Chapter Sixty-One: Confusion
One second, Xaphile was sleeping like a log.
The next, he woke up in a panic since his blanket had gotten stuck on his horns and had started smothering him.
Letting out a muffled gasp, he struggled to sit up, but he couldn't move.
Terror engulfed him as he lay frozen on the ground, breathing rapidly and irregularly with the pressure of it crushing his chest.
His pulse beat against his throat, hands twitching, unable to do more than shift his eyes, and for what seemed to be an eternity, he tried to get his breathing under control.
As he calmed down, lucidity crept back into his awareness.
The moment he realized where he was, he was suddenly able to move.
Bolting upright and jerking the blanket off of his face, his eyes wildly combed through the dark.
Nothing was there.
Breathing heavily, he pressed a hand against his forehead and tried to calm down, but to his confusion, even though everyone was still sleeping, Ella was still nowhere to be found.
Brow furrowing on reflex, he gently flopped back down onto the furry bed with a stressed sigh. None of the guys stirred, nor did Amelia: the sounds of soft breathing let him know that they were all asleep, and he, feeling oddly resigned, decided that it was probably wise to join them.
His pounding heart and whirling head, however, gave him no such luck.
It was only after a few minutes of lying on his back that he recognized it for what it was.
Sleep paralysis.
He lay there, heart pounding rapidly, staring up at the ceiling with glazed eyes.
All the craziness taking over his life was beginning to take its toll on his mind. He hadn't had issues with sleep paralysis since he'd been a little kid... the fact that he was having it now, at seventeen, was a really bad sign.
Rolling over on his side, he pulled his knees to his chest with a shiver, planning on burying his face in them... but as he did so, he felt the bandages around his foot unravel with a pop.
Sitting up, he carefully tossed off his blanket and set about re-winding the strip of cloth, but when he did he realized that the sticky salve had dried into a crust on his skin.
Shit, he silently cussed, reluctantly crawling out of bed. I have to fix up my leg again.
Gus stirred once or twice when he got up, but he either didn't care that Xaphile was sneaking off or didn't deem it important enough to discuss. Blinking at his surroundings, he grabbed the medicine box before heading outside towards the hot springs as quietly as he could.
Lifting his pant leg, he gently set his limb into the water and carefully rinsed the dried salve off, trying not to focus on the ugly scabs and general grossness of his mangled limb.
Then he hopped over to where he'd dropped the medicine box and dug around for some more salve and bandages.
Unfortunately, his hands were still shaking, and he couldn't get the salve jar open because his fingers weren't steady enough.
His arms felt like jelly.
"Dammit," he muttered, struggling mightily with a furious scowl; his muscles trembled even further from the strain of heaving at the stupid jar. "Stupid night terrors... I can't even move right."
"Let me do that."
His heart seized.
The fur on his tail puffed up in an instant and he nearly dropped the jar entirely. Heart leaping, his quivering eyes sought her out.
She was standing not too far away from him, leaning against a tree with her arms folded.
"I can manage," he said, tone coming out more stiffly than he'd intended; he noticed that she had donned her black cloak and the hood was up. "Seriously."
Ella dropped her arms.
"Not like that you can't," she snorted. "Something's spooked you to your core. Not only can I feel it, I can actually see your whole body trembling from here."
He glanced down at himself to see that she was right.
His upper torso was shivering slightly, exactly like his hands.
"It'll pass," he whispered, swallowing hard. "This happens to me sometimes."
Rather than walk away like he wanted, she crossed the clearing, head held high, footsteps falling in a manner so unhurried it felt forced. Each step was a resolution, though of what Xaphile couldn't say. He didn't look at her when she reached out and plucked the jar from his hands since it took little more than a twist for her to open it.
"See?" she sneered, smirking down at him. "A task as little as that."
He took the jab silently, then held out his hand to take the jar back.
"Thanks," he rasped, finally raising his eyes. "I appreciate the help, but I can take it from here."
When their eyes met, he immediately faltered because Ella, you see, was looking at him through lowered silver lashes.
With a rising sense of confusion, he watched as she knelt down and plucked a white cloth out of the medicine box at his side, and with her small, gentle fingers, she carefully dipped it in the jar, then set the container on the ground.
She grasped his ankle in one hand and firmly placed his large, clawed foot flat against her chest, right between her breasts. He blinked rapidly before a flush crept into his face.
He understood why she was doing it, since the action braced his leg, but it was still awkward.
