Dark and Twisted (23 page)

My stomach goes sour. “And with me, if he fed off me, what price would I have paid?”

“I would never let that happen,” he declares with vehemence.

His arms tighten protectively around me, and I believe him. We are quiet for a while when I suddenly let out a little laugh, breaking the silence.

“What?” he asks.

“It took me being kidnapped into another world for you to kiss me. I know I’m a freak, but you couldn’t just kiss me … say, at my locker?

“I can be an idiot sometimes.”

“Sometimes?”

“Okay, a lot of the time. I wish I did it sooner, I wish that none of this happened, Ace. You have to believe me,” he says with desperation.

“I believe you.”

Everything is a deep blue, like the sky, and silent. The only sound is the beating of my heart. A steady thump, thump, thump. Soft, white snowflakes fall to the ground around me. I want to kick out my legs and make a snow angel like I used to do when I was a child.

“Eden …” he calls.

My chest warms at the sound of him. I want to see him, to feel him again. A yearning erupts from deep inside of me. I sit up, and search for him, but there is nothing except vast white snow and ice.

“Eden.”

This time, his voice comes from behind me. I turn to face Jaxson, but he is different. He is not the Jaxson I know. His eyes are as black as night, a dark contrast against his pale white skin. His chest is bare, and he wears a pair of loose fitting jeans that set low on his hips. A charcoal black tattoo of a tree climbs up his chest. Its skeletal thin branches twist down his arms, reaching to the tips of each fingertip. A pair of black wings juts out behind him. Black as raven wings, changing from a solid form into pillars of black smoke every time they move. He descends toward me with a purpose. His face is blank and unreadable.

“Jaxson,” I call his name once more, but he doesn’t respond.

Raising his bow, he aims it at me. I scream just as he releases it.

I wake, the scream still lingering on my lips.

Jaxson bolts up, reaching for the bow that lays at his side. “Eden, what’s wrong?” He touches me, but I jerk away. “Eden?” he questions me cautiously.

I stare at him. His hair is a mess, and his eyes are squinty from sleep. There are no wings behind him, no arrow pointed at me.

“It was a dream, you were there, but it wasn’t really you. Your eyes were black, and you had wings made out of smoke, and you …” I look at the bow in his hand.

He clutches it harder, his fingers turning white. “I would never want to hurt you.” He runs a hand down his face.

“I know that,” I whisper before crawling back over to him and wrapping my arms around his waist. “It was just a dream.” I bury my face into his shirt.

“Dreams have a way of coming true,” he says.

I shudder, all too aware of the truth.

He stands up and steps away from me. “We need to start moving.”

I ignore the little flutter of hurt as I watch him sling the bow over his back.

###

The cave goes on for miles with no end in sight. Jaxson leads the way, and I manage to stumble every so often over my own feet. Telling Jaxson about my dream turned him back into a silent a soldier, and he marches ahead without looking back at me once.

All the silence between us makes me think of last night. I run my finger lightly across my bottom lip, warmth blossoming in the pit of my stomach. Kissing him was different than anything I have ever felt. Each time felt desperate and final as if it was our first and last.

Now I’m beginning to think that they were. The warmth is replaced with a tight pain in my chest. I never did understand why the boys Liv broke up with acted like their life was over. They seemed so desperate to win her back. I get it now. I’m starting to understand the feeling of being so fragile without that other person that you might shatter at any moment. I’m frantic for a sign from Jaxson, anything to tell me last night meant something to him or that he regrets every last kiss. Just give me something. But he just walks on, leaving me staring at his back, all alone with my emotional turmoil.

My mind wonders back to home. I have been gone for a little over twenty-—four hours already. Has a missing person’s report been filed on me? I wonder how Essie is dealing. Does she think I was abducted by Aliens?

“Oh, my God,” I croak.

Jaxson spins his bow off his back, an arrow at the ready. “Eden, what is it?” Worry laces his voice.

“She isn’t crazy.”

He lowers his bow, frowning. “Who?” He relaxes a bit, but still clutches the weapon.

