by Paige, Bea
“What?” Devin says innocently.
“I am not an arsehole,” Ezra growls.
“Not all the time, brother,” Devin agrees with a laugh.
Rhain lays his jacket on the ground and sits upon it, pulling me onto his lap. He is warm, and familiar to me now. The sexual tension is still there, but the overwhelming desire I had felt before we underwent the Claiming has gone, thankfully.
“Do not let Ezra rile you, Accacia, he is not himself,” Rhain murmurs into my hair.
I absentmindedly run a hand over his chest, my eyes resting on Ezra, who is now staring at me intently. We look at each other for a long time and I can’t help but feel guilty that Ezra is in pain because of me, because I took his blood. Though at the time I didn’t have a choice in the matter. The way he is staring at me, it’s as though he is trying to figure me out, like I am a puzzle to be solved. It’s so frustrating, and it doesn’t help that my own feelings are so confused when it comes to him. There is something within me that is drawn to Ezra. Perhaps it is the sadness he exudes, I don’t know. My mother always said I needed to be able to fix things. I went into medicine because I wanted to find a cure to my disease, to help others like me. Ezra’s sorrow is a little harder to fix. My heart aches for his loss, but at the same time I feel angry that he has placed me in this position with no consideration as to how it would affect me, and angry that he seems to want to hurt me.
Eventually he looks away and I curl into Rhain’s arms, resting my head against his chest, glad of the comfort and the steady beat of his heart.
“He is so angry all the time, angry at me mostly, it would seem,” I whisper into Rhain’s chest. “I understand the tragedy of Ezra’s loss. I can’t imagine what that feels like. I just… He made the choice to give me his blood. I wouldn’t have taken it had I known what was at stake. At the time I had no say in the matter.”
“Yes, he did have a choice, Cia. He knew exactly what he was doing. I am sorry you have been caught up in his sadness. I wouldn’t have allowed him to do it, had I known what he had planned,” Rhain says, pressing a gentle kiss against my head.
“Do you think we can change his mind? Maybe if I tried speaking with him again…”
“Ezra is a stubborn man. I’m not sure anyone can change his mind.
“Despite the way he is with me, I can’t watch him die.” My voice catches in my throat as Rhain squeezes me tighter.
“Hush, don’t think about it now, just rest. I will watch over you all. We might have more stamina, but we are not infallible. We still need to sleep every now and then too.”
“Thank you, Rhain.” I whisper, the heavy drag of exhaustion pulling at my eyelids.
Chapter Two
“Accacia, what are you doing here? You must leave, it isn’t safe.”
My eyes flutter open to find Clover standing above me. She looks different, her pale skin sparkling in the light of two fireflies that are hovering about her head. She is barely dressed, wearing just a thin wisp of material that is draped over her body, slightly thicker in parts to cover her modesty. Yet the most noticeable thing of all is her eyes. Where once they were the pale green of a tropical sea, now they are a striking emerald and as illuminous as the ivy entwined in her hair and the stone vibrating in my pocket. She was always beautiful, now she is beyond stunning. She doesn’t seem real. I am scared to touch her in case she disappears.
“Is that really you?” I ask, standing. I pull the stone out of my pocket. It is pulsing with a strange, green glow.
“Yes, it is me, Accacia.” She begins to walk away, stepping barefoot through the forest. Where I seem to catch myself on every shrub and fallen branch, she has no problems traversing the forest floor. I can see the bracken fold back as she moves. The fallen leaves and dropped twigs roll out of the way of her step as the very forest itself parts for her. It reminds me of the story of Moses and the Red Sea. Eventually Clover stops and turns to face me.
“You shouldn’t have come…” she starts, but I just throw my arms around her, smothering her words.
“Clover, I’m so glad you’re okay.” She hugs me back and I catch her scent. It is different now, earthy. She smells like the forest itself. “You don’t know how glad I am to see you. I’ve come to take you home.”
She pulls out of my arms. “You must leave, Accacia. I don’t have time to explain. You are in danger.”