He couldn't move, couldn't even think as she carefully began spreading cool salve over his wounds, fingers gliding nimbly and soothingly. Her hand distracted him as much as her fingers did, partially because her thumb kept tracing a maddeningly little circle around the ball-like bone on the inside of his ankle.
His ears slowly grew hot, and his cheeks followed suit with an unpleasant burn.
He averted his eyes, staring at the ground as she worked with a tenderness he never would have expected from her.
When she finished applying the salve and put the jar away, briefly rising so she could see inside the box to get the bandages, she somehow managed to stand as close to him as humanly possible without actually touching him, aside from where her hand kept a loose circle on his ankle.
"Say something if I hurt you," she murmured, shocking him back to the present. "Am I clear?"
"Would it even matter?"
He'd said it before he could think about it, and predictably, she froze for a moment... then she looked up and their eyes met.
"Of course it matters," she growled. "Why would you even ask that?"
It took a minute for Xaphile to work up the ability to speak coherently.
"Plenty of reasons," he said far too honestly. "You've never really seemed to care too much about hurting me. Like you did earlier."
She glanced at his wrists, where two dark outlines of her palm-prints lay visible against his skin.
"You angered me," she said simply, kneeling down and carefully bandaging up his leg.
He couldn't believe his ears.
Fury ignited in his gut and he abruptly jerked his leg away from her, somehow managing to dodge her grasping hands by swinging it out of reach.
The bandage fluttered to the floor.
He sat in profile, glaring at her. Anger—white hot and searing and oh so very real—made his eyes narrow into slits.
"That's no excuse for hurting someone," he said with barely leashed rage. "What right do you have to hurt me if I make you mad? That's abuse, plain and simple. Do you even understand what you're implying?"
She didn't respond, glaring up at him like he was speaking in tongues.
"And I wasn't talking about that incident, anyway," he continued, holding up his bruised wrist; her gaze tracked it as he spoke. "I was talking about what came after that. When I apologized."
She rose the way a panther would.
"What of it?" she demanded in an incredulous tone.
"Frankly, Ella," he said, sounding every bit as caustic as he felt, "I feel like I've said my piece. I took care of my errors and apologized for them. Now I think it's your turn, don't you?"
Really, her glare was a ferocious thing.
She gave him such an angry expression that it would have made another man turn tail.
"I beg your pardon?" she lowly demanded. "What exactly are you implying?"
Xaphile merely got to his feet and looked down at her with a glare of his own.
"I'm going to be perfectly honest," he said, turning so he was facing her. "Normally I can handle the crap you throw at me. Your domineering behavior, your control issues, the attitude... but today was weird, and I don't know if you're doing it on purpose or what."
"What is that supposed to mean?" she snapped. "My behavior is no different than..."
She trailed off when he leveled a clawed finger at her face, silencing her with little more than a harsh look.
"You know what I mean," he growled. "Don't act oblivious. Ever since Amelia told us about how primordial sprites court each other, you've literally made it your mission to dominate me at every opportunity. I didn't even recognize it for what it was until earlier."
To his chagrin, anxiety made her eyes spark: her throat moved when she swallowed, but just as she opened her mouth to say something, he lifted a hand and closed his eyes.
She fell silent.
"I hate to break it to you," he muttered, trying to keep his tone firm and soft at once, "but being an overpowering control freak is not impressive, or whatever you seem to think it is. It's just confusing and scary. So, if you're doing what I think you are... stop."
Her eyes flashed in a way he couldn't describe as she stomped forward, grabbed a handful of the jet black fur between his pecs, and dragged his face down until it was resting only an inch from her own. She was so close... she smelled like evergreen, pine, and metal.
"So, what if I am?" she said, voice hissing whisper-soft across his face. He could see each snowy white eyelash and every pore in her smooth skin. "Even if I did verbally dominate you... you still submitted."
Xaphile narrowed his eyes at her and decided to prove a point: snarling, he gripped her wrists and roughly shoved her to the ground. She gasped when he pounced on her and struggled to get free, but he clamped his hands down over her wrists and pinned her against the dirt like he'd done to Vrael.
She froze when his face came within an inch of her own.
"You think I've submitted?" he quietly demanded, making her eyes widen when she realized just how pissed he was. "Just because you took advantage of the guilt I was feeling for being an asshole doesn't mean I'll be a submissive little bitch."
"Unhand me!" she snapped, wriggling her wrists. "Now!"
"Why should I?" he hissed, leaning in close to her face; her mouth tightened and she froze, shivering a bit when he looked her clean in the eye. "After all, this is what domination really is... forcing someone else to submit by overpowering them."
