Blaize and the Maven: The Energetics Book 1 (19 page)

Blaize thought that the slow speed of their relationship was more a result of Cuinn’s reluctance to take her on as an Adherent than him protecting her from making a bad choice.

“By taking you into the dreamscape yesterday without the two of you being bonded, he opened you up to danger. Did he tell you that?”

“No.” There had been no suggestion of concern as they’d been working together. Had he really been trying to protect her?
I hate it when people do that.
A trickle of annoyance ran through her.

“The risk was low but still, as a beginner you had no idea how to ward yourself on that plane, and without being properly bound, it would have been harder for him to protect you. And as you saw, split seconds in the dreamscape can make a big difference.”

Tierra got to her feet. “Leave the tea. I’ll make you something in the main house, but you need to come with me. It’s time for you and Cuinn to talk. Really talk.”

Cuinn was in the library, books strewn about him. He’d moved to the floor so he could spread the books out in a bigger space, and the room looked unlike its usual tidy self.
 

Tierra barged through the door. “You and Blaize need to have that talk earlier than planned. There’ve been some new developments.”

Cuinn glanced at the door behind her, which had bounced on its hinges, and then looked up at Tierra’s serious face. “What? Why? Is Blaize okay?”

“She’s fine, for now. Come down to the kitchen, and the two of you can share your secrets.” She started walking back down the hallway. “There’s hot chocolate on the stove if you want some.”

Cuinn scrambled to his feet, trying not to dislodge the piles of books with their many bookmarks.
What now?

When he strode into the kitchen, Tierra was already at the stove stirring a fragrant liquid that he assumed was hot chocolate. But his attention was drawn to Blaize, who was sitting in a chair at the big wooden kitchen table, her gaze focused down, and her hands wrapped around a glass of water.
 

When her eyes rose to meet his, he saw that the green was faded, and the colour of her hair was in sharp contrast to her pale skin. She had been so vibrant when she’d arrived. She had still had some colour from the Thai sun, and her spirit had been so alive.
 

Now she looked drained.

“What’s happened? What secrets do you need to tell me?”

“I think you should start with a few of yours first.” Tierra’s tone dripped disapproval as she brought mugs, the pan, and a ladle over to the table. “You should have been clearer with Blaize about what taking her into the dreamscape yesterday actually meant.”

“I didn’t want to inhibit her. She’s a natural.” Tierra’s impassive face made him shift his weight on the chair. He stared down at the floor. “I wanted to see what we could do in that session. The danger was minimal.”

“And yet,” said Tierra.

Harder to argue against that. He met Blaize’s gaze. “I’m sorry Blaize. I had no idea there would be any danger.”

He couldn’t tell what she was thinking and he didn’t like it.
 

“She’s right, you should have told me. I make my own decisions; I don’t like to have those choices taken out of my hands.” Her tone was even though dulled with fatigue. Had the experience the day before taken so much out of her?

“I wanted to see whether our energies were compatible before we did anything rash and went through a binding ceremony that’s almost impossible to undo. It might have been years before your own energy was strong enough to release from mine.”

“Don’t make this about me Cuinn.” A little of the fire was back in Blaize’s eyes, and he took a perverse pleasure in seeing it there, even at his expense. “You haven’t wanted me here from the start, you’ve made that clear. I just wish I knew what I’d done to deserve that kind of reaction.”

Cuinn stayed silent, not ready to give up all his secrets. But Tierra rapped his hand with a teaspoon. He jerked. “Ouch.”
 

She stared at him, her usual good-natured gaze now a steely glare.
Damn.

“It’s not all about you Blaize. I had a … bad experience with my last Adherent.” The words were hard to say. What was she going to think of him when she knew the truth? He hadn’t exactly made a sterling impression so far. This might be the last nail in the coffin.

Blaize’s arms were crossed, and she leaned towards him, waiting.

“My last Adherent, Sophea, was a Vishudha-Ajna mix. She was a bit … um, otherworldly. I wasn’t used to her combination of energies. My Muladhara keeps me grounded most of the time despite my Ajna. With her Vishudha, the element of ether, of space, combined with the Ajna, she was very abstract. She loved to talk about the concepts and ideas of energies. She loved learning, knowledge. We had some fascinating discussions.”

He paused again, his throat congested as he forced the words out. “What I didn’t realise was that she was falling in love with me.”

Blaize was getting some colour back in her cheeks.

“Sophea had been here about a year. One night, we were alone in my rooms, which wasn’t uncommon. We’d been discussing a particular aspect of the dreamscape, she wanted us to go there to experiment with the theory I’d been teaching her about. It was late, and we were both tired, but her enthusiasm was infectious.” He rubbed his face with his hands, feeling that same tiredness now. He put his hands around the mug of hot chocolate that Tierra had passed to him, and gripped it as if it tethered him to the earth. “She’d been planning it for a long time. She’d created a special room within her own Haven, a bedroom I’d never seen. She’d scattered flowers and lit candles. When we reached her Haven, she took me there. And then she tried to seduce me.”

Blaize held his eyes, but she was very still. He couldn’t read her.
What is she thinking?
This was his darkest secret. It had coloured everything—everything—in the last fifty years of his life. He felt cold.

“I didn’t react well. I hadn’t seen it coming, I’d had no idea she felt that way. I didn’t see her as a romantic or sexual partner. And she saw it on my face. She slammed her defences in place against me and took me enough by surprise that I was thrown back to the physical world.”

Cuinn didn’t look at Tierra, who knew this story as well as he did. Even after decades, her face would still show supportive sympathy. She’d been one of the rocks in his life since the tragedy of Sophea, and without her practical help, looking after him and forcing him to eat and live a normal life, he would also have been lost. But he didn’t deserve her sympathy.
 

