The world remains, p.22
The World Remains, page 22
“But only a little, right?”
“Right.”
His mouth twitched. “Figures.”
Now that the battle was won, I offered a hand to help him to his feet. At first he just studied my outstretched limb, and when he finally decided to take me up on the offer, he didn’t use me to stand. Instead, the imp enclosed my wrist in his fingers and, with a tug, yanked me to the ground. I fell unflatteringly onto my butt. “Olté!”
“What? Isn’t that what you wanted? You so politely offered me your hand. The least I could do was oblige in assisting you to the ground.”
“Whatever! You’re so lame.” But I was smiling. He was too. We were both grinning like a pair of children.
“Okay,” he said. “While I get this thing going, why don’t you grab the containers from the pack? There should be six or so.”
I did as he said – the bottles actually totaled seven – and together we filled them up and returned them to the bag.
“So,” he said when we were finished, “since I carried them on the way here, it means you should carry them on the way back. What do you say? Sounds fair, right?”
“No way! It’s full of water now!”
“Exactly.”
“Jerk.”
“Spazoid.”
We both knew he had no intention of making me carry it – what with my puny chicken arms and all – but we pretended to quarrel because it was fun. With giddiness beneath our flesh, we continued to poke at each other, and when that wore off, Olté took up the pack and stared into the sunset. The amber was nearly at its peak. The moment when its influence is strongest. “Mmm,” he said. As soon as I saw that it had captured his gaze, I offered it should the same to me. I wanted to match his aura. I wanted the twilight to find me.
But to do that I had to force stagnancy.
The instant I became still was the instant it hit me. That was instant my aura matched his. My spirit immediately saw an opening and attempted to leave my body. Though I fought to contain it at first, it soon turned futile. My thoughts became empty under the paralyzing influence of amber. It felt too good to be disconnected. It was too easy to become lost in the glow.
Olté was under its influence too. Side by side we stood, stiff as trunks, and let it coat our skin.
“Seriah asked why I took out my contacts,” mumbled Olté after a time had passed.
I didn’t shift my eyes from the horizon. “What did you tell her?” I said.
“That you were feeling homesick and that I thought seeing something familiar might help.”
“And?”
“She commended me for my sensitivity.”
“Your sensitivity, huh?” The spell of twilight was strong. It forced my tongue to ramble. “She’s a decent person,” said my mouth. “I tried to hate her, but even someone as petty as I couldn’t do it.”
“Hm.”
“It made me realize,” my mouth persisted, “that she doesn’t deserve what we’ve done. She doesn’t deserve to be led on and manipulated.”
Olté’s mouth disagreed. “She does,” it said.
“How can you think that?”
“Because I’m a substitute. That’s all I’ve ever been. If I weren’t, I might’ve fallen in love with her.” It stung to hear him admit that, but that was the price to be paid for amber’s glow of honesty. He went on to elaborate, “Because of my loneliness it would have been easy to use her the way she’s been using me: as a replacement for what I really want.”
“A replacement.”
It wasn’t a question, but Olté perceived it as one. “That should be obvious by now, dummy,” he said. Softly. Sincerely.
Obvious? Yeah, it was obvious, but I wanted more than anything to hear him say it. To hear those words verbalized would be to reach a state of elation I’d only imagined.
“It’s all for you,” he murmured. “Everything I’ve done. Everything I’ll do. No sin is greater than the knowing I’d commit any sin for you. I haven’t had a conventional life, but I’ve seen enough of the world by now to know: The way I’ve always felt towards you, it wasn’t something spawned from the circumstances I was born into. It wasn’t because you were my first and only friend. It’s because you’re irreplaceable, and because even after I left that place and met many other people, none of them were like you. My thoughts were consumed by you every single day, and still I wanted to think of you more. If we were the only two people walking the earth – if we were the last of the Maker’s seeds – I swear I would be happy. I wouldn’t mourn the rest of them. I wouldn’t even think twice. And the worst part is I know how wicked that makes me, and I don’t even care.”
The words were powerful, and although his voice was a hum, they nearly knocked the wind out of me.
