I opened mine, glancing at Elise before turning to face the teacher again. Her expression was taut and I didn’t know how we were going to get through an hour together.
“Please turn to page fourteen in your textbooks and complete the exercise in your pairs. Remember to keep your voices to a whisper so as not to disturb the atmosphere. It is crucial that you get into a detached state so that you might reattach to the celestial world.”
I read through the exercise and saw Elise doing the same in the corner of my eye. Mystice drifted past us, turning in a graceful circle as he waved burning sage above our heads.
“Do you know what you’re doing?” I asked, trying to break the ice, though her stiff posture said that was pretty pointless.
“Yeah, actually…” She leaned toward her bowl, her lips parting. “I can see something.”
“What?” I asked curiously, moving closer to gaze into her bowl and our reflection stared glassily back at us.
“It’s hard to tell but I think it’s a big…winged…dipshit, leaning over my shoulder.” She elbowed me back and I growled in irritation, turning away from her to focus on my own bowl.
“I see something too. It’s a stubborn girl who thinks she’s funny.”
“I am funny,” she said simply. “Hilarious actually.”
“I’m sure all of your friends would agree – oh but you don’t have any of those, do you?” I could tell I’d hit a nerve from her expression and a sick kind of satisfaction filled me at knowing I was getting under her skin. If I still affected her that meant she still felt something toward me. Which was the last thing I should have wanted, but I couldn’t just cut out the part of me that knew she was my Elysian mate. Even if I managed to resist her for the rest of my life, I might always pine for her.
“Well the difference between me and you, Gabriel, is I could have friends if I wanted to. I just choose not to,” she said, her pissy mask firmly back in place.
“I don’t happen to want any either,” I said with a shrug.
“Good so just-”
“Miss Callisto, Mr Nox, please concentrate,” Professor Mystice whispered as he swept toward us like a wraith. “I don’t see any scrying and I can sense a lot of negative energy coming from you both. Work together or I’ll have to dock rank points.”
Elise sighed and I fought hard not to do the same as Mystice drifted away.
“Let’s just get this over with. As soon as I walk out of this room, I’m going back to ignoring you,” she said and I nodded firmly, rejecting the tightness in my chest at her words.
We’re never going to be together.
Even though I knew that, it was somehow more painful in that moment than it had been before.
Fuck, why is this so hard?
“So it looks like we just have to stare at the water and focus,” Elise went on when I said nothing. “Sounds easy enough.”
I tsked, shaking my head.
“What? Is that wrong?” she asked, a trace of annoyance to her tone.
I still didn’t turn to look at her, dipping a finger into my bowl and stirring it once, removing it as I watched the ripples. I breathed in deeply, my eyes beginning to unfocus as the ripples settled and the dark surface gazed back at me. A pop sounded in my ear and I jolted out of my concentration, turning to find Elise peering over my shoulder chewing gum.
I sighed in defeat. “Sit back down, I’ll show you.”
She quirked a smile at me but I didn’t return it as she sat cross legged on her cushion and her skirt lifted enough to give me a view up it and anyone else who cared to look. I caught the hem, pushing it down between her thighs on instinct and her lips parted as I quickly extracted my hand.
“Touch me again and I’ll bite you.” She bared her fangs and something about that made my cock twitch happily.
For fuck’s sake.
I cleared my throat, gazing down at her bowl and stirring my finger through it in a circle. “The ripples help you focus,” I said quietly. “Watch them spread out to the edges and count down from ten. Once they’re gone, you should be ready to receive a vision if the stars are feeling generous. If you get nothing, then picture the next few days in your mind but only bits and pieces. Feed the stars your routine, rising from bed, eating breakfast, brushing your teeth and they should give you a glimpse of something more specific that could happen.”
“Could?” she breathed and the heat of her breath washed over my cheek.
I leaned away, gazing down at the surface of my bowl. “Visions are never definitive.”
/> “Right,” she huffed then fell quiet as she tried what I’d told her.
I let my eyes become hooded as I stared down at the water, the atmosphere pressing in around me expectantly. With my gifts, all types of forecasting came easier to me than most. But I never received the full visions Mystice had told me he often experienced. I had a meeting with him after class today to discuss it in more detail. He had some theories which interested me, the main one being that someone powerful had cast a magical block on my gifts to keep The Sight from fully revealing itself to me. He’d only mentioned it in passing. I couldn’t tell him that my past was shrouded in mystery. That it was entirely possible that someone had done something like that to me. But today I planned on asking him if there was any way to break a spell like that.
“Oh – Gabriel.” Elise elbowed me and I turned to her with a frown, but my expression cracked when I saw the excitement in her eyes. “I saw something.”
“What did you see?” I asked, the itching in my chest settling down as I leaned in close to share whispers with her.
“It was like…like I was flying above the Acrux Courtyard.” She shook her head in amazement and confusion and my mouth hooked up at the corner, her surprise having melted away her anger. Her gaze dropped to my lips as her smile fell and her throat bobbed.
“Well don’t go flying without me,” I said, cursing myself for the words the second they left my mouth.
What a fucking douchey thing to say.
She lifted a brow. “I have strict orders to stay away from you, so we can’t go flying.”
“Yeah and you’ve taken it pretty literally. Glad you’re moving on with your Dragon-Lion threeway by the way,” I said, unable to hide the bitterness in my voice.
She said nothing and I returned to gazing at the water, knowing I was never going to see a vision with the furious emotions churning through me.
A loud snore sounded somewhere across the room and I spotted Leon on his back, using his cushion as a pillow, his hand draped over his eyes. Mystice kicked him as he walked by and he jerked upright, spilling his scrying bowl everywhere while his work partner gasped in shock.
Savage Fae (Ruthless Boys of the Zodiac Book 2) Page 20