Minutes, or maybe hours later, I peeled myself off of the floor and managed a bath. It was pointless. I still felt dirty. I couldn’t settle down in the water. Just feeling-- seeing it reminded me of the gentleness of Kheelan's lips, of his hands… of him.

As clean as I could get, I got out of the bath and opted for a towel, though another perfectly good robe hung behind the door. Seeing the bloodied one crumpled in a corner, breathing felt more like stab wounds sprinkled with salt. Bending down, I took the stained silk in my hands and sparked a flame in my palms. I knew I wasn’t supposed to use my powers, but after what I’d done, I deserved to have Xanthus skin me alive.

The robe curled in the fire until a pile of ash gathered at my knees. Maybe, just maybe if I erased the evidence, then the kiss never happened? Yes. I repeated that mantra over and over, it being the only thing keeping me on the edge of sanity. It never happened… it never happened.

A trunk of dresses was left in the common area. I chose a black one to match the weather, but mostly my mood. A look in the mirror confirmed my beliefs. I looked like death. The front was rather revealing, so I plucked a white scarf from the lot when an embroidered jacket caught my attention. It wasn’t for me, but for Kheelan. Kheelan, who at that moment was with Aeval, kissing her the way he did me, making love to her the way I wrongly and wistfully wished…

I swallowed and suddenly felt used. Being in that apartment was slowly killing me, the prospect of Kheelan coming back too dangerous for us both.

The hallways were empty save for the two guards posted outside of Aeval’s door. They glared at me coolly, and the clothes on my body seemed to disappear. Insanely enough, through their stares, I strained my ears, wanting to hear something coming from behind the large wooden doors. It was masochistic, I know, but maybe it would help me hate Kheelan  if I heard her scream his name. I didn't hear anything except for my deadened knocks on Elena’s door.

After the clicks of a few locks, Elena finally opened, her brow arched.

“I look like hell, I know,” I said, staggering past her and pacing to the middle of her room. Elena closed the door behind her, and simply leaned against the wall, watching me.

Unable to stand still, I walked in looped circles and broken squares. “I need to talk… I need to talk to someone and I have no one else, and it feels like I’m going crazy, and you’re all I have left and…” 

I froze.

On a table, in front of the open windows were the contents of the duffel bag spread out-- Ivan’s things.

Suddenly, it got a little harder to breathe and the world blurred.

Elena sighed and walked to the couch, sitting on the arm rest. “Please don’t get all sentimental. It’s hard enough looking through all these notes to then deal with your tears. Besides, you’re going to help me, and I can’t have you sobbing at every other word. It’s quite annoying actually. You do cry a lot. How Ivan put up with it…” She shook her head and held one of the books up to me.

I hesitated.

“It’s just a book, you know. It won’t bite,” she said teasingly, opening the cover and shutting it closed with a snap as if teeth clamping down at the air.  I ignored her, instead sitting in the shadows at a chair beside the window. From the corner of my eyes, I watched her brows furrow suspiciously, as if trying to pin point exactly what was wrong with me.

I grew hot, and tense, and cleared my throat to fill the awkward silence as guilt induced sweat began collecting at my pores. “Did you find anything?”

After a moment of silent dissection and inquisition, Elena hauled in a long breath and flicked through the pages. Stopping at one, she marked it with her finger and held it out to me. “Ivan started translating the books in this journal. There was nothing explicit about a map, but there was a lot of back history about the Shattering.”

I looked down at her hands, but didn’t take the book. “It’s in Faerie, Elena. I don’t read Faerie.”

“You’re linked to Kheelan. The same way you speak through him, read through him. His knowledge is your knowledge, blah, blah…”

 “What makes you think I’m linked to him? We don’t spend the whole day mentally linked, you know?”

Anger flashed in her eyes and she shot to her feet, towering over me. She jammed the book into my chest. “I really could care less about what you two whisper into each other’s heads all day, but I can’t do this research on my own. Read the damned book.”

“I can’t! I am not linked with him right now—“

Elena shifted back into her stand. “Yeah, then how exactly are you speaking perfect Gri’an?”

“I am not—” I trailed off, hearing the words coming out of my mouth. Realization swept over me painfully. An cutting pain sliced through the center of my head, and I cradled it, the pain darkening my vision for a moment.