“So . . . you’re saying you kind of like me or something?” I kidded since I wasn’t strong enough not to.
“Of course you’d retort with something smart like that after I bare my soul to you.” The mid-portion of the sun’s fire melted into the ground. “No, Ashy, I’m saying I kind of love you. Or something. And the only reason I say ‘or something’ is because ‘love’ doesn’t seem to cover it. It’s something more than that, even.” His voice faltered. “You’re everything.”
But he’d lost me at ‘love’. There it was. That one word, short in the grand scheme of words, was enough to set my core ablaze, making it to match the horizon before me. The blaze started in my middle and shot outwards, and when it had reached my hands and feet and neck, my stomach dropped and I felt sick in a good way.
“I love you, Ashlin.” Olté was no longer staring ahead. He was watching me. Painfully. Strainingly.
I tore myself from the orange and returned both his stare and his words. “I love you too, Olté. Ever since we were kids.” And because I couldn’t stop my lungs from heaving, I failed an attempt at holding my breath. My heart was rapid in my chest and loud in my ears.
Gah! And Olté looked so freaking calm!
But he wasn’t. The moment he took my arms and pulled me into an embrace, I felt his heartbeat, just as rapid as mine, beneath the soft cloth of his shirt. He was nervous too. He was alive inside too. We were feeling the same. He and I were the same.
He brought his lips to my forehead and kissed me warmly. It was comforting, but that wasn’t what I wanted. I didn’t want to be comforted by him. I wanted to be driven to madness by him. I wanted to writhe with him in the darkness.
I knew what I had to do.
Rather than hiding my face in his chest, I looked up with at him with determination. His eyes widened in response, for he didn’t know how to take it. Go on, I told him without words.
No words were exchanged, yet the message reached him.
His hands were on my lower back, holding my body against his, but he now removed one of them and brought it to my chin. Lightly he tipped my face upward, even more than it already was, and locked eyes with me. Studying the different colored rings around each iris, I bit my lip in anticipation. And then he swooped in. I thought he’d land on my mouth, but when I felt his lips on my neck, I let out a weak cry. I hadn’t expected that. It made my stomach fall. I gripped the back of his shirt in my talon-like fingers and dug at the fabric. Closer. I wanted to get closer to him than ever before.
I wanted him to consume me.
From my neck, Olté moved to my collarbone and kissed me there twice before pulling away. His eyes were dark. His pupils large. His jaw tight. It pulsed. His Adam’s apple bobbed, and then he went in again. This time for real. And this time, I met him halfway. Our lips met and something happened. Raw, unkempt, unfed desire erupted between us and our bodies began to act on their own. My hands clawed at his back and then traveled to his hair. As he bent my body backward, my fingers wove between his strands that were falsely dyed, and twisted and pulled. Olté kept one hand at the back of my waist and used the other to play with the hair at the side of my head.
And we continued to kiss. Deeply. Instinctively.
And it felt both right and wrong and good and evil all at the same time.
We wouldn’t pull away. Never would I let him go. This is how it was meant to be. We were meant to be woven together. We were supposed to be one. All the time we’d been apart had been worth it if just for this one kiss.
I wasn’t going to let him go. We would die like this. In each other’s arms. Nearing unity.
But before we could become completely lost to one another, an uninvited, unwanted voice cut through the space that was ours. The voice was hyper and startling and shattered the moment like a bullet through glass.
“THAT’S FUNNY,” it said. “Kissing your sister? Now, I know your upbringing was backwater, mate, but there’s no way it was THAT backwater.”
In no time flat everything turned from pleasure to panic. Bursting with adrenaline, we ripped from each other as frenziedly as was possible. The sun was gone. The air was cool and stark. And Croix stood only a short distance away.
He’d seen everything.
“Croix!” I fumbled for an excuse. “Uh! Er! Eh-”
But Olté just narrowed his eyes in challenge. “Well, now you know,” he said. “Guess it had to happen sooner or later.” He wasn’t apologetic. He wasn’t ashamed. He was only confrontational.
