A Matter of Heart (9 page)

“I am trying to do the
mature thing here.” His words crack just as surely as his carefully constructed
façade. “And yet, it’s still not good enough for you. So maybe you ought to
just tell me how I ought to act, since I’m clearly doing it wrong.”

I merely stare up at him in
delicate wonder. No words surface. Because he’s absolutely right on every
account.

An unbearable tension
surrounds us, so thick I just know I could touch it if I let my fingers trail
through the air in the sliver of space between our bodies. It’s hard to get a
proper breath, especially since my heart is hammering so loud that he must hear
it over the screaming.

Don’t do it
,
Caleb whispers.

Kellan’s chest rises and
falls rapidly. He’s angry, and hurt, and his heart must be slamming around,
too, because I can see it, actually see it thumping beneath his shirt. My hand
moves on its own and hovers over that spot, so close I can imagine exactly how
the thrum would feel under the pads of my fingers.

Don’t do it
, my
Conscience reiterates.

I don’t know if it’s because
I do it or he presses forward, but now my hand rests on his chest, and the feel
of his heart is so strong, so familiar, I’m overwhelmed by the emotions
flooding over me. He has to grab my arm to steady me.

Jonah
,
Caleb says, but his voice is faint in the clamor of our heartbeats.

“I can’t do this.” I look up
once more to find his eyes dark and sad. There is no need to ask for
clarification.

“Me either,” I tell him. And
I mean it. I genuinely do.

So why am I so disappointed
when he pulls away?

“There’s got to be a way
out,” Kellan says, the flashlight smacking against an open palm over and over
again.

He’s pretending like our
lips weren’t perilously close earlier. I don’t know if I want to talk about the
almost incident, either, so I play along. “Like I said, I can blast us out.”

His head cocks to the wall
at the front of the cave I’d created; it’s rattled steadily for the last couple
hours due to assaults by the ever-noisy Elders. I cock my own head in the
opposite direction, back toward the small tunnel leading to an even smaller
tube and our tiny water source.

“Not worth the risk,” he and
Caleb insist in unison. I sigh and rest my chin in hands propped up by elbows
on knees. My stomach lets loose an embarrassingly loud rumble. Fact is, I’m
starving. And thirsty. It takes a—well, I don’t know how long. An hour? Maybe
two? Before the cup I created for us fills even a quarter.

I tried to widen the hole
the water’s dripping from, but somehow, it made the trickle even slower. I
installed a faucet, too, but had to stop when Kellan found out I was using
Magic. I endured a lengthy lecture about conserving my energy, but I’m itching
to try again.

A few rocks tumble down from
the ceiling between us. I stretch up a hand when Kellan isn’t looking and
imagine the ceiling solidifying. Although I can’t physically see it do so, the
cave’s walls smooth slightly until no more loose pieces will threaten to target
us.

Why I can do this, change
the texture and consistency of a cave’s walls, but not be able to create water
or plant life is beyond me. Fate has a funny way of shaping Magical crafts.
Maybe it’s a way for Fate to ensure one craft is never omnipotent. I’d need an
Aqua to help with the water, or even an Elemental or Tide; all can manipulate
water sources. I’d need a Nymph or an Agro to deal with the food, but even they
can’t make something appear out of nothing.

I can build us a table but
not anything to put on it. I’m utterly useless in here.

“Has Jonah escaped yet?”

Kellan looks away from the
flashlight beam he’s been splaying across the cave. “No.”

I try to swallow the
helplessness that rises up my throat, but it’s too big to fully get rid of. “Is
he okay?”

Kellan clicks off the
flashlight and joins me on the floor. “He’s fine.” A small smile escapes. “They
have food and water with them. So that right there gives him a leg up on us.”

He’s tired. There are dark
smudges under his eyes and his hair is in disarray. I can’t help but ask how
he’s doing, too.

Kellan stares off into the
distance. “I’m fine.”

It’s a lie. It has to be.
Because I’m not fine, not by a long shot. I’m so hungry I’ve considered eating
rocks and so thirsty I can barely make my own spit to wet my tongue. It’s
getting harder and harder to focus, and the incessant shrieking outside doesn’t
help matters.

At least I’m not freaking
out. I’m not crying, not hyperventilating. At least I have that going for me.

“We’re going to be okay, C.”

“I
know,” I tell Kellan. But it’s a lie.

Death is such a big thing. I
know that sounds all
duh
, since it’s something we all know is going to
happen to us, but at the same time, it’s never felt real. Until the Elders, I
never thought much about death. Now, every time they’re around, I think about
it way too much.

Thanks to Caleb’s updates, I
know we’re at the end of our second day in the cave. We slept last night on a
blanket that I managed to make before Kellan nearly ripped my head off for once
more wasting “valuable energy on something insignificant.”

When he was asleep, I made
another pair of blankets to cover us. It comes as no surprise he was unhappy
about this.

“They just don’t give up, do
they?” I ask after the cave is rocked particularly hard.

He’s leaning against the
wall, a safe distance away. His laugh, warm and resigned all at once, curls
around me.

“We’re going to die, aren’t
we?”

His head jerks sharply away
from the wall. “Why would you say that?”