The book slipped from Elena’s fingers. “I’ll get Kheelan--”

“No!” I reached for her arm when another throb spliced down my spine. “It’ll pass, please don’t get him.”

Elena wavered for a minute, but then knelt before me. She gripped my shoulders firmly and closed her eyes.  Her waves of healing were relatively strong, but not strong enough for what was happening within me. At least it eased the snapping tension in my head enough where I could lift my eyes and haul in a needed breath.

Elena watched me closely for a minute before lowering her hands. “I know this hurts, but we need to finish this so we can finally get her out of you. Fight her, Take this pain hone it and use it against her.”

I shook my head, tears spilling from my eyes. “How? I don’t even feel her surfacing anymore. It’s as if she’s becoming part of me. How can I fight her, when I don’t even know where she ends and I begin anymore?”

“Then I’ll have to help you with that. How about I slap you whenever you start acting… not yourself? That should snap you back to reality and you can muzzle her, deal? Plus, I’ll get some satisfaction.” She grinned the trademark Elena smile, though there was worry in her eyes.

 “We can do this,” she said reassuringly and stood back up. Rushing across the room, she poured me a glass of water that I downed just as fast. We sat in silence for a bit longer, until the pulsing in my head eased and I felt like myself again.

Convinced I was fine, Elena shook out her hair out and fell back onto the couch. Skimming the notebook, she lay quietly for a moment. “The Shattering, right. It’s said that after the humans betrayed the Fae, and agreed for a veil to be formed, all four elemental powers were needed to do so. The heads of all four elemental kingdoms came together, and under Queen Alistrina’s watch, created the veil. They all agreed that knowing where the veil was located was dangerous information for anyone to possess, so they all sacrificed their lives for the greater good.”

I couldn’t the scoff that exploded from my mouth as I sat back, wiping the sweat from my brow.

Elena continued. “The essences of the leaders were captured into one single source of life, one that can only survive with the coalescing of the elements— earth for its roots, air for it to breathe, water and the light of the sun, fire, to nourish it.”

“A tree,” I breathed. Elena nodded.

“The Tree of Life. The story says the blood of the human king—Maris’ father, was also poured onto the base of the tree to solidify the pact between the Fae and humans. Based on Ivan’s notes, if the four elements were used to create the tree and hide the location of the veil, then this tree must be our map and only the one possessing all these powers can reach it.”

 “So what, it’s etched on the trunk or something? Ivan said it was a map. We can’t exactly carry a tree around with us.”

She shrugged and tossed the book aside. “Ivan never said the map was a piece of paper. It must be inside of this tree, or on it—I don’t know...”

I rubbed my temples, trying to digest it all. “What I don’t get is, Kheelan told me the treaty was bound to Maris’ life and Alistrina hid the veil somewhere in time. Why didn’t Maris just break it—why didn’t she just find this tree and burn it? Or Alistrina, why didn’t she destroy it? They both had the chance to end this all, but they didn’t.”

“Hope,” Elena answered plainly. “If Alistrina destroyed the tree, then she wouldn’t ever know the location of the veil, and our worlds could never co-exist as they did once, something Queen Alistrina desires to this day. Maris’ reasons? I honestly have no idea, but I can imagine it'd be pretty huge if she didn't even bother finding it.”

My stomach twisted a little, but I nodded through it, pretty sure my visions had something to do with it.  “So where does Ivan say we can find it?”

“He doesn’t.” Elena held up the notebook I held earlier in the woods. She pointed to Ivan’s handwriting dissolving into frantic scribbles. “He didn’t get a chance to finish when he got word the bounty hunters were coming. The last legible words say, my father and I don’t know what that means. Either way, some say it is in the gardens of Hillenia, which I doubt. It would be too risky, and Alistrina would never risk that. Over time, after many believed the Tree wouldn’t ever be found, the story grew to become a legend until this day, where no one believes it will ever be found… or that it even exists.”

Elena closed the journal with a heavy sigh. “We may have to do some research on our own. I can dig around downstairs, pick Vurim’s brain for some answers. You… Well, you can get some sleep and wait for Kheelan to get back. He should know what Ivan meant by their father. Once we get some answers, we find this tree and get Ivan back.”