“No, I won’t leave without you.”
Clover places her hands on my shoulders and squeezes. Her fingers dig into my skin as her eyes glow even brighter. “Listen to me. YOU MUST GO NOW!” she shouts.
“Please, let me help you.”
“GO!” she says, pushing me away from her. I fall, and it’s as though I am falling into a bottomless pit…
“Wake up. Damn it, Accacia, WAKE UP!”
My eyes snap open to find Ezra shaking me roughly. I stand, pushing him out of the way. “Where is she, where has Clover gone? Did you see her? Which way did she go?” I look frantically about the forest, my eyes desperately trying to adjust to the lack of light.
Ezra grabs hold of me and swings me around to face him. He presses a finger against his lips and pulls me to the ground, tugging me beneath him until he is lying completely over me. It is only then that I realise there is no Rhain or Devin nearby and panic sets in. I attempt to speak, but Ezra simply presses his whole hand over my mouth this time, shaking his head frantically. For long, agonising minutes we lay pressed against the forest floor. Weak sunlight barely penetrates the thick canopy overhead, but despite the sun’s power to kill me I find myself wishing for more of it. I try not to think about the press of Ezra’s chest against mine, the position of his knee between my legs, or the fact that I am cradled in his arms. Eventually, Ezra peels himself off me. He stands, picking up his satchel, and pulls me up with him. “Rhain and Devin have been taken.”
“Taken? Taken where?” I stutter, shaking off the sinful thoughts that seem to want to torture me at the most inappropriate times. I did not want Ezra like that.
“By the fae. Who else?” His body is shaking with anger. “They should never have come along. Now I may lose my friends too.” He turns from me and punches the thick trunk of a tree. I’m pretty certain I hear bones break, but he neither cries out in pain or acknowledges me. He simply walks away.
“Where are you going, Ezra? Will you just wait a minute?”
He swings around, and I collide with his chest. Ezra looks down at me, grabbing my upper arms and lifting me away. “I am going to find my friends, and you are going to stay the hell away from me.”
I want to cry, but I don’t. Instead I poke a finger in his chest. How dare he treat me this way. He looks at me in shock, his eyes resting on my finger, which is still pressed into the hard muscle of his chest.
“You can push me away all you like, Ezra,” I say, jabbing my finger into him again. “You can hate me all you want, but I asked for none of this. None. Whether you like it or not, for now you’re stuck with me. I can be just as stubborn as you.” I glare at him, my own body shaking with anger and hurt.
My hand drops away from him and I feel a sob rising up my throat. Turning away, I cover my mouth with my hand and move deeper into the forest. I don’t care that I am stumbling over my feet because I can’t see my way clearly enough through the tears that well in my eyes.
“Accacia…” he starts, but I ignore him, swiping at my face. Two can play at that game.
“Accacia, I shouldn’t have…”
I keep walking away from.
“Accacia!” He grabs hold of my hand and I whirl around to face him.
“What?”
He flinches from the force of my anger. “What?” I repeat, refusing to look away this time. An angry tear falls from my eye, but I make no move to brush it away. Let him see how he’s hurting me, I don’t care anymore.
He raises a finger and gently swipes away the rogue tear. “I do not hate you, Accacia.”
“You could have fooled me.
You have been nothing but cold towards me, angry even. I am sorry about everything. If I could change what has happened, I would. It would have been better if they had taken me. At least I would get to see Clover.” The words spill from my mouth in a jumbled hurry.
“You are right, Accacia. I have been cold towards you. When it comes to you I am…”
“You’re what?”
He shakes his head. “Nothing. Just know, I do not hate you,” he repeats, letting me go.
I don’t believe him. Every time he looks at me it’s as though he wants to run a mile in the opposite direction. I am nothing but an irritation getting in the way of his plans to kill himself. I could scream in frustration. “Well, now that we’ve got that cleared up,” I say sarcastically. “What the hell do we do now?”