“I waited for her to come back. Our mats were side by side and hers was as powerfully warded as mine. She was a strong energetic and knew what she was doing.”

He fell silent, unsure if he could bear to tell the story’s ending.

Minutes passed like eons.
 

“What happened?” Blaize whispered.

“She lay on her mat, face peaceful, and I paced around my study, waiting. I was agitated and didn’t want to go back to the astral world immediately in that mood.” His fingers twining and untwining as he repeatedly rubbed his hands together, the agitation of that night echoed here.

“After an hour, I returned to the dreamscape to find her. I wanted to talk about what had happened. I went back to my own Haven and tried to get across to hers. When you complete an Ajna binding ritual, your Havens are linked and you can move between them.” He shook his head. “She’d managed to block me. I don’t know how—I’m very powerful. But I couldn’t get to her. It was as if her Haven had become untethered from mine, lost.”

“What do you mean?”

“She never returned. Her body remained as she had left it, essentially in a coma. But her mind was lost somewhere in the astral realm. Her mind had become untethered from her body, and she either couldn’t, or wouldn’t, return.”

Blaize’s eyes were wide, and she hugged herself tightly, her arms wrapped around her body. “That can happen?”

“Of course. It’s one of the reasons why we spend so much time training and why the binding is so important, because even if your Haven becomes untethered from your own body, your Maven can find you and bring you back. She shouldn’t have been able to sever the connection between our Havens. I still don’t know how she did it.”

“Where is she now?”
 

“She’s in a Rogue rehabilitation centre on an island to the west of Canada. Tierra’s friend Cara works there and gives me updates. And I go and see her when I can. I still hope …”

“You think she might come back?”

“It’s possible.” He glanced away as he said it.
 

“Is it … likely?”

“Possible is enough. And if she does come back, I’ll be there. Sometimes I look for her in the dreamscape. Our paths might cross. It’s feasible.” His head dropped. He’d had hope at the beginning, fifty years ago, but while he said the words, he no longer felt them. But he couldn’t let her go.

Her body, still youthful as energetics aged so slowly, lay as if in stasis in the rehabilitation facility, hooked up to machines to help her eat and expel waste. And she could stay like that for hundreds of years. It was a terrible fate for an energetic. His stomach curled inside him.

“So, now you know my darkest secret. I killed my last Adherent.”

***

Blaize’s fatigue had lessened as she’d heard Cuinn’s tragic story. And her heart had wrenched for both Cuinn and for the young woman who had tried to give him her love.
 

Energetics lived a long time, but tended not to talk about their past, living with the mantra of ‘live for the now.’ It wasn’t that the past was taboo, it just wasn’t seen as relevant or necessary, and it helped to iron out sometimes huge age gaps between energetics, who lived, worked, and loved together.
 

Blaize, who’d studied psychology for her undergraduate degree, wasn’t so sure that it was possible to always live in the now. Here was a case in point. In this case, Cuinn's past explained a lot of his reactions to her over the last week or so. Including why he'd pulled away from their kiss, and why he had seemed so against having her as an Adherent. It had nothing to do with her personally, and everything to do with him. And Sophea.

“You didn’t kill her Cuinn.” Her voice was sharper than she meant it to be.

He took a small sip of his hot chocolate.
 

“What happened was terrible, but it wasn’t your fault. Sophea made her own choices.” Immature choices, from Blaize’s point of view, but she knew love could affect people in different ways. Most of them bad. Another good reason to avoid it.

“I looked for her for months afterwards. I spent all the time I could in the dreamscape trying to find a trace of her. But it’s an infinite place. I could look forever and not find her.” She had to strain to hear him. “Your uncle, Marius, helped me keep my sanity when I thought I would go under. And Adam and Tierra’s earth energy kept me grounded and made sure I didn’t disappear. But I was tempted at times.”

Tierra got up and stood behind him. She put her arms around him and rested her face on his shoulder. “Drink the hot chocolate Cuinn.”
 

Blaize shook her head. “I’m not her. Manipura energy is very different from Vishudha. The only similarity between us is that we’re both your Adherents, and we both have Ajna as an auxiliary energy. That’s it. Right?”
 

Blaize turned to include Tierra in her appeal.

“Yes, love. You’re very different.” Tierra lifted her head from Cuinn’s shoulder and sat at the table between them. “And Cuinn, you think you’re the same person as you were then, but you’re different too. But you should have prepared Blaize better for the dreamwalk yesterday.”

Cuinn half-shrugged, and he leaned heavily on the table.

“I told you both, I thought it would be easier if Blaize approached it naturally. She’s powerful, and gifted. I didn’t expect her to create her own Haven so easily. I’m sorry Blaize. You don’t want to be my Adherent. It’s not safe. I’m not safe.”

That was practically a compliment. Tied up in a rejection.
“I can make my own decisions. But only when I’m given all the information.”

She was almost too tired to be angry, but there was a spark to her words. She hated being kept in the dark.

Tierra nodded briskly. “I agree. And Blaize, you need to tell Cuinn about your dreams. No more secrets on either side.”

“This wasn’t a secret,” Blaize protested. “It’s only just happened.”

“Tell me,” commanded Cuinn, a touch of imperiousness back in his words.

The room was dark, and when Blaize glanced out the skies outside were overcast, heavy with the promise of rain. She got up and flicked the switch on the lamp in the corner of the room. It cast a gentle light over the three of them, and the room instantly became cosier.

She took a breath as she sat back down, waiting a beat before she launched into a fast and concise retelling of her dreams. Tierra listened more calmly this time, but Cuinn’s face had the same look of concern Tierra had shown on the first telling.