A matter of heart, p.8
A Matter of Heart, page 8
I stare at the door he’s indicated. “He’s through there?” Jonah nods. “You said I’m good, that I’m all better?”
He nods again, smoothing some of my hair down. So I will the door out of existence, needing to look into the next room.
Kellan is in the distance, uncharacteristically pale against the pillows and white sheets. His head is tilted towards one side, angled toward the windows. If I hadn’t just heard what I had, I’d assume he was napping. There is no IV, no machines, no nothing.
Just a boy in a bed. Sleeping.
I force my attention away from Kellan, back to Jonah. “How’d you find us?”
A gentle kiss is pressed against my cheek. “Once Zthane brought in a team to extract us from where we were trapped—”
“Are you okay?” I interrupt, searching his face for any kind of trauma from his imprisonment. “Did they hurt you?”
“I’m fine,” he insists, and I can’t help but kiss him in relief. “I’d gotten the details of what went down from Kellan and shared them with the team once we got back to Annar. We knew pretty much where you two were, but since you hadn’t built the portal yet, Rushfire had to do it for you.”
Huh. I can’t even get a hello out of the ancient Faerie, let alone get him to help me with a project. “He did that?”
“He wasn’t really given a choice. So yes, he built it with the help of a Mover, because the nearest portal was a hundred miles away and I wasn’t willing to travel that distance.”
“Tell me you did not threaten Kleeshawnell Rushfire into building that portal.”
“Whether or not I did,” he says, “it’s done now, and was completed in record time. Which was good, because we were already handicapped by time constraints.”
“And the Elders?”
“There was a fight,” he admits. “But we managed to chase them off. Our team was bigger than theirs.”
The image of Earle being tossed like a doll flashes through my mind. “What about my team? Are they here, too?”
His face is guarded. “We can’t find any traces of them.”
I shudder as a slew of awful scenarios flood my mind. Earle, Nividita, and Harou all missing, and on my watch no less. I throw the covers back. “We need to go find them!”
He yanks the sheets back up. “You need to stay right here and rest. There’s a team out there looking as we speak. The Guard is committed to finding them.”
Please, for the love of everything that’s good in all the worlds, let them be found.
Jonah tucks a blanket around me. “It was awful when Kellan wasn’t able to talk to me anymore. I mean, I was able to access his mind, but I couldn’t hear him. I just knew he couldn’t hear me. We’ve never had that problem before, so it was just . . .” He wipes at his face. “There came the point where I knew he was struggling to even remain coherent. It was like his mind became a series of fragments—nothing made sense anymore. What I saw were clearly hallucinations. I couldn’t tell if you were still alive, or even with him. I have never been so terrified in my entire life.”
And he’d been scared, for me and his brother, and I’d gone and kissed Kellan. I can’t help it—guilt crashes over me, fast and hard, a hammer smashing through the calmness Jonah gifted me earlier. But before I can apologize or grovel at his feet or even begin to rationalize my actions, he says, “This isn’t the time to talk about what happened in that cave.”
He knows. Caleb is smart enough not to issue an I told you so. “Jonah—”
“Chloe,” he says, closing his eyes, “I can only deal with so much at one time. Please. I need to make sure that you and my brother are okay first before we have that discussion.”
It’s like someone set off a siren in my body: PANIC. PANIC! PANIC!!!
“I love you,” I whisper, pushing so much adoration in those three words that he won’t have any other choice than to believe it.
His head falls until his forehead rests against the side of my head. “I know. I love you, too.” His next words are clinical, all traces of vulnerability gone. “As for the Elders, they all got away. We had the opportunity on the Gnomish plane to capture two, but abandoned the plan so we could get to you before it was too late.”
Determination fills me up. “We’ll get them.” We have to. I made a promise, and I intend to keep it.