Her mouth worked and she slowly turned red.
"Unhand... me!" she squeaked. "Now!"
He waited for a few moments, staring at her without blinking.
She squirmed with discomfort.
"You don't like this?" he questioned.
"Of course not!" she snapped.
"Then you understand," he growled, tightening his hands when her eyes flinched. "This is how I feel whenever you do this kind of crap to me. It isn't nice."
Her face went slack, and she stopped struggling.
She lay there on her back for a moment, blinking rapidly, but then... without warning, her face softened.
"I don't like this sensation... that much is true," she said carefully, long-lashed eyes staring deeper and deeper into his own, until it felt like her irises were touching his soul, "but if I'm going to be truthful, both with you and to myself... even now, pinned down against the ground and held at your mercy... I am... not afraid of you. Not the way I used to be."
He stilled, heart palpitating.
"What?" he rasped, gut beginning to tighten in fear. "What is that supposed to mean?"
"It means," she said, "that for some bizarre reason, even after everything the two of us have done to each other... I've somehow come to trust you completely."
He froze.
"You frustrate me," Ella went on. "You're infuriatingly vague at times, and your negative outlook irks me to no end... but as much as you annoy me, I think I'd be deluding us both if I didn't admit that you... as of late, intrigue me, too."
"I intrigue you?"
"Yes... I truly want to figure you out, without cutting corners," she said, swallowing. "Don't ask me to explain why—I just do. You sometimes say things that I fail to understand... I find myself wondering about them for days, trying to make sense of them. To make sense of you."
When he let go of her as if he'd been stung, Ella lifted her left hand and firmly set it against his chest, pressing her skin lightly into the fur streaking down his middle until she could feel the rise and fall of his breathing. He stared down at that small, pale hand for a moment.
His heart had gone numb.
"Why... do you want to know me?" he croaked, hollow and unsure. "You've already seen everything from the inside out, right? You saw my childhood and all the little things that shaped me into who I am today. That's already given you a hell of an advantage over me, since you already know what will drive me crazy and what will make me so mad I can't see straight."
"That's true," she admitted, smirking at him. "I did see your history... but even though we both know this to be the truth, you act as if we're strangers."
"Aren't we?" he questioned, making her fall still. "You know everything about me, Ella... you've seen into my head, and you're constantly reading my mind, so you know how I think. But I literally know absolutely nothing about you, aside from a few minor details."
Her eyes widened as if that reality hadn't even occurred to her, then the surprise faded and her hand fisted in his fur.
"Do... you desire to know about me, though?" she inquired, tilting her head. "I am not the Ella of your world, Xaphile. I'm a completely different girl."
He stared at her, genuinely thinking about it, and he was shocked to realize that he actually did, for one reason alone.
Closure.
He wanted closure that Ella Marie Richardson and Ellameira Rochard weren't the same people.
If he knew more about this Ella, it might help him come to terms that his Ella was gone.
"I do," he said, shoulders sagging. "I want... to put you into a more understandable context. Things would be easier on me if I knew why you acted the way you do... and at the very least, I would learn how to avoid triggering your mood swings."
"Mood swings?" Ella snorted, eyes dropping to a dangerous and sleepy half-mast. "I already apologize when I lash out."
"True, but the problem is that you're too closeted with your emotions," Xaphile countered. "No matter how big of an asshole I can be, not knowing how to read you can really limit how well I react to your moods. You're never too clear with what you're thinking."
"Then read my mind," she snorted, furrowing her brows. "It's not a big issue."
"It is to me," he muttered. "Invading someone else's head is... well, its not something I want to do. There's a reason people call a man's mind his last sanctuary. I won't change myself and take the easy way, so you're going to have to be more open if you truly want to stop irritating me."
She nodded.
"As you wish," she murmured. "Now, could you please get off of me?"
Xaphile blinked and glanced down, then flushed bright red before scrabbling off to the side.
Ella slowly sat up and rubbed her wrists for a moment, then she grabbed the bandages.
Without a word, she gripped his ankle again, braced it against her chest a second time, and started wrapping the cloth around the bridge of his foot.
Xaphile let out a small sigh when she worked her way up his ankle and around the lower half of his calf. Her work somehow managed to look much neater than his own, and the bindings exhibited just the right amount of pressure without being too tight.
He made a study of her small, calloused hands as she worked, marking the short nails, delicate fingers, and rough white palms... her hands were well-used to holding things.
