Charcoal Tears

by Jane Washington

  “Don’t—” I started.

  “It’s a little different with Silas and Miro,” Noah smoothed over my protest. “They are a pair on their own, but when it comes to you… it’s similar again. When Miro puts up his walls, we can feel how much it hurts you, and it hurts us too. So… it’s different, but the same.”

  Cabe tilted my head suddenly to the side, and Noah’s head ducked like they could read each other’s minds. Noah’s lips whispered over mine in a kiss so brief, so slight, that the darkness didn’t entirely consume me for it. I almost wished that it had. After only a fraction of a second, Cabe tilted my head back to him, and the door to the balcony swung open. Clarin was there, tapping a cigarette packet against his palm. He froze when he saw us, a wall quickly slamming over his shock, rendering his expression blank. The boys moved so quickly that I stumbled, and found myself hidden behind their backs as they rounded on Clarin. Unfortunately, my faintness from their touches was still with me, and I had to tamp down on the valcrick so that it didn’t give away my discomfort. Whatever Clarin had just seen was bad enough, but to know that it negatively affected me in some way? That wouldn’t be good.

  “You saw nothing.” Noah was suddenly cold, and I wanted to reach out to sooth him, but the darkness hadn’t yet receded, so I didn’t dare.

  “It looked to me like Cabe was about to kiss another pair’s Atmá,” Clarin said easily. “Or was that just a story that you fed Poison to keep the attention off her? Are you scared that someone will bond with her and steal her away? No—don’t answer that. I saw the looks on your faces when she pulled that valcrick trick today. You don’t want anyone near her. You and your brothers.”

  I walked out from behind Noah and Cabe, my strength rapidly returning. Whatever secrets the boys were hanging onto, it was important to them that they stayed secret. I wanted them to tell me, but I was willing to wait, and I wasn’t entirely happy with Noah for stealing a kiss from me, but I couldn’t muster the anger that was required to admonish him.

  “We’re just fooling around,” I said casually, folding my arms over my chest.

  His eyebrows shot up. “You don’t seem the type to fool around, Seph.”

  “Oh yeah?” One of my eyebrows twitched up, and I went to move past him, pausing when we were shoulder-to-shoulder. “It’s too bad about you, I’m in a bit of an experimental faze right now.”

  The shock in his expression made it all worth it, though I worried about the traction of this new lie, since I’d made my stand on getting boned awfully clear in the car earlier that day. I wrenched open the door and left them all out there, feeling a small sense of triumph, and a bigger sense of relief, because there hadn’t been any interest in his eyes, only shock, and maybe a little bit of disbelief. They eventually caught up to me and acted like nothing at all had happened.

  “You need clothes,” Cabe informed me. “We only have what we got you weeks ago, and that isn’t much. Plus it’s colder here right now.”

  “Clothes?” Clarin’s eyes took on a particular gleam—the very gleam that had been missing only minutes ago—and he grabbed my arm, causing me to stiffen. “This is my god-damn domain, dudes.”

  “Way to play into the stereotype.” Cabe rolled his eyes.

  Clarin dragged me toward one of the shops and the boys trailed behind, looking uncomfortable but not interfering. I was glad that Silas wasn’t there. Clarin wasn’t joking. He really did love clothes. He held up things against me, muttering about what was my colour and what wasn’t my colour, and how I needed to stop dressing like a pre-schooler. He loaded his choices up into my arms and then told the boys to go and wait somewhere else, because they were scaring the store assistants.

  I glanced over at them hovering on the other side of our clothes rack, their expressions dark and uncomfortable, radiating hostility, and I sighed. “You actually really should go. We’ll be fine.”

  They left, and it was almost like the whole shop took a collective sigh of relief. Clarin perked up, and when I couldn’t hold another item of clothing, he shoved me toward the dressing room. He set the pile down outside on a bench and pushed me into a booth, shutting the door behind us.

  “Off with them.” He gestured to my clothes and folded his arms, waiting.

  “W-what?” I stuttered, backing against one of the padded benches that ringed the little dressing space.

