Nada's Escape: Fighters' lies

18.3 Eyes

I bawl up my courage and both fists, peeking a glance to the side at him, still slung across the back of the couch.

"What is this?" I ask, gesturing between us. As if summoned by my attention I feel a pull, as though something is physically connecting us. "Why were you in my head yesterday? What is going on?"

He stands slowly and I hear the smile in his words, "You were in my head too."

A trickle of warmth runs down my spine. I stamp my foot against the carpet, forcing myself to concentrate. I will not be enthralled. I'm not even fricking looking at him. My focus is laser-beamed on a wrinkle in the couch cover. His hand is out of focus behind it.

I imagine forging a steel pillar in the centre of myself, letting it form straight from the heels of my feet all the way up to my eyes. I centre all my determination into them and open them on Finley, who still gazes at me. I have to know.

His eyes are those of the boy that I'd met in Seven. A kaleidoscope of colours; brown, green, blue, yellow in a hundred tiny flecks. Then, as now, I feel as though we are connected by a stream of warm light. Something passing between us, a conversation beyond words.

I blink, refocusing on the image of the steel pillar inside myself. I can't step forward because its drilled into the floor, anchoring me to the present. I look again and he's leaning forward over the back of the couch. Not quite the same as the boy I met at first.

There's something more subtle, more wary, in his face now. Maybe that's what's changed between us. Or perhaps it's me; all my time fighting has jaded me, poisoning me against him.

The planes of his face smooth, calming in understanding at my words. It's an infectious serenity, like waves of warm light washing over me and my steel centre. I sink my fingers into my thighs, reminding myself to concentrate, to find answers.

"Do you know what's happening?" I ask him.

When he opens his mouth it's slowly, as if he's encased in honey. But no words come out, it just hangs there, open. I feel it again then, the pull, tugging on my chest. I don't move but he stumbles forward, catching his knee on the corner of the couch. He tumbles, shoulder slamming into the back of the couch and he's falling backwards like a discarded doll, no arms raised to catch himself.

Holy fu- I slide forward to catch him, arms circling his chest. My knees buckle with the impromptu weight, and I twist to fall beneath him, his head cushioned on my chest.

I slump against the floor, trying to figure out what happened. For a beat nothing further happens.

And then Finley reels away from me, sliding away from the arm that had saved him. I can't help the hand that reaches after him, forlornly, worried that he'll fall again. He claws himself upright on the couch cover, ripping it back to reveal garish green and orange patterning.

I scramble to my feet, crouching like a cat and staring up as Finley leans heavily on the couch. Is he wounded?

His hand trembles even as the knuckles turn white from squeezing the cushioning.

"Are you alright?" I ask.

"You... You..." Finley blinks, as if struggling to find his way back into the land of speech. His eyelids flutter, thoughts shifting beneath his skin. "Impossible." He mumbles.

He clears his throat and turns his face to me but his eyes fumble along the ground for something. Analysing all the symptoms, my brain starts to come to its own impossible conclusion.

"Did I just... enthral you?" I feel the words fall from my mouth in shock. "But I can't."

He hides his head in his hands. "But this is ridiculous. But you did. I mean-"

He whirls away from me, clearly beginning to regain his motor skills. I cautiously rise from my crouch.

"You actually enthralled me!" He proclaims this to the darkened kitchen window.

His body turns back to me, his eyes flicking across me like hummingbirds. A gesture I know well.

"I thought the mark was faked! Darcell did something sneaky but he didn't make you-"

"It is fake!" I yell back at him. "It's just lights under the skin. There's a switch and everything." I hold out my arm as if to let him check it but he keeps his distance. Wise, probably.

He shakes his head, his shoulders bouncing along behind it. "There's something going on here. You shouldn't have survived that potion Darcell gave you. Even a drop of something that strong should have made you sick. But a whole bottle? Something with enough magic to make you change bodies? You should have died!"

Finley's face has become wild, like a Halloween mask. I swallow hard, struggling to comprehend the change in him, barely processing the rest of it.

"Mark or not, though. You have Talent." Finley appears to be composing himself, looking back into the darkened window. "And you're definitely not human."

It's my turn to start screaming. But the voice is only inside my head, a high pitched wail of how is this happening to me? Finley starts to pace the kitchen, getting his thoughts together.

"It all makes sense now. The blood drugs should have killed you. But they didn't. Because you're not human. Instead they awakened your powers and somehow forged the mind-link between us."

Something about that is wrong, but I can't visualise it around the noise in my head. I'm fucking human, okay?

"Yes that's it. You're actually a Huntswomen." The revelation seems to bring him joy and the demon screaming inside my brain will NOT HAVE IT.

"Get out!" I scream, "Get the hell out of here before I melt you into-"

He might actually believe I'll melt him into ash because he gulps and brings his hands up in a slow, deliberate way.

"Okay. I'm going. I'm just going to get the..." He makes a dash for the table and snaps the clasps on the ribbon-case closed. My fingers close around a pillow ready to launch, but he's already at the door. With a last sheepish half glance he vanishes into the night. My gaze turns to the clock on the wall. Quarter past midnight.