Page 8 of Sick Like Me

That one word bleeds uneasiness inside of me like lava spilling down the side of an erupting volcano. But Caelus didn’t say it like it was a bad thing. He said it with a dagger-sharp possessiveness like helikedit, the feeling.

‘Sick in the head, sick in the heart, sick in the soul.’

That’s what I focus on now, as my skin itches, feeling too tight to really feel like my own, heart too heavy to beat its usual even, steady drumming like I’ve learnt to control so well, standing before my family’s home.

Stone Hill Manor.

I think of all of the things Caelus has said to me since then. The secret meetings where sometimes we just talk, somewhere deep inside, what is known as,Carnell Wood.Other times he pins me in a darkened corner and ravishes me right there, where anyone passing by could see, and makes me see stars that definitely don’t come from the sky.

I feel safe and protected and what I imagineloveto feel like when I’m in the secure circle of his lean, muscular arms. He keeps me safe and makes sure I eat and get enough sleep. Caelus Carnell makes my heart flutter and my insides knot, and I’msupposed to hate him. He’s supposed to hate me. But neither one of us does.

Guards let me through the gate without need for interaction, my white high tops soundless as I track my way up the thirty-plus stone steps to reach the front door which already hangs wide open. I didn’t want to have to come back here ever, especially not like this, feeling the way I do right now. Knowing what I’ve done and having no way of undoing it.

I suck a shaky breath in through my teeth, the cold air of the overly-air conditioned house making pain flare in my front two incisors as I cross the entrance hall, beelining straight towards the grand dining room.

Breakfast in this house, with these people, is never much more than a business meeting. Father assigns tasks, I nod in silent agreement, and then escape his vicinity as quickly as possible.

Colin Stone is not a nice man.

Zoe, the youngest at just sixteen, is the first of my sisters I see, short, white-blonde hair tucked behind her slightly pokey-out ears. Dark brown eyes lifting from beneath the heavy flutter of her lashes. She stares at me from her seated position at the far end of the table, on the opposite side to where I usually sit. When I take my seat, the room in silence with only her and I currently present, I see her left cheekbone is a bright burst of blue.

“Don’t,” she says immediately, rasping the single word across the surface of the shiny, black glass table top. “I deserved it.”

I bite down on the inside of my cheek, holding her gaze, but if she says she did, I’m not going to argue. Zoe’s the sister I’m the closest with, but none of us are closer than acquaintances, something else designed by our father. Besides, worse things have happened inside this house than a backhand to the face.

Our eldest sister, Amelia, is next through the door, our father close on her heels, and with no sign of our second eldest sister, Naomi, Colin begins to speak.

It’s the usual stuff, the lists of small tasks he wants us to perform. His meaty hands plant on the table as he stands, pudgy fingers spread wide, he focuses his gaze on me, and it takes everything I have in me not to look away.

“A little birdy told me,” he exhales, the small lump of his belly resting atop the table too now as he presses further forward, “you’ve recently become close with the Carnellcunt,” he spits with disgust, and my entire skeleton twitches inwardly.

My heart clatters like tin lids crashing together, rattling my teeth, but I don’t react, I don’t even blink. I hold his gaze, the deep brown of his irises too much like my youngest sister’s to hate them, but I can still hate how his gaze makes me feel, boring into me like a drill bit to the temple.

There’s no one alive who has seen us together, realistically he shouldn’t know that, but he’s obviously found a way. I show nothing on my face, no outward reaction, but panic is like a piano wire around my heart, squeezing, squeezing, squeezing.

“Which makes your next job easier, Ostara,” he says merrily, a little glint in his gaze, behind the lenses of his glasses, something stares back at me like joy, only this fleeting moment is filled with sinister and bloody intent. “You’re to kill Caelus Carnell.”

The rest of breakfast went by in a blur, the two tiny bites of bagel feel like rocks in my stomach, but Colin Stone’s very real threatsignite sickness in my gut, the taste of acid sits heavily on the back of my tongue.

‘You’re sick, Ostara. Make sure you don’t forget what we do to girls in this family that are sick like you.’

It doesn’t matter that his order goes against the agreement between our families, because despite my grandfather and Cal’s arguing like toddlers over some meaningless land deeds, they signed an agreement that neither bloodline is to cause harm to or kill the other.

It’s why I don’t think. Panic this very real, living, breathing thing inside of me, poisoning me from the inside out. My leaden feet carry me through the old stone halls, my white high tops splattering with red where it drips from my closed fist. I thought it would help, slicing my skin, letting it out, this overwhelming feeling tightening at my temples, squeezing my lungs.

It always usually helps.

The flats of my bloody palms collide with huge, wooden, double doors, fingers flexing and pushing them open with a rushing thud as the left one collides with the wood panelled wall behind it.

‘You belong to me now.’

Caelus’ hazel eyes narrow as his head snaps toward the interruption of his class. And there’s a moment, suspended, where there’s nobody else inside this studio as he stares at me.

Mirrors line the two adjoining walls where Cal stands in the furthest corner. Tall, muscular body angled towards me; his left hand curled around the long pine coloured barre bolted into the long mirrored wall. Upper half drenched in a thick sheen of sweat, his light skin exposed in the gaping neck and arm holes of the loose, black, stringer vest he wears, glistens under the harsh white lights. Black tights sculpted to his legs, silky black pointe shoes on his feet, extending the already long length of his legsinto something powerful and elegant. He’s magnificent, every single inch of him.

That’s one of the reasons he’s so deadly.

His hazel eyes scorch me, burning me up from the inside out, and every instinct inside of me tells me to go to him. To tear my way across the wooden floors, ignore every student in this room, all of their gazes focussed in on the intruder interrupting their scheduled training session, and go to him.

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