  “You heard me, mouse. I need to see what I’m working with.” He tossed a sky-blue dress onto the bench and reached forward, tugging the shirt I wore straight up and over my head.

  I stood there, stunned into unmoving silence, realising that I’d cooperated with him out of sheer reflex. Now I quickly wound my arms around my chest and backed up. He was tilting his head, examining me, and there was nothing sexual in his expression at all. He flicked me an annoyed glance and drew my arms away from myself.

  “Cut it out, stop being shy or this will take all day. I need to see what I have to work with,” he repeated. “Off with the shorts.”

  His matter-of-fact tone struck me, and I hesitantly stepped out of the shorts.

  “Turn around.”

  I did, and he nodded, grabbing the blue dress and backing out. He returned a moment later with a black skirt and a pretty blue singlet top edged with the same coloured lace. I pulled the top on first and then stepped into the skirt. It was a corded material, and very tight, but was a decent length, ending just above my knees. He brushed my hands away and secured it over the singlet, zipping up the back. He set his hands on my shoulders and spun me to face the mirror, grinning.

  He was good.

  My petite form had always seemed flat and boring to me before, but now it looked like it curved in all the right places. The skirt looked especially amazing. Clarin let out a low whistle and I laughed. I gradually relaxed with him, and soon didn’t mind the way he touched my body to fix a particular item of clothing or to turn me a certain way. It still didn’t sit well in my stomach, and I felt a little queasy by the time we left the store, but I didn’t mind him so much anymore. Clarin was nice, and fun. And definitely gay.

  Clarin had called Noah in to pay for all the stuff, and the queasy feeling in my stomach tripled. I really needed to get a new job. Clarin put me through several more stores, and then Cabe’s phone rang and he informed us that Silas was finished.

  My legs forgot how to work when I saw Silas’s arm, and I wanted to cry, or laugh, or maybe ask if he was insane, because the angle wings hadn’t been a little tattoo. They curved sinuously around his arm, coloured in black and shaded with grey. It looked like a finished tattoo, not an outline. The design was situated like a cuff just below the elbow, with the wing tips meeting up at the back of his arm. It was still bleeding a little bit, and covered in cling-wrap.

  I was so stunned I barely even registered Danny asking me a question.

  “Oh, ah… sure,” I answered, thinking that he might be double-checking that I liked my earring.

  When he handed me his phone with a smile, I only blinked at it, my mind racing. Nobody was close enough to hear us, as they were busy inspecting Silas’s arm while he paid, but Noah shot me a look, and I knew that I had to diffuse the situation before they clued on and freaked out. I keyed in a random phone number and handed the phone back. I immediately felt bad when I saw the happy surprise in Danny’s eyes, but then we were leaving the shop and I was back to thinking about Silas’s tattoo. Somehow, it made him seem even more formidable.

  I still hadn’t said anything about it to him, and when we got back to the cars, I slid into the passenger seat of Silas’s Lotus Elise while they were busy packing all of the shopping bags into the Lexus. There were only two seats, and a group of guys passed by the car, snapping pictures of it with their phones before they realised I was inside. One of them saluted me cheekily, not embarrassed in the slightest, and I felt a wry smile twist my lips.

  When Silas slid into the driver’s seat I finally reached for his arm. It stretched the space between us, his hand resting in my
lap, and I hovered my fingers over the sore looking skin.

  “I wasn’t expecting this,” I finally said.

  “I don’t do things by halves, angel.”

  Angel.

  I stared at the wings a while longer, and something twisted inside me. I was pleased, and it made me feel dirty. I was pleased that I had my mark on him, and even after he got a girlfriend… it would still be mine. The other three had each given me something that I could return, but Silas… I tried to push the selfish thought away, struggling with it for several seconds more before something else caught my attention. It was the distorted star mark, seeping into his skin like a faint scar, right below the inside of his elbow, above the tattoo. I had only seen Quillan’s mark so far and none of the others’. My fingers twitched up, touching the mark, and he stiffened in his seat. I looked up at him.

  “I’m confused,” I said, my voice coming out breathless and anguished.

