Chapter 32 32
RANDOM FACTS: In the dream realm, pheromones don't exist. There's no biology, no heat, no instinct driving them together. For the first time, Kael has no excuse for why he can't look away from Riven Draken.
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I wake up to the feeling of something cold creeping over my body.
I also realize seconds after that I’m not fully awake, not in the place that I call home anyway. Everywhere is dark so I can barely make out anything… except of course the tendrils moving over my skin.
I don’t even take a pause to use my brain to its full capacity as I instantly snap, “Get me out of here—!”
“You’re the one who brought yourself here, little lamb. Like a lost sheep. I found you wandering here since I could not find you… anywhere else,” His voice is like gravel, and it should grate across my senses and make me feel irritated and annoyed.
But instead, all that happens is I’m quiet again as I see his face slowly firm up right in front of me. His eyes are gold now as he reaches out for my face, his voice low. “I do not like these games of hiding in a place of light so I cannot reach you. It maddens me.”
I should find those words threatening… but I feel tired. I feel like I’m about to pass out even in this state as I whisper back, “Tell me what you are. Please.”
Kael Veyne’s hand still rests on my face. “You are sad.”
“Yeah?” Usually, I’ll have something to say about that but I don’t. Not now. I feel too weak to say anything, too tired. “Fuck. Why do you refuse to distract me? Why am I here? What’s going on?”
“You called for me like you did before, mouse,” His voice sounds deceptively calm, or maybe it’s always been that way and I didn’t always associate it with that. I don’t know. “With your blood.”
My blood? I don’t… I don’t remember bleeding, I don’t…
Claire. Claire. Claire. Claire.
“It hurts,” The word slips out of my mouth before I can stop it. “Every part of me hurts. Make it stop please. I’m begging you. It hurts. Please, please, please,”
Kael stares at me. That’s all he does. Stares. But a shadow tendril moves to my cheek, cradling the tears falling from my face before slowly letting it dissolve in itself.
Then he speaks, his voice soft, “What do you know about the human realm, Riven?”
The human… realm? “I don’t… no one speaks of them since the… war that happened.”
“I do not remember the war.” His eyes glow in the dark. They’re gold again, and fit a moment, I think of stars burning in them. “But I see them in my realm from time to time.”
Shadows swarm us. The sensation that fills my skin is a bone chilling icy feeling, cradling my entire skin as I gasp before they clear again, and I realize we’re somewhere else… and white things fall from the sky and touch us.
And it’s freezing cold.
I look up, blinking as some of the white things fall on my face. Kael moves behind me, his arms wrapping around my waist as his voice says from behind me, “This is winter. What falls on you is called snow.”
I catch one of the things falling, my thoughts going to Garouihl. It’s always cool or warm there. Never icy. Never cold. “It’s cold.”
“It reminds me of you.”
I turn around so I can look at him, my eyes looking up at him. “What?”
“It’s a slow killer, I see, people almost never notice it. It is dark, and seeps into your skin. But it’s… soothing. It makes you feel… things,” He says. There is still no emotion in his words but it sounds as if he’s trying to find the right words to place together. “It has its own design that many do not fully grasp… but enjoy to stare at.”
I stare at him, unsure of what to say before I look away. My face seems to be heating up all of a sudden and my heart is racing again. “That place looks like it’s iced over.”
“It is a frozen lake. Would you like to glide over it?”
“Glide.”
“There are things called skating shoes on your feet.”
I look down as he says those words, realizing we are now on the ice and I’m wearing clothes covered in fur. The design is different from the one I’m used to.
He’s right in front of me now, his face towards me with that same impassive expression. It’s only then I realize he has on a black coat, his hands in its pocket as he slides across the ice like the wind itself pulls him backwards. “Do you like it?”
There’s music playing in the background now… something old but soothing. I realize we’re now in an auditorium of some sort, with the open sky right above our heads.
And I’m still somehow standing on the ice without falling. The skates feel strange on my feet, like they're an extension of me but also not. I watch him move backward, effortless, like he’s a shadow moving across the entire space.
“I don't know how to do this,” I admit, my voice small in the open air.
“You will not fall.” He says with the same certainty like the earth is round. Kael always speaks like this. Like he knows. It’s soothing. Calming, maybe. “Not here.”
“Where is ‘here’, exactly?”
“Wherever you want it to be.”
He's in front of me then, one hand extended. I take it without thinking, without questioning. His fingers are cold through the fur-lined gloves I'm suddenly wearing, but it's not unpleasant.
“Do you plan on ever speaking without parables? What about straight to the point conversations?”
“If I answer, you wake up. Enjoy this place a little longer.” He pulls me into his body, his voice low and patient in a way I’ve never heard from him. “Slide one foot forward. Then the other.”
He’s close. Too close for me to smell his pheromones and to make my mouth water and to scramble whatever thoughts I’ve managed to conjure up in my head… but I can’t look away. “I thought I couldn’t fall here.”
“You desire to learn still. I can read your thoughts here.”
He adds the last part for my benefit even if he’s said it a hundred times and I should know it by now. And I shouldn’t be here. With him. All of my problems are because of him. He isn’t good for me. I shouldn’t be here…
But I do as he tells me.
In this moment, with snow falling around us and music playing for an audience of just the two of us, I can’t seem to pull away.
I move one foot. Then the other. I wobble, gasp, grip his hand tighter—but I don't fall.
“Good,” He says, and his deep voice resonates through my spine, settling somewhere deep in my chest. “Again.”
We move across the ice together, him backward, me forward, his hands guiding me when I stumble. The snow falls heavier now, catching in my hair, on my lashes.
I'm laughing. I don't know when I started, but I'm laughing, breath clouding in the cold air.
And Kael Veyne has not pulled his eyes away from me for a second.
He lets go of me for a second, just one, and it feels like I will slip but I don’t. He just glides backward, his arms now behind his back as he stares at me like he sees nothing else but me.
And his pheromones hit me again.
Desire.
Not the reasonable kind. It’s predatory. Like he’s only inches away from devouring every inch of me till there’s nothing left. It makes my knees feel weak. It makes it hard for me to focus. “Kael.”
“You say my name differently in dreams.” He tilts his head like he’s studying me. “You are wondering why I have not made love to you yet, or why I’m restricting myself. I do it because this… restraint feels… new.”
I shouldn’t ask. I shouldn’t fucking ask. But I do. “Why?”
“I want my shadows to replace the veins that run to your heart so I can always sense you whenever I desire. I want to exist in you, and you in me.” He says this without a change of expression on his face. “But there are too many sides of you, Riven. I wish to see each one before I do so.”
Kael looks at me like I’m a meal he must hunt down, like at the end of… whatever this is, I am nothing but an object that he toys and fucks with whenever he desires… but I… I want more.
More than this.
I want him to see me as more… I want to know why he’s the way he is.
I can fix him… which I know is something stupid girls say but I can’t help how the thought flashes through my head. “You never told me what you are.”
“Nothingness.” He says. Like that’s the answer for anything. “And you cannot fix what does not exist, Riven.”
The conversation is over. I know it somehow. My body feels weak, like I’m about to pass out soon. “Where are we, Kael?”
“A dream I believed you would like.” He says, his voice smooth. “Stay next to the shadows.”
An order.
I pass out before I can tell him no.