I walked to the window, and parted the curtains. “We’re not going to get Ivan back. He asked me not to come back for him…”

 “Yes, well, the surest way to get someone to do something is to tell them not to do it. I know Ivan. He says the right thing, what he's supposed to say, but deep down he wants you to come back for him.”

I laughed bitterly, fighting the tears threatening to spill. “You would know that, wouldn’t you? I wouldn’t. I know nothing about him.”

Elena saw my coming tears and squeezed her eyes. “Come on, you know I didn’t mean it like that…”

 “I’m just stating the facts. It’s not his fault either. He probably doesn’t even know anything about me either. The important things, maybe, but…” I shrugged. Elena fixed me with a studious gaze.

“Ivan and I, we happened so fast that to this day, we barely know one another. I’m not saying I’m not grateful. What girl wouldn’t wish that the man she loves most is her soul mate, predestined to be together by fate? It’s just sometimes I wonder, if none of this would have happened—if I was just a normal girl, and he nothing but my Art teacher, would he have fallen in love with me, would he even have noticed me? That hurts the most. I don’t have mile long legs like you, or ravishing red hair like Maris – well, now I do, but I didn’t then. I was just me, still dealing with teenage insecurities, more than I knew what to do with.

“I know nothing about his life before me, Elena, before all of this. I knew he had a thing with you, and Maris, but what of everything else--his favorite color for instance? I’m sure it’s black, but for all I know it’s blue, or yellow.  Does he drink coffee when he first wakes up—does he even drink coffee? He was my first kiss, my first…my first everything and I don’t even know if Ivan Stokaya is his real name.”

A fog of smoke formed at my lips, a long sigh leaving me. My powers were plummeting the temperatures in the room, but Elena didn’t scold me. She just listened.

“I’m not complaining, just it would be nice to have memories of a first date, of inside jokes and secrets only we know— things you have, things Maris has, and I don’t. I want nice memories to keep for days like this, when I’m walking toward a future I don’t know, without him, not knowing if I’m ever going to see him again… when I miss him so much that it hurts. I can’t help but wonder if in the end, what we have is enough.”

Elena sat there for a moment, her face as blank as it was pale. “I can’t pretend to understand the two of you. You’re right. You don’t know each other, yet, the intensity of you two together—it’s unexplainable. From the moment I went to see him at the hospital, and saw how he looked at you, how worried he was, I knew I’d lost him. I’d been losing him little by little before that, but once you happened, he was gone. I’d rather cut my tongue out than say this, but you have nothing to worry about, Charlotte. Your favorite food, color, day of the week—it’s all trivial. Ivan adores you in ways I could only dream.  He’s your soul mate, and he died for you. You love him, and died for him--”

“I kissed Kheelan.”

Elena opened her mouth, but nothing came out. There was a slight breath, and then an even silence that swept through the room, where I could almost hear my pounding heartbeats, and Elena’s lack of. For a second, I was certain she’s going to clap her hands, or do a jig across the room. I almost expected her to be cheering, that I’d finally screwed things up and I’d lose Ivan. But she just blinked, nothing in her expression.

“I said I kissed—”

 “I heard you,” she snapped, her jaw clenching tightly. “And I’m going to kill Kheelan.”

 “It wasn’t his fault. It just happened. He was healing me, and I… I wanted him, I think a part of me always has. So we kissed. I don’t know who started it, but I didn’t stop him.”

Elena grimaced. “You didn’t stop him because you’re lonely, confused, and stupid. He should have stopped you!”

“Stop making excuses for me. I’m guilty, I did this—I kissed him. I wanted more. I still want more! It’s killing me that he’s down the hall, making love to Aeval and not me! I kissed him, and I think I love—“

A slap resonated through the room, a burn sweeping through my jaw. I fell back onto my chair shocked, cradling my jaw.  

Elena towered over me, her breathing heavy. “Charlotte, listen to me—“

I lifted my legs and kicked her with a roar. She stumbled back, and I lunged from my chair, ramming her onto the floor. I punched her, but she evaded it and my fist exploded through the floorboards. Elena wound her legs around me, knocking me to the floor. Twisting herself behind me, she grabbed my hair and yanked my head back. Using all my strength, I ripped my head from her hold, wincing as patches of hair ripped off. I spun beneath her, knocking her to the floor. Our legs tangled, and arms twisted, somehow Elena rolled us over and ended up on top of me. She gripped my wrists, digging her nails into my skin.