  I may have known Silas and Quillan for a year now, but I hadn’t really known them until I met Noah and Cabe, and now I was deeply attached to all of them, and it had only been a matter of weeks. I was one of them, and we had inadvertently marked each other, branded each other. We were a part of something together, the five of us, and we wanted to acknowledge it… except that I had no idea what I was really acknowledging. All I knew was that it wasn’t normal, and I couldn’t stop it if I tried.

  Silas’s dark eyes softened, transforming his scarred face into something breathtaking, and he leaned forward, his thumb brushing over my cheek in a familiar caress.

  “We’re going to protect you for as long as we can.”

  I wanted to believe him, but I couldn’t see as clearly as they could. This whole girlfriend insurance thing wasn’t as amusing to me as it was to them. It was eating right through me. I looked down at Quillan’s watch—which fit me like it was my own watch now—and Cabe’s little silver-and-pearl ring. I could still feel the dull throb of Noah’s piercing, and Silas’s tattoo would be there in glaring evidence for the rest of his life. Which should have told me that Silas was a total nut-job, but he had done it so easily, so calmly, that I couldn’t quite come to terms with how strange it was.

  Silas pulled away from me and drove in silence, his attention floating back to make sure I wasn’t breaking down every few minutes. When he pulled into the house, we sat in the car for a long time, saying nothing.

  “You have to trust me.” He finally spoke. “You have to trust us.”

  18

  Notoriously Sexy Zevghéri Bastards

  I borrowed Silas’s phone to call my brother, and then I called the home phone. When my father answered, I hung up. I didn’t actually want to talk to him, I was just making sure that he hadn’t drunk himself to death.

  After a while, Cabe came to find me in the media room. “Poison is bugging me again. She says she’s waiting. Do you w1ant to go?”

  I shrugged, because I had told her that I would go, but I didn’t want to venture from my comfortable armchair.

  Eventually, Clarin made the decision for me. He stood up and snapped his fingers. “Come on, mouse, you won’t deprive me of an opportunity to dress you up for one of Poison’s famous parties now, will you?”

  I smirked at him, because I knew that he was actually serious. I understood the way he looked at me now; I was the Barbie doll that he had never had. I pushed up and everyone seemed surprised, except for Clarin. He clapped his hands together and drew my arm through his, escorting me from the room with all the aplomb of a fifteenth century knight. He pushed me into a shower—thankfully not insisting he needed to be in the room for it—and then blow-dried my hair before running a straightener through the length. He massaged some lilac-smelling lotion into it, and when he was done it fell down my back in a flawless, inky-black sheet. He picked out a pair of ankle-boots for me, and paired them with light grey tights and a black dress. The dress was pretty short, but paired with the tights it wasn’t so bad. The back of it dipped below my shoulder blades, and the front was cut just low enough to still be modest. The sleeves were long, slim and gathered slightly. When he was done, I once again praised his skill, but this time aloud.

  He beamed. “See? Didn’t I say we were going to be the best of friends?”

  I laughed and shook my head. “Sure.”

  When we went downstairs Noah and Cabe were ready to go, and Silas was taping up his arm, over the fresh tattoo. He was dressed in full black: cargo pants and a long-sleeved shirt with a hard-looking, ribbed vest over the top. Black boots and a dark cap without a logo finished the ensemble, and when his eyes met mine, my heart almost stopped beating. His hands were still taped up from the injuries he had mysteriously obtained the night before.

  “Silas?”

  His eyes sparkled, but it wasn’t the happy sparkle that I often saw in Cabe’s eyes, or the glint of fondness that I was used to seeing in Quillan. This sparkle was feral; there was a beast inside him and it was salivating.

  “We’ve got a job.” As he spoke, Quillan entered the room from behind me.

  I smelt him more than I heard him, which should have been strange, but I was beyond being surprised by my strange bond with them by now. I turned to find him wearing the exact same thing as Silas. His cap was pulled low, throwing the perfect lines of his face into shadowed relief, his fiery eyes were as subdued as ever, but there was a cautious edge. I didn’t wonder why. I knew it was because of Silas.

  “Be right back,” I said to nobody in particular. “I need to ask Tabby something.”

