Shadowburn (2)

Chapter 14

Suddenly the food tasted like ash in her mouth, but she forced herself to keep eating. To keep her face silent and still.

Idiot, idiot, idiot, stupid aciriaen! She cursed herself silently, over and over again. She shouldn't have done that. She hadn't meant to do that, but it had been so surprising, so... comforting, to have him in her head.

She was so used to that, to just giving Thorn everything she thought and felt, everything she needed him to understand but couldn't put into words.

So when Andreas had entered her mind... she'd been surprised. And she'd tried to hold back, to blank everything inside her because she knew that most mental links weren't like the one she shared with her Faen brother.

But she had been afraid that he didn't want to teach her, and she had been worried that she made the wrong decision in asking him--actually asking something, her!--to help her. So when he took the trouble to do something he didn't like doing, to explain... she'd just automatically expressed herself in the way with which she was most familiar: wordlessly, with her heart.

And now he was gone.

Gone. He'd just left.

Everything inside her was jumping all over the place, and she didn't know what to do with it. Hated that something in her heart ached at the way he'd left. She had felt utter shock through the link between them, before it had been shut down.

She hated that she was afraid of that, afraid that he was shocked because he didn't want her to feel what she'd felt. Didn't want those emotions--not from her, not inside him. She hated herself so much for the insecurity.

But she couldn't seem to shut it down.

Didn't know what she'd do if she'd ruined it, if he told her to leave now. She would go, obviously--she wouldn't stay where she wasn't wanted. But it would hurt, gods it would.

She finished her first plate of food and stared at the rest of it. She wasn't hungry anymore. She stood, pushing back her chair calmly, and then pushed it back in just as slowly, no expression on her face. Without a word to either Kalen or Lana--who both looked very confused--she headed for the door.

She needed to be outside, needed to do something with all the things building up inside her. Couldn't stand to be stuck in this house for one more second.

She'd barely reached the doorway when she felt a rush of magic against her skin--and then, to her surprise, she felt Andreas behind her. She glanced over her shoulder, everything in her going utterly silent as she forced her expression to blank.

She blinked at him, then, because it was as if the mask he always wore had just vanished, and she could see ten thousand things in his eyes and on his face. He was still shocked--and gods, was that vulnerability? It couldn't be, wasn't possible, not with his arrogance and the way he was always, always in control of himself.

Before she could say anything, he'd put his hands around her waist, and she felt a faint rush of dizziness as he vanished them to somewhere else.

A split second later, they were surrounded by familiar things--his room. Their feet were barely firm on the carpeting before she started to pull away--and he pulled away, too, almost backing away from her. Gods, she'd really messed things up, hadn't she?

He looked... awful. He was a wreck, pacing across the floor like he couldn't stay still. She didn't want to know what was going on in his head, was afraid that he was struggling because he didn't know how to tell her to leave, after she'd chosen to stay.