Chapter Seven: Petrova

Getting attached is risky I reminded myself. So many times we all learned the hard way. I couldn’t help but feel a jolt of guilt thinking about Ward, how he changed when Kody was “culled”. The system we work in, it’s horrific. Sometimes I wonder if those that make the rules, those that enforce them ever feel guilty. The rules are old world, and this is a new world, ever changing but the traditions of the Touched remain untouched and inherently wrong. Or at least that is my opinion.

I flirted with a fine line that I didn’t know the boundaries of so often that it was a wonder that I hadn’t landed in trouble much sooner. Ward and I weren’t strangers in any way, but emotionally, we kept so distant that there often felt like a gulf, a canyon could be between us no matter how physically close we were at the time. I suppose that is why it felt so different.

It was nice to feel closer to someone, to not have that feeling filter up. Not ignoring how truly intimate we were being. Ymirxi was different, I reminded myself, not that, that wasn’t blindingly obvious. He was flirty and cheeky and so optimistic. Like brightness and light bouncing off of ripples of water cascading through the air.

“Just most things,” I smiled. He returned my smile moving closer, just a fraction. I looked into those brown eyes and just let myself stop thinking for a moment. Just a moment I promised myself. He leaned closer, his face so close to mine, his breath was warm on my cheeks, his hand slipped around my waist. When I kissed him I did something stupid. I let go of being in control of myself, I let go of controlling the feelings filter and how I needed to keep my distance. I let go of being cold. I embraced the warmth of a passionate kiss. Pulling apart for a moment of breath I could feel every inch of my skin burning. It was that burning that woke my muddled brain from its less logical thoughts.

“I, I can’t” I stuttered out the words barely hearing my own voice. The look on Ymirxi’s face, confusion was as clear as day.

“Can’t what?” he asked. Trying to coax me to look at him, it was the first time I was afraid around him, afraid I would lose control.

“I can’t get feelings involved. It would be stupid, you’re an angel for heavens sakes.” I could see him break into a smile from the corner of vision.

“No one said we had to get feelings involved, well, the emotional kind, not if you don’t want to.” His voice was calm and tender.

“I am a deeply flawed human being.” I thought out loud.

“Yeah, well, you’re more than just that you know… You are fun and kind and sweet and so sexy.” He had been stroking the back of my neck with his thumb, so gently it tickled.

“I didn’t know that angels ever thought…” for a moment my mind fogged again thinking about what it might be like to be with him. Continue reading →

Chapter Seven: Leianna

I never felt so bold. So safe to be open. Like I was with someone who would understand and he did. His words still rang true with me, still rang out like something I remembered soul deep, “the truth is a very dangerous thing” that had been my whole life. My truth, what had been done to me at birth, my pre-paved life, my pre-paved future, the destiny I was thrust toward. Make the best out of it, that is what I had always told myself. Making the best of it had nothing to do with me kissing him, or him kissing me back. That was something else entirely. It made me feel something that I believed impossible. Something that swept away the coolness and how I could reach out and touch the world. Something beyond the water, the fine mist of the air surrounding me, something that seemed a different kind of pure. In that moment I got a glimpse of a fire within, that could burn through me radiating something entirely new. Something very unlike all that I could understand. A kiss dissolved the world, this one and mine. Ending it, had me breathless against my own desire, wanting to kiss his lips again.

The way that Raxaorie looked at me, though he was concerned he had over stepped. I realised that we both had. When he asked how that kiss made me feel, it was a scramble for words, when I found them I wasn’t entirely sure where it was leading, or what I was saying one word to the next. It took following through with each word to realise exactly what it was that I was on the verge of discovery of.  “It felt like nothing I ever felt before, I felt something different, the way the air felt in my lungs… it was different. It was like there was some kind of spark in my chest, a flicker, a flame I don’t know but it didn’t feel, I didn’t feel normal. It didn’t feel like the water in my blood, it felt like for a moment there wasn’t a single drop of water in the air. It didn’t feel like me. It felt… It felt like you” Continue reading →

Chapter Six: Petrova

“You brought me here… Another risk… What if someone finds out?”  I thought of when he started talking to me.

I replayed it like a movie reel in my head for the briefest time, how he spoke. The warmth in his voice that somehow made me feel safe even though it could have been the most dangerous thing in the world. “Do you know who I am?” Such a softness, such a safeness in that smile that made me forget about stranger danger, because he wasn’t one, I knew him in a way, even though it could have been a trap and I could be very dead right now. But when he asked me to really think about how I knew him even though I had denied it. I remember looking around and not really seeing anything even though there was something I was missing.

I remembered how I had seen his presence in the final ritual of the sway before I completed the ascension. I remembered the energy but there was something I was still missing. Even when he said “I am your angel. I have broken so very many rules for you.” Even though his smile was calming and nonchalant. Then I saw it.

“There was someone else there.” I said to him out loud. Finally seeing the dark jacket and jeans, the cap that made it hard to see his face.

“Yes.” He answered, a panic rose in my chest. What had he done? He was risking everything. If that man saw Arielriele then he was exposed.

“You brought me here anyway?” I felt my breath quicken. I struggled to find the words.

“Yes I did. Do you remember the man following you?” Sort of yes but not in a way that seemed to mean much. The harder I tried the cloudier the picture.

“Not really…” I swallow but that doesn’t make me feel better, the panic is rising too high. It was clouding my thoughts.

“There was a man-” I remembered. Continue reading →