Ruin Maketh Me

68 - Discoveries

     I must've fallen asleep, listening to the buzz and crack of the static in my head, because when my eyes blink open again, the light pooling onto the broken floor is a deep golden orange. The distracting pounding seems to have dimmed down through the oblivion of my sleep, and everything now from the whorls in the floor to the lines in the wall have become infinitely clearer. Finally, I don't have to look at everything through a film of murky glass.
     Sitting up straight from my slumped position against the wall, I delve towards the Bond again. The static seems to have dimmed in volume too, or perhaps I've just become used to it? I nudge it with a careful finger, and a barrage of emotions come to life. Anger, anxiety, sadness, longing, tenderness, all swirl into a concentrated elixir and flow into my blood from Sol. Heat rushes from my heart to the rest of my body, and a shaky breath streams from my mouth. Fuck, finally, it's connected.
     Cynder where are you? Are you ok? Did they hurt you? The Bond isn't particularly stable now, because we spent too little time together, and we haven't... mated yet.
     An intimate flash of naked limbs and slapping flesh shines like a brilliant porn video through the Bond into my mind. A hotness flushes up my face and ears, and Sol gives an embarrassed huff.
     I'm with~ But at my words, another insistent jab of sputtering sound distorts my message.
"Oh fuck, come on!"
Leonard, I'm with Leonard the fucking slave trader, Leo-fucking-nard!
     But the spiral of sound seems to be both continuous and contagious, and I receive no reply that indicates Sol's understanding. Wordlessness chokes the curses in my throat, and all I can spit out is a twisted puff of air. What is even the use of having a Bond when you're unable to communicate? Yes sure, I can experience Sol's anxious care, but what use is that when I desperately need to tell him where I am?
     Click.
     The door clangs open again, and the foxy Leonard wanders in with a tray of food. He stands, staring at me for a second and raises a brow, "You having some problems communicating over the Bond?"
     My jaw tightens, "How the fuck did you know?"
     He shrugs and places the tray in front of me, "That's the logical step to take, but luckily for me, you're gonna keep having trouble with the bond." He extends two clawed hands and draws them apart, "The farther away you two are, the weaker the communication connection, especially since you two haven't mated yet."
     I raise an eyebrow, and noticing my expression, he licks his lips almost sheepishly.
     "I can taste him on you, but his presence is way too weak for you two to be mated properly." He laughs, exposing his glinting canines, "I'm sorry darling, you couldn't have your steamy sex."
     I ignore his raucous comment and pick up a bun from the tray. Giving it a whiff, I obey my aching stomach and give in to the temporary bliss of food. The least I can do in a situation like this is to feed myself.
     "I thought you'd have jumped out of the window." Leonard contemplates whimsically, as if speaking to himself.
      I make no reply and continue savouring the soft flesh of the bread. Does he think his jokes are funny? If I had jumped out of the window, I would've gotten more than just a few broken bones.
     "Can you really not remember anything at all?" He asks quietly in the same manner, "That house, the Salabens..."
     My teeth stop in their repetitive movement up and down, up and down, and yet strangely, the queasiness of unease does not rise through my guts as it normally does, "Did you know me from before?"
     "No," Then louder with more conviction, "Not at all. But you know, I would've been impossible for me to be acquainted with you at all." His pale golden eyes deepen and darkness with an alien hint of solemnity. And though it's far from cruel, it entertains it's fullness with the coldness of calculation.
     My legs tense from beneath me, and only now does a sliver of ice crawl through my veins. The way he observes me, the tone of his voice, the selection of words, all hint at something hidden behind the curtain of what he knows and what I don't know. Something about his knowledge and mine of this particular body do not match up. What does he know about 'me'?
     His foot lifts up and down against the wooden floorboards, and a crisp tap, tap, tap vibrates through the floor, "I'm not going to beat around the bush, you're an Otherworlder aren't you?"
      Leonard's eyes are unclouded and full of conviction. There's no room for lies or bluffs, he believes in it as surely as he believes in the sun or the clouds or the moon. The back of my throat dries, but the cold unease of the unknown draws away, and the pit of my body heats up like an eternal bonfire. There's no point. There's no point in hiding at all.
     "How did you know?"
     His eyes curve into crescent moons, and his ruby red ears twitch in the confined air, "Because I know more about this world than you do." He pauses and lets the air rush in to fill the gaps, "Magic isn't all powerful, once someone dies, they don't just come back, not more than ten years later."
     "Explain."
     But he doesn't elaborate further, just smiles meaningfully full of cruel knowing, "Don't worry, I have no plans on giving you up to the authorities, I need you to make me some more money."
     "Why?"
     He lowers his gaze towards me, "Why what?"
     "Why would you go through all the trouble of stealing me from the Salabens and then sell me to the Kades? Surely, as you said, the Salabens would've paid more money for me?"
     He blinks, "I was..." He trails off, mouth opening and closing in the attempts to find a right word, "Fascinated. But later on, I was losing money and I had a reputation to uphold. It was the right time and the right place, something like that?" He let's silence wade in for a second before carrying on as if he had heard a definite answer, "But it was the right choice. I would've lost more if I got involved in you romantically." An amused laugh disturbs the sparks of dust twisting through the air, "I wouldn't want to be your mate."
My mouth opens as if to say something, but nothing important or even trivial comes to mind. He's made it very clear already that he won't expand on this body's identity any further, and nothing I say would probably change it. Indeed, he's already given me enough information. If what he says is true, this body's been dead for more than ten years. Why would Salaben keep a corpse in a glass coffin? And why would he buy back a corpse of someone he dislikes for a fortune?
A rough sketch builds up within my head. The love, the hate, the need, all the things clear and unclear in between draws out thinly into a tangled map of relations that shines brightly clear at one angle.
     "—they say the elf child rips the mother apart from inside."
     Wouldn't it make sense if this body gave birth to Salaben's child? A wave of bitter nausea gushes alongside the walls of my organs, and a deep, deep rejection rings from something other than my soul. No, that's just sick. Who'd go through such suffering and die for love?
     I shake my head firmly and although the sticky gall of wrongness doesn't fade, I spoon a mouthful of soup through my lips.
     A tuneful little whistle warps the stale air, and Leonard runs his watchful gaze down my figure again as if not getting enough of a curious specimen, "I have nothing personal against your mate, but you do know that this fateful connection between two mates is only as deep as the body right?" The light threading through his pale irises almost turns righteous in nature, "And no one is cruelly arrogant enough to say that a being who's lived in this world is fated to die."
     I throw the spoon into the murky soup with a clang, "Just what the fuck do you want to say?"
     Leonard throws his hands up in mock surrender, "Continue eating princess, pretend I didn't say anything, we're leaving," He glances quickly at the failing glow of light, "very soon."
     But the food tastes like wet cardboard, and I can't help going through his words again and again. If I hadn't transmigrated, Sol would be mates with a different man wouldn't he? It'd be the man who used to own this body.
     I force the thick liquid down my throat.
     Well, shit like that doesn't matter, because now I own this body, and I have no plans to leave.