“Essie. She is not crazy. All this time, everyone, including me, thought she was, but she must have been taken by Faeries. She has been here before. I can’t believe it. It all makes sense now. Holy crow. It wasn’t aliens. She was here in Faeylon. All those years of being accused of being crazy, she wasn’t. She was only wrong about one thing. Aliens didn’t abduct her. It was Faeries.”

I let out a laugh of excitement, but Jaxson doesn’t seem too convinced about my theory.

“Perhaps,” he says cautiously. “Entering Faeylon is easy. It’s the leaving that one must pay a price for.”

I shake my head, brushing his words aside. “When she was fifteen, she went missing for two weeks. When she came back, she claimed she was abducted by aliens, but now I know she wasn’t. What happened to her here? How did she get home?” My head swims with questions.

“I’m not sure, but if she was here, she had help,” Jaxson says.

“Who do you think it was? Maybe they can help us.” I ignore him and ramble, excited with this new piece of information.

“No one will help us without paying a price. I will get you home,” he says curtly.

I look at him for a moment. What makes him so sure we can’t trust someone else? Surely, not everyone in this realm is like Cardelian.

Jaxson sighs and closes his eyes. “Faeylon is a complicated world. Most of it is cruel and horrible, but there are exceptions to some,” he says as if that explains everything.

Why isn’t he more excited about this? Doesn’t he get it, whoever helped Essie might be able to help us too?

“Jaxson, why did you leave?” I ask.

“My father. I left because of my father. Like I said, nothing is simple in Faeylon.”

“But maybe we can go to him? He would understand. He could help us home.”

“He will never help me.” He reaches for my hand and interlaces our fingers together.

His long fingers brush the back of my wrist, and where he touches the cold spark is back, running through me. I’m both relieved and confused. “Jaxson, he is your father, whatever happened between you can be forgiven.”

He brings my hand to his lips, kissing my thumb before moving to my other fingers. My eyes automatically flutter shut, and I have to force my legs to remain solid under me.

“Some things cannot be forgiven. When I was nine years old, my mother and sister were killed.”

My eyes spring open. I know how he feels. The pain of losing a parent, the ever present ache of missing them. “Jaxson, I’m so sorry.”

He shakes his head. “I was there when they died. I hid and watched like a coward while they were slaughtered by magic seekers. My father was enraged that I did nothing. He believes it was my fault they died.”

He releases my hand, and I feel the distance between us again. “But you were just a little kid, you could have been killed.” No wonder he seems so cold and distant. He has been living with the guilt of his mother and sister’s death all these years. I want to tell him I understand, but I don’t, not really. People die every day in car accidents, but being murdered is something entirely different.

“If I’d died trying to avenge my mother and sister, my father would have celebrated my death. I would have been a hero. Instead, I dishonored him. I’m a constant reminder to him of what a coward I was. If he could have disowned me, he would have. So I made it easy for him by leaving.” He looks off, keeping his head turned away from me.

“You are not a coward.”

“I was, and maybe my father was right, I should have died helping them.”

I close the distance between us and wrap my arms around his waist. I want to make his pain mine, to take any hurt away from him. He steps away from me without a word and starts to walk, leaving me again with nothing more than my thoughts of uncertainty to creep back into my mind.

My head fills with doubts and questions until I want to scream. The cave narrows, pressing in around us, Jaxson has to bend down to keep from knocking his head as we pass through. I drag my hand across the ceiling, and when I pull it away, frost lingers on the tips of my fingers. A small stream trickles past our feet from melting ice.

“It’s as if we traveled back to the Ice Age,” I say.

“Close enough,” he says as we step through the narrow passage and the cave opens up to a new world.

Jaxson stops so suddenly that I slam into the back of him. He looks down at me through heavy lashes and my stomach flutters.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” I say trying to ignore the butterflies that fill my stomach. I glance past him at the vast amounts of white, frozen tundra stretching as far as I can see. Snow and ice cover the world, sparkling like crystals against the white sky. My heart sinks. I’m no longer scared, confused, or hopeful. Instead, I feel as frozen as the land.

“I’m never going to get home.” I want to fall to the ground and cry.

“Eden.” He says my name like a gentle touch, but it brings me no comfort.

“I know. I know …. You’ll get me home.” Even though I say it, any hope I had is gone.