“Stop it, Charlotte!” Elena growled as I struggled beneath her. “Look at what she’s doing to you! You’re self-destructing from the inside out and you don’t even know it. Maris is making you do things, and then letting you rot in regret over them while she scoots in. You can’t let her get you like this. You kissed Kheelan—so what! You won’t say it again, and you won’t do it again. Remember Ivan,” she said, slamming my wrists with each word. “Remember him, his eyes, the way the left side of his lip curls when he smiles-- remember him. You love him!”

“Why?” I roared, my voice an echo between my voice and Maris’. “Because some prophecy says I have to love him, because we’re commons?”

“No. Love him because I lost him to you, and that pain couldn’t have been for nothing. Now shove her back where she belongs so we can get on with what we’re supposed to do. We’re going to Vurim. We’ll find out about this Tree, and head out in the morning. Kheelan can either go with us, or we go alone. But we’re going to get him back, Charlotte, and we’re getting her out of you. I may hate you, but I hate her even more and I will help you through this. Now focus!”

For long moments later, Elena kept whispering for me to concentrate while holding me down. I closed my eyes, and focused on my heart beats, on what little memories I had with Ivan. I remembered our time in the Underlands, the manic and obsessive way we loved one another, as if it would be the last time….

 “Why are you doing this?” I breathed through the violent pulsing in my head. “You can tell him what I did, and he won’t want me anymore. He’ll finally hate me and you can have him.”

“If I take him from you, it will be fair and square. I won’t be the default lover. When he chooses me, it will be because he wants to choose me.”

Her words struck a chord, and I opened my eyes. It was as if I’d taken off a pair of sunglasses and was blinded by sunlight. I looked at Elena’s bloodied face and busted lip, and then down at my hands that were pinned to the floor. I knew what had happened, but at the same time I didn’t. Maris was gone, and the air in the room became warmer.

I looked pointedly at Elena, having easier time breathing. “Ivan isn’t going to choose you. I won’t let him. He’s mine.”

Elena blew out a breath, relieved, and gradually eased her weight off of me. Finally letting go on my wrists, she sat back onto her knees. “It’s good to have you back, Charlotte.”

There was a knock at the door. I moved to open it, but Elena motioned me back. “I got it, just lay there. They probably want to know what the ruckus was about. I’ll tell them I kicked your ass until you begged for mercy.”

She smiled and stopped at the door. Swiping a hand over her face, her smile was gone, as were her wounds. I lay back down, nursing my wrists that beaded with blood, fresh bruises under my skin.

Elena opened the door. “Yes—”

She gasped and vanished into a black cloud that tore through the room, swallowing the flames from the torches. A scream lodged in my throat when a cold claws clamped down on my mouth, my hands and feet instantly bound by the dark wisps.  I struggled, but the binds tightened, burning my wrists and ankles.

Fae.

Before a blink, we were outside. Before a breath, we were deep in the forest, the lights from Gri’ah but a hue in the distance. When Gri’ah disappeared from view, the black cloud ejected my body. I slammed against a tree, the crunching sound of bones breaking drowning out the still nothingness of night.

I groaned, rolling onto my stomach as the black clouds whisked past me erratically, howling, taunting me. I stumbled onto my knees and tested a breath. My chest throbbed, ribs broken.  With what little strength remained, I clawed at the rapids of mist that whirled all around me.  They hissed, twirled and spiraled through my fingers, toying with me like some caged animal. Cold fire scorched my hands. I choked back a scream and retracted my arms. The pale glow of the moon illuminated the gashes that appeared slowly, the coming blood marking fresh claw marks on my torn skin.

Moonlight broke through the trees like a giant spotlight and the black fog retreated just outside the line of light. The Migols' seedy red eyes watched me hungrily and dread settled on me swiftly. Every Migol had a master...

Just then, a black voice strummed all around me, crystalizing my fears.

“Broken yet, human?”  spoke a voice from the darkness. I could feel the smirk on his invisible face.

Loch.

                                                              ***

Thoughts?

I really didn't want this to be a cliffhanger, there was just nowhere else to cut the chapter off and plus the chapter had a lot of info so it would have been overkill. Hope you enjoy, external link to the right :)

Thanks for reading!