“Lass isn’t your sister, is she?” said Croix. Per usual, I couldn’t read him. His arms were folded. He seemed half-relieved and also half-disappointed. I didn’t understand it, so I didn’t bother with it at all.
“She isn’t,” said Olté. “She’s . . . my everything.”
“Everything? So she IS your sister?”
“Even if she were, I doubt it would make a difference.” Olté tore into Croix with an energy that was something like conviction. “But for simplicity’s sake, we’ll say she’s everything but my sister.”
“Now, that’s a little too inclusive, don’t you think?” said Croix. “Everything? So she’s your love slave? Your cousin, maybe? Your tumble buddy? Your nanny? Your ward? Your –”
Croix wasn’t taking this seriously? He was joking around about it? Unbelievable!
But believable or not, his behavior made Olté relax a little. “You know what I mean,” said Olté. “I’m in love with her. Don’t worry, we aren’t related enough to cause you any squeamishness.”
Croix still appeared only half-relieved. “I see,” he said. “So that bit about her poppa having a covert affair with your mum was a fib?”
“Yes. I’m fully the child of that couple. In other words, ‘Mum’ was faithful.”
“Ah. Now I see.”
“What I’d like to know,” Olté implored Croix, “is what you plan to do about it. Are you going to tell Seriah?”
“Lady’ll pitch a fit.”
“She will.”
Croix was contemplating. I worried. I worried that he’d tell her, but I knew that it would serve us right. I didn’t fear punishment because it had been worth it. That just proved what a sinful creature I was.
Croix must have come to some kind of conclusion, for his long mouth started to smirk.
“Let me get this straight,” he said. “You arranged this whole thing to save your girlie? Being found by Seriah and me; making her fall for you; pilfering a job with Histo; fabricating some story about a dying sis; and convincing one of the future Curators to break her out?”
Olté gave one stern nod.
“Brilliant!” Croix clapped. “Quite chivalrous of him, don’t you think, lass? That outta earn him at least a little tail. About time virgin boy gets it on . . .” Croix’s voice trailed, for he was remembering something. “Hee! Olté, it all makes sense now! All those times after work when you could’ve . . . but you didn’t! I’ll admit for a time I thought you fancied men! Truthfully was a bit offended you didn’t come on to me.”
“You were not.”
“Naw, I wasn’t. Thought you were saving it for Seriah, but . . .” Croix eyed me. “It’s all come to make sense now.”
His attention was directed at me. I used the opening. “What will you do, Croix?” I said, mainly because I’d just remembered that there was someone else I still had to live for. Under the spell of amber, I’d forgotten all about her. Her face had been blurred in lieu of greedy divulgence. Even so, I couldn’t help noticing that a piece of my heart was somewhere else, and with that piece ensnared in the palm of a thick-fingered girl, I couldn’t lose complete focus. I couldn’t become completely corrupt until after I accomplished the goal I’d set to save her. “I know it sounds selfish, but I ask that you keep our secret, Croix. Because . . .” I took a breath and looked at him squarely. “I’m also traveling for the sake of someone else.”
That was news to Olté. “You are?” he said.
I nodded. “There’s someone like me. Someone I have to save. So it’s really important we find a cure!”
“Hm.” Croix held his chin and studied my face. “You’re one I have to figure out. I’d been counting on you being Isaac, but if you’ve been lying this whole time, then the both of you are stained with sinblood already, aren’t you? So if you ain’t Isaac . . .” Croix had been rambling to himself, but he came to something hard to pass. He chewed on it. “That pins you as Sarah. But then there’s . . . what if the lass did it for someone else’s sake? There might be sufficient unadulterated intent to justify the wrongs.”
“I really have no idea what you’re talking about, Croix,” said Olté. “Save it for later and give me your answer. You know the deal. I don’t plan on giving it up. If not through Seriah and Histo, I’ll find another way. I won’t stop. I’ll play anyone I have to, and I won’t repent. To be fair, I’ll have you know that right now.” He tightened his fists. “So what’s your answer?”