“We have to get to the base of those mountains. That is the way home.” Jaxson points to blue, white-capped mountains in the distance.

“We will never make it. We will freeze to death.” I only have on a skirt and Jaxson’s sweatshirt, which offers little protection against the elements. And Jaxson is wearing even less than I am.

Jaxson pulls me close to him and puts the hood up over my head. “We have no choice. It is the only way home. Trust me.”

He holds out his hand for me to take. I swallow hard and slip my hand into his. We are going to die, this I’m certain of it.

I no longer feel the cold. My limbs have gone numb as I recite the symptoms of frostbite in my mind. Behind us, the security of the cave looms, taunting me with the protection from the weather. I think about turning back, but to what? I keep going, my head lowered to the wind. No matter which way I look, it feels like death sits around every corner, waiting for us. Oblivious to it, Jaxson pushes us forward with ice frozen to the tips of his hair.

“I think we sh-sh-should go back,” I call over the wind to him. My body is shaking uncontrollably, and my teeth clatter together so hard, I might have chipped them.

“We can’t,” he calls over his shoulder. He doesn’t seem to be as affected by the elements as I’m.

“It’s so cold,” I whisper, but it is lost on the wind.

“Just a little farther,” he urges me.

I try to make my legs walk, but they are too heavy to lift. I can’t go on. My thoughts feel jumbled, and nothing makes sense. Everything swirls together in my mind. Jaxson takes my elbows to steady me, but I can’t feel his touch. There should be electricity coursing through me. I lean against him for warmth and support.

“Why do you look at me like that?” I ask, my tongue swollen.

“Like what?” A smile tugs at the corner of his mouth.

“Like I’m the last girl you want to see one moment, and then the next like I’m the last girl you will ever kiss. Almost as if I might mean something more to you, but you’re not quite sure.” I try to grab onto his arms, but my fingers will not close.

He embraces me. “You are ridiculous you know that, right? You’re the only girl I ever want to kiss.” He pulls his bottom lip between his teeth the metal studs clank against them.

I watch, mesmerized.

“You mean more to me than you can imagine.” He leans down, gently kissing me on the mouth.

Warmth shoots through me, running through my limbs and defrosting the ice that has formed inside of me. Steam rises around us, my arms—which were stiff—can move again. I sling them around his neck and tug him closer. A tingling feeling dances through me. I reach for his hair, but his hands meet mine and pull me back down. He stops kissing me, and I feel lightheaded and tingly all over, no longer cold. Jaxson’s eyes are glowing,

“What did you just do to me?” I want him to do it again, and again, and again.

“I just warmed you up a bit. You should be good for a while.”

I want to dive into the snow so that he’ll kiss me again like that.

“Do you think you can walk now?” he asks.

If he wanted me to, I could probably fly, but I just nod my head yes.

Jaxson is right. I stay warm and tingly, but not like when he was kissing me. I can still feel the cold grabbing at me, but it doesn’t affect me the way it did. Jaxson keeps a hand pressed firmly to my lower back, guiding me, and helping me climb what must be layers upon layers of snow and more is coming down.

“Does it always snow here?” I ask

“Most of the time.”

“What about spring and summer?”

He turns, gripping me around my waist. His hand slides up to meet bare skin and more surges of warmth shoot through me. I wonder if it’s just adrenaline from his touch or more elfin magic like the kiss. I hold onto the top of his hand with my own as he lowers me to the ground from a steep snow bank. He lets his hands linger on my waist and my stomach flutters to life.

“It is always the same here. We leave Eyce for the change of seasons, the other lands of Faeylon do not change either. Therefore, if you want summer you have to find it.”

“It must have been amazing growing up here.” He let’s go of my waist, and I’m sorry I said anything.

“When I was younger, I was happy.”

I don’t push, but I’m itching to know more.

“It’s very beautiful.”

And now that I’m not freezing, it is. It’s like something off a postcard. Drifts of snow in various shades of blue on either side of us. The skeleton trees are not the dreaded dead looking trees that I thought they were. Instead, they are alive with ice that hangs like glass off the delicate fingertip branches.

“What does your home look like?” I ask, picturing a giant igloo.

“It’s—” He doesn’t get to finish because he’s cut off by a low, spine-chilling growl.