Page 26 of Embracing Darkness
“We need to be careful.” He finally concedes with an expression of affection on his face. He steps up to me and caresses my cheek, and the look in his eyes touches my heart – gentle, warm, and tender.
“I missed you,” he finally says softly.
“I missed you too,” I admit.
“I wish our reunion could have gone differently,” he says with a mischievous smile, which is also tinged with sadness.
“Why won’t you just tell me what’s going on?”
I can see him wrestling with himself, but he shakes his head. “Everything’s fine. I’m taking care of it.” He runs his fingers absent-mindedly down the side of my face and through my hair. “Everything’s fine. You can trust me. And the thing with the Tempes – I’ll take care of that too. I’ll find out if they know anything. I promise you. Just try not to worry. You’ve been through enough already.”
I snort loudly and flash him an angry look. “Oh, and you figure I can just put my feet up, forget all my problems, and lead a carefree life while there are hunters after us and you’re still keeping secrets from me?!” I give it one last try. I put my hands on his cheeks and give him a piercing look. “Noah, you’ve never kept secrets from me before, at least not anything this important. Why do you want to start now?”
I can see him struggling internally. He hesitates because heknows I’m right.
“Noah,” I beg in a whisper.
He finally opens his mouth to confide in me when I hear a noise. He instantly spins around, pulls his key out of his pocket, and before I realize what’s happening, he’s summoned a door and pulled me through it. I utter a stifled scream, get a brief glimpse of the Odyss, then another door, and then we’re standing in the middle of the city at the edge of a park. I look around me, my heart pounding.
“What just happened?”
“I have to go. And I don’t know when we can see each other again. If anything comes up...” He pauses, leans forward, and gives me a peck on the cheek. “...message me. I’m here for you, I promise.” He turns around, takes out his key again and says, “I’ll explain everything to you soon, I promise. But now is not the time.”
With that, he summons a door, glances back at me one last time, and disappears.
Chapter 14
All the next day I keep thinking about Noah’s hasty departure. What’s wrong and why haven’t I heard from him? I check my phone again, but there’s still no message from him. I sigh and try to exercise patience – not one of my strengths, I’ll admit. I force myself to focus on the present and glance at Max, who’s sitting beside me. She looks tired, which is no wonder after last night. She reaches for another pain killer and washes it down with coffee. I wonder how many she’s already swallowed just to stay awake and follow the class. Ms. Warren, our biology teacher, is speaking at an incredible pace, as usual.
“The last breath of a dying person takes the form of a bright light, but most of us will never witness this unless we’re standing beside a Noctu at the moment they’re carrying out their heinous handiwork. They use the breath for two things: to maintain the Odyss so that they have a place to retreat to, and they also take power from the breath for the fallen and for themselves. The breath is an energy source, the quintessence of life, which the dying person expels with their final exhalation. The Noctu absorb this power into their bodies, thereby strengthening theirmagic. The strength and duration of its effect depends on the breath itself. The more vigorous it is, the more useful it is to the Noctu. There’s a formula you can use to estimate the strength of the final breath and then calculate based on that how long the effect will last.”
She writes a long, complicated series of letters, numbers, and symbols on the board and then rattles off an explanation. It’s all Greek to me, and I wonder how this information is supposed to help me. In a fight, I’m hardly going to ask if we can take a quick break so that I can figure out how powerful my opponent is and how long their power will last. And if I’m not intending to fight, then I definitely don’t need this formula. But I write it all down anyway, puzzling over how I’ll ever get my head around this complicated equation.
I’m glad when the class ends, and I stretch and yawn. It’s lunchtime, and after that we have training.
I instinctively look out for Ayden on the way to the cafeteria, although I don’t know what I’ll say to him about last night. Will he even ask? If he does, I can’t tell him the truth, that’s for sure. He’d kill me if he knew I went to meet Noah.
Max is looking at me, studying the side of my face inquiringly. I palmed her off with some lame excuse too, and I wonder if I’ll ever be able to stop lying to the people close to me. But right now, I have no choice, I have to accept that.
When I meet Max’s gaze, a guilty expression steals across her face, and she starts apologizing for the fourth time today.
“I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to worry you, and I really didn’t want to make you lose sleep. I don’t know what got into me.” She sighs deeply and stares at the floor. “And then I go and drunk-dial Ayden. It couldn’t be more embarrassing. As if it’s not enough to dump my problems you, then I have to go and do that.”
“You didn’t think it through, but you were so drunk last nightyou probably didn’t have much brain function left.” I wink at her, but my joke falls flat. “What was up with you?” I ask.
She glances sideways at Lucia, who I guess is already in the loop.
“My parents were fighting again. It was pretty hardcore. Dad came home late from a work dinner. Mom was pissed because he didn’t tell her he was going to be late. She had cooked, and the food was cold, and she threatened to never lift a finger for him again. He said she never does anyway. And then he saw the meal and yelled at her that her red goop disgusts him and he wouldn’t be surprised to find one of her revolting fake nails floating around in it.”
Max continues her report of screaming and shoving and broken plates, but my attention is already wandering because her words suddenly trigger a flash of inspiration. Red and disgust. I’m reminded of Ty’s letter, in which he mentioned the blood seal that I found so disgusting. He used a double blood seal just for fun. A cold shiver runs up my spine. Why didn’t I think of it earlier? Frida’s secret room is so well hidden; she was really careful about protecting her secrets. So I doubt she’d be satisfied with a simple blood seal. What if she went a step further to make totally sure that the secrets that needed safeguarding remained undiscovered? And it could be a kind of test for her successor: Does this person really deserve to have this information? In any case, I’m desperate to test my theory. But first, I need to be here for Max.
The idea of parents fighting like that and ripping each other to pieces is bad enough, but their children always get caught in the crossfire too.
“I’m sorry things are so bad between your parents right now. But getting totally wasted is no solution. You just wind up putting yourself in danger,” I reprimand her gently.
“Sorry,” she says again. “I actually thought the date with Aydenwould improve my mood, but he was so quiet the whole time. It was like he was a million miles away.” A dark cloud passes across her face. “Oh well, at least he was there for me last night.” She flashes me a smile. “And so were you.” She sighs. “And here I go again, talking to you about him. Sorry, I just don’t know where my head is at. It was kind of insensitive of me, going out with him. I know you guys are still having issues.”
I shrug. “That’s not your problem.” And it’s true. They’ve known each other a long time, and I don’t want to come between them, even if it’s not easy for me to see them together.