A Matter of Heart (41 page)

“But you want me to fight
for you.”

I’m startled by this.
“What?”

“I feel it in you. Yeah,
you’re conflicted. But this week, you’ve also been very . . . possessive of me,
I guess. And you’ve wanted me to be possessive of you, too.” His fingers brush
the base of his neck, where the mark I’d placed there is now just a smudge. “I
will, you know. Fight for you, I mean. I’ve wanted to this entire time. Every
single day, I wake up and think,
Today is the day I no longer give a shit
about making my brother happy. Today I’m going to grab happiness for myself
.
But I don’t, because I fear it would tear you up. But now . . .” He places his
hand against my cheek. “This could work, Chloe.
We
can work.”

His offer is so tempting,
but I suddenly realize—despite how much I love him and want him, now more so
than ever before—I can’t sacrifice what I have with Jonah, at the expense of
Jonah. Or at least, can’t right now. Maybe never, but then, I didn’t ever
expect something to happen with Kellan again, either.

“I know it’s selfish,” I
say, stumbling over the words, but needing them out there between us, “but I
can’t make a choice right now. Please don’t ask me to.” Tears from the
reservoir that I thought I’d depleted an hour before resurface. “I can’t. And I
constantly feel this pressure to do so. Like somehow, because I love you both,
I’m a crappy person. The guilt I feel over how it kills Jonah to know that I
love you, and how you are miserable because I’m with him—I drown on a daily
basis in it. There are no life rafts, no boats. I’m barely treading water here,
Kellan, in the middle of the ocean.”

He drops his hand and sighs.
I cry silently as the insects around us sing their night songs. Twenty-four
hours ago, they were brimming with life and happiness. Tonight, they’re
mournful. And my heart breaks clean in half, because as we listen to this
symphony, Kellan shudders in the tiniest way when he breathes. Just once or
twice, but it’s enough to notice.

My stomach twists until I’m
breathless myself.

I scoot closer and lean my
head against his shoulder. One of his arms loops around me and we sit there,
anguished, knowing nothing either of us can do or say can change the fact that
Fate has royally screwed the both of us.

On my desk is a thick file
held together by a rubber band. A yellow sticky note on the top from Fraank
Mountainhold informs me to return it directly to him rather than the Guard.

I sink into my chair and
stare at the file. After coming back from Costa Rica last night, I forced
myself to think not about my unraveling love life but about Jen Belladonna’s
charges against me. Weird as it sounds, it’s easier to deal with this potential
trauma than the one I’m actually living through with the two most important
people in my life.

It’s a standard Guard file.
Brown, with an embossed label on the front detailing the mission specifics:

Frejahnii Civilization /
Cliff Dwellings

Gnomish / Ragnopikk /
Baldurmei / Frejan Mountains

41.6041˚ S /
3.4829˚ W

CL-1-219C

My fingers slide over the
raised series of letters and numbers designating my responsibility for the
mission.
Responsibility
. It’s something I have, no matter whether I want
it or not. I have a responsibility to fulfill my duties as a Creator, and as a
Destroyer, too. I have responsibilities towards the countless people stretched
across seven planes.

Of the handful of people
I’ve quizzed, none admit to keeping track of any deaths that might occur due to
their crafts. The reasoning is always the same—it’d drive them crazy to know
such facts. And I get it; it’s a soldier’s mentality. Sometimes, to stay sane,
you have to accept things without knowing the specific details.

And part of me never wants
to know what the side effects of my craft might be. Just the possibility of
knowing that I might be the cause for anyone’s death, purposeful or
accidentally, is soul crushing. But I also know that, after years of wandering
like a bumbling fool in the dark, I don’t think I want to live that way
anymore.

I flip the folder open and
sift through the papers. There’s the official Council order, including votes;
the Guard mission overview; Tracker reports pre-mission; my detailed report.
But my signature isn’t the last thing in this file. Behind my report is a
post-mission Tracker report I’ve never seen and a handful of laminated
newspaper clippings.

I scan the Tracker report
first: the tiny Frejahnii civilization is officially extinct. No full-blooded
Frejhanii citizen remains; smatterings of lingering bloodlines can be found in
nearby heavily populated regions after the area had been conquered roughly five
hundred years prior. An Intellectual will be dispatched within the next decade
to drive a quest to rediscover remnants of the civilization for academic
purposes; an Emotional will follow within a year to foster national pride
toward the now-forgotten group.

The mission itself had been
uneventful other than it being a windy day and the helicopter I’d been riding
in felt more like a roller coaster than air transport. I’d been on the Gnomish
plane for all of half a day, which was standard, considering I’m Human and
nobody wanted me seen. I remember thinking the cliff dwellings beautiful albeit
worn by age, feeling it was sacrilegious, in a way, to break apart such
history. But I did it, and until Jens Belladonna mentioned it last month, I
hadn’t thought about the mission again.

I slide the first newspaper
article out. Written in a Gnomish dialect and script entirely different than
any language on my plane, I have no idea it says. But it’s obvious it’s about
the Frejahnii cliffs, because a picture of the desolate ruins is featured front
and center. Further on down the page, though, is a pair of photos of young, twenty-something
Gnomes wearing backpacks and big smiles.

My heart drops.

I slip the second newspaper
article out and it is much of the same. Same photos. Same guys. Same smiles.
Same cliff dwellings. The third article follows suit.

On the back page of the file
I find another yellow sticky note:
Inform Councilman Brievssonn of need to
accelerate secondary mission.