He swipes a hand through his hair and looks about us. His eyesight is far better than my own and like all the vampires of Clan Lux he can see very well in the dark.
“I’m not sure. Lights damn it, they just appeared out of nowhere. If it weren’t for you sleepwalking in the forest, we both would have been taken too. I got up to follow you. You wandered off quite a distance.”
“You followed me?”
“Yes. I couldn’t sleep. Rhain and Devin had dozed off. Rather than wake either of them, I went to see what you were doing.”
“Did you see where they took Rhain and Devin? Were they okay? I mean, they didn’t hurt them, did they?”
“Neither of them put up a fight, they appeared to be under some kind of spell. The fae are strange creatures, they all have these bizarre green eyes. They are just like the colour of the trees here.”
“Did you see a female with long red hair? The same piercing green eyes you speak of. Beautiful, tall, practically naked… She would have been hard to miss.”
“No. There was no-one of that description. Why?”
I bite at my nail, thinking for a moment. Had I been so desperate to see Clover that I had conjured her up in my dream? Or is there more to it than that? She had seemed so real.
“Why, Accacia?” Ezra persists. “Talk to me.”
“I think Clover came to me in my dream.”
“In your dream?”
“Yes, no. I don’t know,” I say, frustrated. “I must have been sleeping, and yet she seemed so real. Clover was trying to warn me. She said they were coming, that we were in danger. She was frantic, she wanted me to leave…”
“I see.” Ezra frowns. “Then she is fae now.”
“Wait, what? Just because she has the same weird green eyes, it doesn’t mean anything. Why would she warn me away if she were one of them now? She’s my friend.”
“Precisely, Accacia. This is called the Forbidden forest for a reason. We are not welcome here, and your friend knows that. Do you still have the stone?”
“Yes,” I say, bringing it out of my pocket.
“Warning or not, we have no choice now but to find Clover.”
“What about Rhain, and Devin?”
“If the fae wanted to kill them, they would have. We find Clover, we find my brothers.”
Chapter Three
Together, Ezra and I walk deeper into the forest. At one point it is so dark I can barely see in front of my face. The lack of any light, however dull, tells me that it must be night time. The day is only distinguished by weak rays of the sun attempting to penetrate the thick canopy above us.
“Shit,” I say, stumbling over a bush. I fling my hands out in front of me to catch my fall, only to find myself pressed against Ezra’s chest. For the briefest of moments, he holds me still against him, steadying me.
“Okay?” he asks.
“If I could see where I’m going, I would be,” I mutter, not sure why my heart is hammering in my chest so damn loud.
“Yes, sometimes being a vampire is useful. Heightened senses come in handy,” he says, and although I can’t see his face clearly, I have a sneaky suspicion he is smirking.
“You’ve decided to acknowledge what you are then?” I say, ignoring the fact he is obviously referring to my traitorous heart. It’s pounding so loud, I can almost hear it. Why the hell is the forest so quiet anyway? There’s no sound apart from our steps and my ridiculous, drumming heart.
“I kind of like the sound of it. Vampire. It rolls off the tongue rather nicely, doesn’t it?” This time he laughs, and I know he is ribbing me. I roll my eyes, not bothering to answer him. Ezra is a strange creature, even for a vampire. Most of the time he is miserable, brooding, hateful even, and then there are moments like this when he acts almost nice and I am thrown into confusion once more.
“Shall we keep moving then?” he asks, realising I’m not about to respond.
“Yes.”
Without saying a word, Ezra takes my hand in his and guides me through the darkness. Part of me wants to pull away, the other part knows that would be stupid. I am, for all intents and purposes, blind. A small voice in the back of my head keeps pointing out the fact that my palm appears to be tingling under his touch, but I refuse to acknowledge why. Shaking these new feelings aside, I clutch the locater stone tighter in my free hand. Even though I have only known Nostra a short time, I have faith in his ability as a witch. Rhain, Ezra and Devin found me because of him, why wouldn’t I be able to locate Clover now? It gives me hope that we will find Rhain and Devin too. The thought that we could lose them to the fae is too unbearable to even comprehend and I refuse to believe that it might be a possibility, just like I refuse to believe we won’t find Clover.