I feel calm saying this,
which is funny, since I’m talking about death. I shouldn’t be calm. I ought to
be hysterical. But I’m not. It’s like I’m on autopilot. “We have no idea if the
rest of our team is alive. No one knows we’re here except Jonah, and he’s
trapped, too. And even if they did, they’d have to get past the Elders outside.
There are more than two now, aren’t there? Can you feel them?”

“I don’t want you thinking
like this.” He rubs his eyes. “Do you hear me?”

My lips twist, just a
little. “Gonna make me stop?”

He looks away. “You need to
stay positive.”

I humor him before asking if
Jonah’s free yet.

A flash of uncertainty
streaks across his face. “I don’t know.”

“Ask him!”

Both hands run through his hair.
“I can’t.”

Come again? I stumble a bit
closer. “What do you mean you can’t? Is he okay?
IsJonahokay
?”

He’s quick with his answer.
“Last I heard, he was fine.”

“Then . . .?”

His fingers grip at his hair
now. “It’s just . . . it’s hard to concentrate, you know? To connect with him.
I think I can hear him better than he can hear me.”

This makes no sense. They’ve
always been able to communicate in their heads. Even when they’re so pissed off
they refuse to speak in person, they always continue talking to one another in
their minds.

Caleb finally says something
other than the time.
Ask him if he’s been working his mojo on you.

Huh?

Ask him
.

I cut off some ridiculous
excuse Kellan is rambling off with Caleb’s question. Without blinking, he tells
me yes.

Order him to stop
,
Caleb barks.

I don’t see how this—

NOW!

“Whatever you’re doing, stop
now,” I tell Kellan. His eyes go flinty. “I don’t want you to work on me,
okay?”

FORBID IT!

“I . . . I forbid it.” And
then, a flood of emotions crash down upon me like a tidal wave: terror and
hopelessness, fear and panic.

Oh my gods, oh my gods, OH
MY GODS.

“What the hell, Kellan?” I
shriek. “How long have you been doing this to me?”

He looks me straight in the
eye. “Since the moment I left you in the dark to hunt for a way out.”

I can barely even focus. The
emotions crash against each other in me, making me so nauseous all I want to do
is lay down and sob.

Why didn’t I see this?
Caleb
frets.
Here we were, so worried you’d deplete yourself when it should have
been obvious he was taking the hit so you could stay calm. This is why he can’t
talk to his brother. Do you understand? He’s been using up all of his Magic to
keep you safe.

More importantly, how had
I
missed it?

I promptly burst into tears.
The moment I feel even the slightest bit calmer, I shout, “STOP THAT RIGHT
NOW!”

Anxiety rushes back, even as
he attempts to assure me he’s okay enough to continue influencing me. So I cry
even harder—how could I have even entertained the slightest notion of picking
fights with him earlier? Why would I have done that? What kind of crazy, sick
girl am I?

He’s way too good to me, to
the point he put his welfare and his own state of mind far below the needs he
saw in me, which is exactly what we fought about. Me never thinking about his wants
and needs, and him bending over backwards to give me mine.

When I begin to
hyperventilate, he grabs my hands. “Don’t cry. It’s okay, I swear—”

I yank them free. “We’re
going to die in here! Jonah is trapped—who knows if he’s really okay or not?
And we’re fighting, and I hate it, and I’m so sorry, and I’m hungry and . . .
gods, are you hungry? Are you okay?” My arms whip around like a madwoman’s;
I’ve reached banshee-level wailing. “How are you doing? I’m not asking enough.
I’m so selfish! I haven’t been
asking
enough. I need you to be okay. Are
you okay? I need us to be okay. All of us. Oh my gods,
nothing’s
okay,
Kellan!”

As crazy as I am, the
craziest thing of all is that Kellan doesn’t hesitate. One second I’m having a
full-on, nuclear meltdown that has rocks around us exploding like firecrackers
and the next his arms are around me.

My
world stills.

Caleb doesn’t bother saying
a single word. He knows it’s pointless. Instead, he buries himself in the
furthest corner of my mind he can find.

I can’t help but think of
when my life imploded last year after I found Jonah kissing Callie. Everything
in me short-circuited, leaving one, small instinct left: go and find Kellan.
And I had. I ran straight to him, even though my heart was destroyed and I was
blacking out and doing all sorts of horribly embarrassing things to admit to
doing in light of seeing a kiss between my Connection and his ex-girlfriend.
And Kellan made it better.

Like he’s making it better
now. Not with his mojo, not like the last couple days of full-on Emotional
tweaking, but just by being him. By touching me.

By being my Connection.

Part of me is ashamed,
because he obviously knows he has this effect on me. How couldn’t he? I was
just wild-banshee woman and now I’m practically purring like a kitten. What
does this say about me? Me, who chose his brother. Me, who is happy with his
brother. Me, who dreams of marrying his brother.

Me, who is utterly content
to be held in his arms again.

I don’t know what to say. I
don’t have the slightest clue on how to even approach this. We could always go
back to the whole pretending bit, but, if I’m honest with myself, I don’t know
if I can.

And I definitely don’t know
how I can endure another eight months of no talking, no touching, no . . . no
anything, let alone another eight minutes.

“It’ll be okay,” he repeats.
I know right then that he’s decided to play the role. He isn’t going to let me
know he’s affected by my touch, too, even though I can feel his heart pounding
like the surf he loves against the shore. No, he’s going to keep everything
locked down tight, because he—unlike me—actually puts someone other than
himself first.