I
insert all the documents back into the file in the order I found them. Then I
write out a new request form for Fraank Mountainhold because it’s clear I need
a dictionary.

“So.” Jonah sits down on the
couch next to me. “I hear you had lunch with Kellan and Sophie Greenfield while
I was gone.”

My head snaps up; the book
in my hand drops. A burst of panic forces me to construct an emotional shield.

“I guess it . . . surprises
me? That you didn’t tell me that you met my brother’s . . .” Don’t say it.
Don’t say it. But he does. “Girlfriend.”

My lips twist so I can chew
on the corner.
Yes, Jonah. I had lunch with them, and then afterwards,
Kellan came over, and we almost had sex and merged and then spent the better
part of the week with our hands all over each other
.
Only, when he asked
me to pick him, I didn’t. I picked you. Again. And pretty much destroyed his
heart and seriously wounded my own in the process. I don’t know if I can ever
get over him, but I’m trying—even though right now, I miss him so much it
hurts.
“Yeah, I had lunch with them. Until Maccon Lightningriver showed up.
Then I went and did some work stuff with him.”

Jonah studies me for such a
long moment, I want to squirm. Somehow, though, I do not. I hate that I’m
becoming so adept at hiding things from him. “Did you two talk about it?”

I laugh. It’s forced. “Of
course Mac and I talked about what we were working on!”

If he wasn’t suspicious before,
he sure is now. I’m awful at this. I’m a horrible liar, and emotional shield or
not, Jonah knows me well enough to pick up this stuff like a heat-seeking
missile. “I meant you and Kellan. Did you two talk about how he’s dating Sophie
nowadays?”

My laughter turns hyena-ish
until I realize—Jonah knew all along about Kellan and Sophie. And never. Once.
Told me. “How long have
you
known?” I ask more forcefully than I’d meant
to. But then, before he can answer, I find myself snapping, “And she’s not his
girlfriend.”

His eyes narrow. “You’re
right. She’s just some girl he screws when it’s convenient, because that’s what
he does. He screws girls without any consideration for their feelings and then
throws them away the moment they give him what he wants from them. But as he’s
strung this one along for awhile, I think she’s got the right to label whatever
it is they have, don’t you?”

Anger nearly engulfs me, but
then I remember, his jealousy is not groundless. And I need to fix that, stat,
even if I think he’s way out of line talking about his brother like this. I
ask, more conversationally than I feel, all the while my stomach clenches and
my head pounds, “Do you know her?”

He’s surprised by my
turnaround, cautious with his answer. “I’ve met her a few times, but it’s not
like I know her. I know more of her. She’s . . .” He pauses. “Popular, I guess.
For lack of a better word.”

Well, no shocker there,
considering she’s a goddess incarnate. I’m annoyed by how pathetic I must seem,
having no clue who Sophie was when apparently everyone else knew, including
Jonah. I manage, “She’s pretty.” Gorgeous is more apt, but I refuse to
verbalize that.

My generosity only goes so
far.

Jonah shrugs. “I guess.”
Then he smiles, although it’s more of a comical leer accompanied by a pathetic
attempt at eyebrow wiggling. “Only if you like redheads. Myself, I prefer
brunettes. Always have. Always will.”

I end up giggling at his
hideous French accent.

He laughs too, but then
notices my book. “Gnomish dialects?” He picks it up. “Since when are you
interested in languages?”

Since I started killing
nons. I should tell him this, but . . . it’s too hard to even verbalize before
I know all the facts. I take the book from him. “I’ve been thinking it might be
useful to learn at least a few languages from all of the planes we work on,
don’t you think?”

“Well, as I primarily work
on the Human plane and already speak several . . .”

I swat at his arm. I’d
forgotten that. Overachiever.

“Plus, I know some Elvin
already, thanks to Astrid . . .”

I swat him again, but unable
to contain my smile.

He grins. “Actually, I think
it’s a great idea. Do you want some help?”

As I
can only claim to speak conversational Spanish at its worst, I take him up on
his offer. He’s certainly got his work cut out for him.

The map illuminated on the
wall is eerily detailed, like an exact replica of land, mountains, trees, roads
and all, turned on its side. It’s exactly what Zthane requested when he tasked
me to create a machine that can project a map of any part of any of the worlds
in perfect detail, both up close in zoom mode and from a distance.

Iolani stands before it, her
finger mere inches away from one of the Elvin plane’s more populous cities.
“Incredible,” she murmurs. Her finger dips into the picture; colors swirl momentarily
before settling back into crisp focus. “Is there anything you can’t do, Chloe?”

Fall out of love with
someone, I think. Or break a Connection. “Make baklava. Doesn’t that sound good
right now?” is what I say out loud.

Zthane drops in the seat at
the head of the expansive table that dominates most of the Guard conference
room. “I don’t know what baklava is,” he says to me, “but I wish you could whip
me up a double espresso like my mamán used to make for me after school on cold
afternoons.” He pretends to shiver; the room is set at a comfortable
seventy-two degrees. But then, Zthane hails from a Goblin region where the
average temperature hovers around one hundred degrees year round; years of
living in Annar has never taken the heat out of his blood.

“Did you actually ever
experience anything below eighty degrees?” Iolani muses. A pen is chucked her
way. She ducks in plenty of time.

Giuliana plunks a paper cup
with a lid in front of Zthane. “I guess you’ll just have to suffice with this.”