Since the Claiming I have felt a growing connection with Rhain, one I am not willing to think too deeply about right now. Devin too, in a different, but no less significant way. Just like Ezra, I care about them both and I’m not willing to lose either of them to the Forbidden forest and the fae.
“Lights damn it.” Ezra suddenly winces, stopping abruptly. He steadies himself against a tree and takes some deep breaths. His hand is trembling in mine. I reach out towards him, my fingers grazing the skin on his cheek. He is burning hot.
“Ezra…” I start.
“Don’t touch me!” he snaps. My hand falls away.
“This is because you won’t take my blood, isn’t it?”
He ignores me, pulling his hand free from mine.
“I know we haven’t seen eye to eye, but I can’t see you in pain, Ezra. Please, just take my blood. It doesn’t have to mean anything.”
“I will not,” he grinds out.
“I know you said if you take my blood it will mean that we are joined, like you and Thalia once were. But I won’t hold you to it. The Joining is sacred, I understand that. I understand the way you feel about her, that you don’t wish to replace her. Ezra, you might be an infuriating, stubborn, obnoxious man but I won’t watch you die. Do you hear me? I will not.”
“Just give me a moment. This feeling will pass momentarily.” His words are lost to a scream that he has trouble keeping in. I can hear him slide to the forest floor and I blindly feel for him in front of me until I am kneeling between his parted legs.
“My God, Ezra, if I had known… This is getting worse.”
He lets out another roar of pain as he reaches for me, clawing at my clothes. I react on instinct and pull him to my chest, holding him as tightly as he is holding me. The cries of his pain shake me to the core and I find myself crying freely, rocking him in my arms like a mother would their child. “Shh, Ezra. I am here. I won’t let you go.”
Another scream rips from his mouth and I know that nothing but my blood will stop this. And yet, he’d rather suffer this all-consuming pain than take my blood and be joined with me. It angers me. I can feel the rejection ripping at my guts, even though I have no right to feel that way. I just want to take his pain away. I want him to let me.
“The pain. Accacia, the pain. I don’t think I can take it.” He turns his head and screams into my chest. It is an ungodly sound, like a wild animal caught in a hunter’s trap. I can feel the warmth of his tears against the bare ski
n of my neck as my own drip into his hair.
“Ezra, take my blood,” I cry, a sob escaping my throat. I feel helpless, so damn helpless. He shakes his head fiercely, pulling away from me.
“I. WILL. NOT!” He attempts to push me off his lap, but in his weakened state I manage to stay where I am.
“Damn it, why, Ezra? Let me help you.” I grab his face between my hands, barely able to discern the outline of his face. “Let me help you,” I repeat, softer this time. Even in his weakened state I know that he can see how distraught I am. Still he shakes his head.
“No.”
I don’t know if it is the desperation of his voice, the pain in it, or the deep ache in my own chest but I close the distance between us and press my mouth against his. For a split second, he does nothing, he just allows my lips to graze against his as more pain rips through his body.
“Please,” I say into his mouth, my own tears mingling with his. A strange noise slips from his lips, the sound caught between a cry of pain and a moan of desire.
“No,” he says. But instead of pulling away he grabs the back of my head and kisses me like the dying man that he is. I pour all my anger, my frustration, my heartache into the kiss and hope he understands that come hell or high water I will never allow him to die. One way or the other he will take my blood.
Chapter Four
I don’t know how long we remain holding onto one another. Long enough for daylight to filter through the canopy and long enough for me to see Ezra’s face more clearly. He looks terrible, his skin grey, his eyes dull. A stubble has grown over his face, highlighting the hollow of his cheeks. The pain is evident in the way he holds himself, but at least he is calm now.
“How do you feel?” I whisper. It’s a stupid question really, but I ask it nonetheless.