I waited in apprehension for the decision Croix had yet to make. The air, despite being open and free, felt heavy on my shoulders. They hunched no matter how hard I tried to make them strong. Croix’s decision would affect how we proceeded from here on out. One word and Olté and I’d become enemies to both him and Seriah. We’d lose the only allies we had.
Please don’t let it come to that. I wanted to say it aloud, but my mouth was cowardly. If only twilight would have lingered a little longer, I’d have had no choice but to say it.
I waited and waited while Croix rambled and deliberated.
And then he made it. The decision was made.
“I won’t feed you to her,” he said simply.
The heaviness lifted.
“Naturally, as we’re mates.” Tipping his head to the side, Croix petitioned Olté. “We are mates, aren’t we?”
“Yes, albeit I’ve used you as a pawn,” said Olté, dark. “Something I’ll continue to do. That said, the amity between us is genuine – on my end, that is.”
“Shit. I know that,” said Croix, off-put. He scratched the back of his head. “It’s settled then. I won’t be telling your secret. There’s naught reason for it. What’s more, I’d like to figure out who Lil Sis epitomizes – be it Sarah or Isaac – and that’ll take more observation.”
“I still have zero inkling what that means,” said Olté. He was tiring of his friend’s crypticism.
Croix cackled. “Don’t mind it.” Then, dismissing us with the back of his hand, the tattooed man turned to head back to the clinic. “One thing,” he called over his shoulder, “may be a good idea to be a mite more discreet in the future. Macking in an open field isn’t the smartest notion for lovers in hiding.”
I blushed. I felt it happen in my cheeks. He was so right! We’d been stupid. And our punishment was that an outsider knew our secret.
“But it was worth it,” I told myself. My fingers found my lips in remembrance of the kiss.
“It was,” Olté whispered in my ear, sending a new wave of shivers up my spine. “Come on, Sis,” he said, “Let’s get back to my ‘inamorata’.”
“Sure thing, Bro.” I punched him in the arm. “Sure thing.”
On the way, Olté reiterated the plan.
We were to return to the others and maintain the act of being siblings. Tomorrow, we would pass through Brazlee and begin our journey through the other connected Desolics in the hopes of finding a safe route to the Tarchey Mountains. From there, we’d continue to the west, through the guarded rim, and to a city apart from Scindo Peninsula. The city was known as Deca City – D.C. for short. It was a skyscraping, never-dark place where Olté, Croix, and Seriah lived alongside millions of other true Remnants. One of those Remnants was the former-Historian scientist who would be my salvation.
And Sella’s, too.
The plan was sound. The moment Seriah detected Histo interference, she would send them a distress signal and pretend she’d been taken hostage. That would ensure our safe passage for the rest of the way. They wouldn’t do anything to risk hurting her. Olté assured me that Scindo was big enough that we could easily become lost in the untended parts. It would be next to impossible for them to find us if we buried ourselves deep enough. That was the gist of the plan. If we stuck to it, we’d reach the city in just a few days’ time.
But things, as I would come to find, rarely go as planned.
The first rift came at the backside of the clinic. In the midst of trying to compose our giddiness, Olté went rigid. His body gave a small jerk. I hadn’t an inkling why, but I knew well enough to know not to say another word. He’d noticed something – something that jeopardized our safety – and stealth-mode Olté had been triggered.
Stealth-mode Olté was an amazing thing all on its own. He’d always refused to read the spy books I’d forced on him as a kid, insisting he didn’t like reading because he was too much of an ‘in-the-moment’ sort of person. Whatever that meant. So he hadn’t read them, but by the way he reacted to the unseen threat with instinct, taking my waist and sweeping me around the opposite side of the clinic, he could have been in one himself. He embodied those ambiguous hero-villain reconnoiters so well. Too well. In lieu of it, I forgot to be afraid.
Until I heard what he’d heard. Voices that were muffled by the walls of the clinic escaped through the broken top-floor windows. Voices were to be expected. Seriah, Kinamo and Croix were inside, after all. But of the voices coming from the windows, only one of them belonged.