Sometime before dinner, Karl stops by. He’s smiling, but it’s not his normal, easy-going smile, the one that reaches his eyes. “I’m glad to see you awake. You had us all worried, especially with that bullet-proof wall you barricaded yourself behind.” Even his quiet laugh is off. “Took me a long time to break it open. Sort of wounded my ego, you know?”
Jonah positions himself next to me, so he’s slightly in front of Karl. I have to crane my neck around just to see our friend. “Sorry about that.” I grin. “But thanks for coming to get me.”
“I may not be your personal guard anymore,” Karl says, the smile even fainter, “but I will always try my best to make sure you’re okay.”
Jonah grips my hand and gives Karl a long, pointed stare. It’s almost as if he’s daring Karl to do something. Exactly what, I’m not so sure. And then, in a low, tense voice, “Chloe needs her rest.”
I attempt to assure everyone I’m fine, but Jonah cuts me off. He practically seethes, “She’s been through a lot over the last week. A good friend would understand that.”
“You know I do.” Karl sounds oddly resigned.
This is beyond bizarre. “What’s happening right now?”
“Nothing is happening,” Jonah insists, and I swear, his eyes are iced over in anger.
Karl follows up with, “I talked to Kate downstairs. She says Kellan is coming along?”
“Kellan,” Jonah bites out, “also needs his rest and should be left alone.”
I’ve never seen Karl so uncomfortable before. He scuffs his steel-toed boot against the tiled floor. “You feeling okay, Chloe?”
I tell him I am; Jonah’s grip on my hand is close to bruising. “Tired, but less thirsty, you know?”
I expect this to be amusing, considering the threat of dehydration and all, but neither man smiles.
“Good, good,” Karl mumbles, shoving his hands into his pockets.
“You should go now.” Jonah stands up, mercifully releasing my hand.
“Jonah,” Karl begins quietly, but my fiancé shakes his head.
“No,” he tells Karl. Practically barks. “You need to go.”
Karl scrubs his face. “You think this is easy for me? I have my orders.”
Jonah surprises me by saying, “Are you kidding me? Fuck your orders. We’ve already had this discussion, and my answer is the same. I tried to do this the nice way, but I will not tolerate this insubordination.”
“What. Is going. On?” Insubordination? What the hell? Jonah does not throw words around like this. Jonah is the most sane, logical person I know.
“It’s standard procedure,” Karl offers unemotionally. Like he’s a robot. Like somebody came and stole the Karl I know and put some voice box and wires in him and made him say stuff in a voice that’s his but isn’t.
Jonah laughs, but there’s no humor in the room. “Is that how they’re playing this?”
Karl’s shoulders sag and unhappiness colors his entire person for the tiniest of seconds, even though his back is ramrod straight. “If you look at it from the Guard’s perspec—”
Jonah cuts him off. “I outrank every single person in the Guard. Even you. And when I say no, I mean no. If he thinks he can challenge my authority, especially since he thinks I’m just a,”—and here he flashes air quotes—“kid, then I welcome him to try. But we all know how this is going to end. I’m going to get my way, and he’s going to get his ass handed to him.”
I grab his arm. “Jonah, talk to me! What’s this about?”
A muscle twitches near Karl’s left eye. “Even though I’m a Council member, I still have to do as ordered when the Guard brass issue a command—”
“Unless the Council revokes that order!” Jonah says loudly, also ignoring me. “Which I did!”
Karl’s eyes close briefly as he massages the spot between them. “I know, J. You think I didn’t point this out, oh, I don’t know, a few dozen times?”
Jonah may be shorter than Karl (I mean, who isn’t?), but he sure doesn’t seem like it when he takes a step closer and says in that low voice, “Then why are you here? I told you to stay away. I ordered you to stay away.”
Karl’s eyes do not leave Jonah’s, not for a second. “For your information, I was escorted.”
Jonah laughs. It’s ugly. “And you let them? Wow. I guess I don’t know you as well as I thought I did.”
