Page 77 of Enchantment of Silver and Sea
I sat down in the middle of the floor. I considered myself to be a clean person, but my carpet truly hadn’t been this clean since I first moved in ten years ago. I ran my hand across the fibers.
Slowly, a rumbling began to build in me. It rose up like a tsunami.
I curled into a ball, pulling my legs into me. Wrapping my arms around them. Holding on so tightly that my knuckles turned white. My breaths came fast and hard as I squeezed my eyes shut, willing someone, anyone, to rescue me from what was coming. But the wave was rolling in and there was no stopping it.
The sound that erupted from me was somewhere between a scream and a wail.
No one was coming to save me. No one cared enough.
In every aspect of life, I was just a means to an end. Something to be manipulated. Something to be used. Something to be lied to and taken from and ripped to pieces until there was nothing left of me.
And I felt it again. Rushing through me, filling every part of me. The same feeling that consumed me after I watched the light go out in Irene’s eyes. Smothering the sobs that wracked my whole body. Smothering my sense of self. Smothering any flicker of anything that was left in me. That creeping numbness. That living death.
It was all that I could feel. All that I was.
I felt nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
CHAPTERSEVENTEEN
The sun finished its ascent. It dipped below the horizon again. I was there and not there. Asleep and awake.
I saw Irene. What I could remember of my parents. Brielle and Zander. I saw all the members of The Council, including Cato. I saw Nya, and the faces of the people I had met Outside.
I saw Kieran.
I also heard something like a giant bang and a rumble somewhere nearby. I’m not sure if what I saw were dreams or visions. Or a mixture of both.
At some point, I realized vaguely that I needed to go to the bathroom. I wasn’t sure if it was that sensation that pulled me out of my trance, or if it was the fact that I was already coming out of it that allowed me to recognize the sensation. Either way, I raised slowly up onto my hands and knees. My limbs trembled with the effort, and I realized I hadn’t eaten since dinner the night Kieran arrived.
Was that only yesterday?
As soon as the realization hit me, sickening, gut-wrenching hunger exploded through my stomach and burned my throat.
I hurried to the bathroom and emptied my bladder, then tore through my cabinets, consuming anything edible I could get my hands on. Bread, a stray apple, a jar of peanuts, a quarter of a bag of sugar…I shoveled it all down, too ravenous to even try to throw together something that resembled a meal. When I was finished, I filled a glass to the brim with water and downed it, then repeated the motions twice more.
I leaned against the sink, breathing heavily. Water dripped from my lips. My hands were sticky from where I had been grabbing sugar out of the bag by the fistful. When my breathing steadied and the feeling of hunger was sated, the sensation of pain rose to the surface. My muscles and joints ached.
I crossed to the bathroom, carefully avoiding looking in the mirror. This time, it had nothing to do with not wanting to see my resemblance to Irene. It was because I knew I would be horrified to see how the mess inside of me was manifesting on the outside.
I rinsed the sugar off my hands, then stripped off my nightgown. Once in the shower, I let the cold water wash over me. Over and over and over. Relishing how it made me feel as numb on the outside as I still felt on the inside. Afterward, I brushed my teeth then ran a comb through my wet hair and braided it.
When I emerged from the bathroom, I went straight to my bed. With all my basic needs met, I felt the gentle brush of a thought, which was equal parts tentative and urgent.
What the fuck was I going to do?
I ran through all the events of the past twenty-four hours Then I ran through them again. And again. There were so many things that had been kept from me for so long…I needed to replay every conversation, every interaction, every subtle change in expression and body language that had caught my attention, to make sure there was nothing left that I was missing.
In spite of myself, I found a fresh wave of tears spilling over as I replayed the night and morning that Kieran and I spent together before theEnforcersshowed up. Each memory brought fresh pain. He had said that he had something to tell me. Now I understood it was the truth about me being a Conductor. But the memory that stuck in my mind the most at this moment, making my chest ache, was not that revelation. It was not the Enforcers breaking down my door, or even when Kieran and I were moving against each other, as close as two people could physically be.
It was that moment, after he pleasured me, and before we both found our pleasure again in each other, when he pressed gentle kisses across my face.
The feeling of his lips against my skin was arousing under any circumstance. But those kisses, soft and gentle, hadn’t been meant to arouse me. They were communicating something else. Something he was struggling against his pride, or maybe even his nerves, to say.
In that moment, I had known, somewhere in the depths of my soul, what he felt for me. Yes, he was feeling attraction and lust and all the things that went along with what we had done. What we had been about to do. All things that I was feelingtoo, toward him. But in that moment, I had also felt something else from him.
I had felt cherished.
