Things That Should Stay Buried - Casey L. Bond Page 0,40

heard you stir,” he said, his voice gravelly.

“You heard me stir?” I repeated with only one eye open and focused on him. “What are you even doing out here?”

He didn’t answer, he just stared at the bloody lines on my face. They must still be intact, because he wasn’t trying to retrace them. Would he have to do that at some point? “Oh…” I finally realized. Protecting me. “Thanks.” I gestured to the bathroom. “I’ll be right back.”

He nodded and waited in the hall, like he’d been doing all night, apparently. Had he been there since Kes left?

Groggy and exhausted didn’t even begin to cover how I felt. I used the restroom and washed my hands, raking them through my untamed mane. God, Aries was probably afraid of me at this point. I looked haggard.

Fumbling with the door handle, I walked back to my room, throwing a hand up as I passed. “I’m going back to bed.”

“The sun hasn’t risen,” he informed me.

“Good.”

I didn’t even bother grabbing my comforter or sheets from the nest I’d made on the floor before flopping onto the mattress and curling into a ball.

The door opened. Aries covered me up and left the room, as swift as a breeze flowing through, gone as quickly as it came. I caught his cinnamon smell and nuzzled into the pillow.

I wanted to sleep for hours, or maybe days or years. Until this waking nightmare ended and life went back to the way it was before.

ARIES

Larken slept so peacefully. Her brows relaxed and she inhaled and exhaled, quietly but deeply. I wasn’t sure I’d ever been so serene. While she was sleeping, the worries that plagued her waking moments were banished and her mind seemed at rest. Her eyes had stopped flickering back and forth behind her lids.

I knew I should wait in the hall, but I needed to see her. Be near her.

Kes warned me that it was only the pledge making me feel protective, but I wasn’t sure whether he was right, or if it was something else that called me closer.

Whatever it was, I couldn’t deny it. He knew me well enough to recognize the intrigue I felt for her, and admitted that her feelings for me were deepening. I just wondered how shallow they were now and how deep they one day might grow. Was I willing to explore those depths, or should I heed Kes’s warning and leave Larken alone?

I wasn’t sure the latter was an option.

How could I fight against my desire to know more and the need to keep my distance?

How could I stop something that had barely begun but seemed more real than anything that came before it?

The skin between her brow creased. Her heartbeat thundered. Her eyes began to flit beneath closed lids. She was dreaming again.

What was she seeing play through her thoughts? I could put my forehead against hers to experience it with her, but that would be an intrusion. One I promised myself never to make with her.

She was curled up beneath the blanket wearing the tight pants she wore, the large sweatshirt Kes called a hoodie, her hair a tangled nest on her head and still… I wanted to brush my knuckles down her face, to feel her skin and comfort her as she dreamed so fitfully. But I couldn’t do that.

I wrung my hands, raked fingers through my hair, and paced the room. But no matter what I did, the knot in my stomach didn’t uncoil. I was still pacing when I felt Gemini approaching. I called on Kes to protect his sister as she slept.

“What is it?” he asked, concerned.

“Gemini draws near,” I bit and left him to rouse her in case he needed to take her to a safer place. I reappeared just outside the columnal rings to confront Gemini and see that she was kept far away from Larken.

Her expressions were closed off as each of her twin heads swiveled to me. “You visited and didn’t linger to say hello,” they both said simultaneously. Her olive skin glistened in the early morning sunlight.

Either she didn’t know why I was there, or she was playing me to see how much information I would divulge. “Would you have welcomed me?”

“No,” she answered, both mouths giving the answer succinctly. Absolutely.

“I hope we can work past our differences.”

Her left head cocked to the side, intricate fiery braids falling over her shoulder, her sultry mouth raising at the corners. The other head, whose fiery locks lay straight