“Jonah!” I gasp. I may have no idea what’s going on, but . . . but . . . this is one of his oldest, best friends! “Somebody tell me what’s going on!”
Karl finally looks at me and then back at Jonah. “Maybe you don’t.”
Jonah takes another step closer, so there is very little space between the two men. “You tell him,” he says in such a quiet, flat voice that I flinch back into my pillows, “that if he dares to contradict my orders again, he will regret it. That if he thinks I won’t destroy him, he’s deluding himself. Because you know as well as I that I will.”
Karl nods, just once. Then, to me—“I’m glad you’re okay, Chloe.”
When he leaves, I practically shout, “What the hell was that?”
“That,” Jonah says, calmer now, “is another thing we’re not discussing tonight.”
I am utterly bewildered by what just went down, but I know Jonah. And I know he’s been through hell the last week, too. And if he says he’s not ready to talk about something, I need to accept it for the time being, even though I’m dying to know. So I say, more teasing than annoyed, “What exactly are we allowed to talk about?”
He sits back down on the bed next to me. “You. And me. And how I’ll do anything to ensure your safety and happiness.”
But just what does that mean?
Dinner is Jell-o. Yay.
“Do you have a preference?” Jonah asks, flipping through a menu dropped off earlier by an orderly. This is so Annar—menus in a hospital. Personalized, no less. Only my menu consists entirely of Jell-o options. “Flavor-wise, I mean?”
“I’d like chocolate pudding,” I grumble, but he ignores me and rattles off ten different flavors for me to choose from. “Fine,” I sigh. “Cherry will do.”
He smiles. “You always pick red.” Then he calls down to the kitchen and makes the order.
“How are you feeling?” I ask when he climbs back into the bed with me.
“Other than having the week from hell, I’m fine.”
I glance towards Kellan’s door and try to block out the memory of us kissing in the cave. “I’m sorry you had to go through all of this.”
“It’s not like you purposely went out and tried to get yourself killed.”
“You know what I mean.”
He sighs, rolling onto his side. I do the same, so we’re facing one another. “I love you more than life itself. You know that, right? You are everything to me.”
As always when he says things like this, my entire being fills will contentment and bliss. “I feel the same way about you.”
He’s staring directly into my eyes, so deep down I swear he can see my soul. “But you don’t, not really.”
Whaaaat? “How can you ever say that?” I gasp, and when I’m about to jerk up, he reaches out to hold me down.
“That came out wrong. You love me, yes, I absolutely believe that. But whereas I have one Connection, to you . . . you have two.”
“You have two as well,” I shoot back, suddenly so alarmed that I can’t even think straight.
“It’s not the same,” he says, shaking his head softly against the pillow, all black-blue, beautiful hair against white. “And you know it.”
“Is this . . . is this because of what happened in the cave?” Hysteria pounds furiously against my walls, screaming to be released. Even Caleb, suddenly aware in the back of my mind, is stunned into silence.
Jonah closes his eyes and rolls back onto his back. “Maybe. I don’t know.” He covers his eyes with a hand. “I just . . . fuck. This is all so much to take in right now.”
He’s cussing. It’s a bad sign; Jonah hardly ever cusses around me. “You . . . you said we shouldn’t talk about this!” I’m babbling, sitting up and grappling at his free hand. “And you know that I love you, that you’re the one—”
“I know you love me, Chloe.” He’s tired; Caleb reminds me just how much stress he’s been under this last week: fighting the Elders, being trapped, himself, in a dungeon, escaping and then fighting another group of Elders, all the while dealing with his fiancée and twin brother being trapped and dying slowly in some remote, random cave. And then, to top it off, find out said fiancée and twin brother kissed while he was doing everything in his power to save them.
A lesser person might have broken under such circumstances.
I take a few deep breaths, frantically trying to think of what I can say that will even be appropriate at a moment like this. Like the sad, pathetic drama queen I am, I start out with, “I am so, so sorry, Jonah . . . please, if you let me, I’ll try to explain . . .”