  “She’s up there, prepping for class tomorrow,” Clarin said, pointing to the staircase leading to the other side of the house.

  I skipped up the stairs and found the room she was in, knocking on the open doorway. She glanced up, surprise lighting her eyes.

  “Hey, honey. Everything okay?”

  “Yes. I was just wondering if you had a handbag I could borrow? I need to take a sketchbook to the party without the boys seeing it.”

  The truth had slipped out before I could think of a better lie, and her eyebrows inched up, but she got up from her desk and rummaged around in her cupboard. She handed over a black leather tote and I gripped it, feeling a little awkward.

  “Anything else?” She leaned back against her desk, watching me. Not for the first time, I thought that there was something off about her gaze.

  “Do… do they go on assignments for the Zevghéri often?”

  “Ah. Well, Silas does. Quillan prefers a normal job, and Noah and Cabe sometimes go, but only if it’s required.”

  I nodded, looking to the carpet and scuffing it gently with the toe of my new shoes. I knew that I could probably ask Tabby for more information, and she might even tell me, but it seemed like something I shouldn’t be going behind people’s backs to discuss. There was something dark in Silas, something terrible had happened to him, but I didn’t know what. I couldn’t understand it, and I couldn’t protect him from it.

  “Thanks, Tabby,” I finally said, offering her a smile. “I’ll bring it back.”

  Instead of going back down, I climbed up to the glass room on that side of the house and walked down the hallway to my own room to bypass the boys waiting below. I stuffed a sketchpad into the bag along with a selection of pencils, and then I went back downstairs. Silas and Quillan had already left in Silas’s Lotus Elise, and the rest of us piled into Noah’s Lincoln. It took twenty-five minutes to reach Poison’s house, and by the time we got there it seemed that the party had already started. We parked a little way down the street so that the car wouldn’t get boxed in, and then fought through the crowd of people to get inside. Poison’s house was massive, a mansion by definition. It was almost as impressive as the mountain home, and I had the urge to touch everything I walked past.

  “Cousins!” Poison found us on the back patio, and swooped in, hooking her arm through mine. “Sorry, I’m going to steal your pretty little pet. Have fun!”

  She yanked me away before they could protest, an
d I held up a hand to Noah, who looked as if he was going to interfere. I offered him a weak smile and he narrowed his eyes, but then Poison was already dragging me up a staircase.

  “So.” She released me once we were out of sight. “You look hot. I was expecting a sundress or some shit. I don’t know, maybe a Dora the Explorer backpack. Clarin got to you, didn’t he?”

  I chuckled. “Yes, he did.”

  “Fantastic.” She bared her teeth at me. “Saves us time. Now lets get some drinks in you.”

  She pulled me into some kind of entertainment room, where a bunch of guys were lounging on couches playing a video game and drinking. There was a foosball table set up in the corner and another small crowd surrounding it. Behind them all was a table strewn with bottles of alcohol and plastic cups. She started mixing drinks and I gave up on watching her, because it was beginning to make me nervous.

  “Don’t worry,” she said as she pushed a cup at me. “Only my brother’s friends are allowed up here so the drinks are safe. They’re all on the team and they can’t afford hangovers for practise.” She winked. “All the more for us.”

  I tried the drink and found it surprisingly tasty. It was undeniably strong, but there was a fruity tinge that underlined the alcohol, and it was slightly sweet.

  “So are you interested in any guys, or are the Adairs and Quillans covering your eyes whenever one walks past so that you don’t accidently discover your sexuality?”

  I forced myself to swallow what was in my mouth before I spit it out. “W-what?”

  She rolled her eyes. “You’re in the only Zevghéri-run school in the country, shorty. We’re notoriously sexy, you haven’t noticed?” There was a smirk on her lips, so I assumed I wasn’t actually required to answer that question. I was right. She kept on talking. “I know you have people interested. They think you’re a bastard born from Lord Weston’s first wife, which means you’re another harem child—that’s what they call all the illegitimates born of Weston—and these idiots love the idea of a harem child. I should know.” Her mouth tightened, the smirk slipping.