He’s still not looking at me. “You don’t have to explain. Logically, I absolutely understand why things went down like they did. You and he share a Connection.”
I muster up the horrible audacity to ask, “What all do you know?”
“Enough.”
When I saw Jonah kiss Callie a year before, it shattered me and nearly destroyed everything we have together. And when Jonah found out I’d kissed his brother shortly afterwards, it’d been just as devastating for him. What if he’d seen it? Through Kellan’s eyes? Worse yet, felt it?
I cry, and even though there’s no doubt he can feel the agony and misery in me, I still try to muffle the sounds. Fat, hot tears well down my face in soundless paths.
“I’m trying,” I whisper when the silence in the room becomes unbearable.
He knows what I mean. “Where has that trying gotten you, Chloe? I’ve known these eight months what his absence does to you. I can feel it in you. Trying means nothing, not when you’re Connected to someone. You might as well try to cut off your arms. You could get one off, but you’d never be able to take the other one off by yourself. It’s impossible. He can try to force as much distance between you, but it’ll never work.” Jonah lowers his hand and stares up at the ceiling. “The two times distance has been forced between you and me—when the doorway was lost and then last year, with Callie—it never helped me. It made things worse.”
“Sometimes it helps.” A tear rolls across my nose; it tickles but I’m afraid to even move in this moment. “The distance, I mean. When you’re with me, I don’t feel his loss.”
“I know,” he says.
“I didn’t choose this. I mean, I chose you. I didn’t choose to have another Connection with another person, let alone your brother.”
“I know, honey,” he says, and part of me softens in relief with the endearment. “But, you need him. I know that now.”
If someone could shatter in fear, it’d be me. Eight months without Kellan is one thing. But I cannot fathom life without Jonah. I wouldn’t want to. “What are you saying?”
He finally rolls back over so we can look at one another. “I am willing to . . . concede, no—not concede, because that would indicate I actually have some say in this—”
“You do,” I cut in. “You absolutely have a say.”
“Nobody truly has a say in someone else’s emotions. Well, except an Emotional . . . But you know what I mean.” His smile is faint. “What I’m trying to say is that, while it was Kellan’s choice to exile himself from you, I actively encouraged it.”
You’d think this would upset me, but it doesn’t, because I know Jonah is not capable of being malicious towards either me or his brother.
“And,” he continues, “I’ve always known what this has done to him. But he’s done it, because he’s altruistic and because he loves me, and I’ve let him because I’m a selfish bastard.”
“No.” I reach over to touch his face, but he gently grabs my hand before I can make contact.
“Yes. I am. But I had an epiphany recently, and even if it kills me to do so, I’m going to back off and let things fall where they may.”
I don’t understand. . .?
“What I mean,” he says, sighing as he places my hand down next to me, “is that I will no longer encourage my brother to stay away from you.” Just as my panic hits the top and spills over the Chloe Terror Meter, he adds, “That’s not to say that I’m encouraging you two to go off and get married or even . . . do anything like you did in that cave . . . but, there has to be some kind of halfway point we can all meet at. Because I miss him and hate knowing that I’m destroying him like I’ve been doing—”
“You would never do that—” I start, but he waves me off.
“Yes, I did. I’ve fully known every last misery he’s been going through. People with Connections are not meant to deny themselves of their significant others.”
“He’s not my—”
“You know what I mean. The fact that he’s been able to go this long is, frankly, astounding, and a testament to how much he loves us both. But having no contact with one another hasn’t done either of you any good. So what I’m suggesting, I guess, is that maybe you two can be . . . friends?”
I dumbly repeat back, “Friends?”
“Yes,” he says quietly. “Friends. Not friends with benefits, you know, because I have my limits, but . . . friends . . . who are there for one another. Who are actively involved in each other’s lives.” He studies me intently. “What do you think? Is this maybe an acceptable alternative?”