She had callouses for days.
"I don't want to change you," Ella said suddenly, breath flowing over his leg when she spoke. Though she had finished treating him, she held his foot pressed against her chest with one hand on his bare knee to keep it there.
"You what?" he managed, somehow.
"I don't want to change you," she repeated. "If you thought that was my intention, it wasn't."
He narrowed his eyes.
"Then what was your intention?"
She looked up, lips pursed.
"I am not," she reluctantly admitted, "a gentle girl. I don't know how to be gentle."
"I already know that much," he deadpanned, voice coming out in a rasp. "I've seen it and felt it firsthand."
Her eyes swept up the bare, muscled length of his leg; gooseflesh broke out in their wake.
"Are you a faery?" Ella quietly asked, fingers tightening on his knee. "Or are you a human?"
The question caught him on his blind side.
"What?" Xaphile asked, swallowing when her pale pink eyes locked on his face.
"Are you a faery or a human?" she repeated. "Tell me."
"A human," he instantly said, not knowing why the hell it mattered.
Her lips twitched.
"You mean, you think like a human," she said in a silky voice. "Right?"
"I was raised human," Xaphile muttered, frowning, "if that's what you mean."
"Xaphile," Ella murmured, narrowing her own eyes. "You're not human anymore."
"Obviously," he muttered, spine tingling at the honey-dark tone in her voice. He felt her hand alight on his arm before he looked to see what she was doing.
"Faeries," she said slowly, pulling his bruised arm outward, "are not like humans."
"I think I got that memo," he curtly told her. "It's unbelievable, but I understand."
Before he could react, she crawled forward and gently pushed him backwards.
He lost his balance and fell on his back with a startled grunt, but before he could get back up, she slid up close to his face and planted her hands on either side of his head. She wasn't straddling him... her lower torso was actually curled off to the side, but she was holding herself up above him using her arms.
She gazed at him with an intense expression.
"Even if you aren't aware of it... your mind reacts in a specific way to certain behavior," she said, face inching forward even as she held their eyes together. "Your race acts on instinct, especially when in situations like this one. The fact that you... you marked me is proof."
"That's why we're here," he coldly reminded her. "To get it removed."
She nodded.
"Very true," Ella roughly confirmed, then sighed, "I, too, desire for it to be removed, but I've also had a lot of time to think. I don't want the mark you've already given me, but..."
"But?" he questioned.
"But," she muttered, eyes flashing with something he couldn't name, "the reason for that is because you weren't in control of yourself. And at the time, I still had doubts about you."
With no warning, she lowered her head and her eyes fluttered closed.
Xaphile's heart stopped and for nearly ten seconds, he lay frozen, pupils expanding. His vision went blurry when she gently placed her lips against the corner of his jawline, and his pulse, like some sort of traitorous and uncontrollable wild animal, began to sprint at top speed.
Then she pulled back.
"Once the mark is removed," she murmured, staring at his unfocused eyes. "Perhaps..."
She trailed off, then, and smirked.
When his arms started to shiver, Ella watched with obvious satisfaction until he remembered that breathing was a good thing and let it out, lightheaded and dizzy. He was hoping she'd just pull away and be done with it, but instead she just lay there.
He jumped when she leaned forward and pressed her face against the side of his neck.
"What are you doing?!" he finally yelped; he was sure she could feel the pulse pounding in his throat; surely it was visible beneath his pale skin, an undulating flag of... something. "This is seriously making me uncomfortable."
"I know," she said, but despite his worries she didn't kiss him or do anything weird—she just lay there. The mane running down his spine fluffed out when her breath fanned over his winding veins and shallowly breathing throat, waves of heat that left him cold.
But somehow... once it was apparent she wasn't going to do anything, he felt himself relax a bit in spite of himself.
His worries on just what the heck she was doing bled away.
He lay on his back, staring at the dark sky.
Her breathing grew slower... calmer.
"Hey," he muttered, lifting a hand and shaking her. "Seriously, what are you doing? Ella..."
He trailed off when he saw that her eyes were closed.
Her entire body had gone limp.
Brows raising, he sat up a bit and looked down at her; sure enough, her head lolled.
She was fast asleep.
Frowning, he stared down at her.
The warmth of the nearby hot springs, however, was rather comforting.
Letting out a sigh, Xaphile gently flopped back down on the ground.
There were a few rocks digging into him, but after wriggling a bit, he got comfortable.
Then he closed his eyes.
What is with this girl? he silently wondered. I can't seem to figure her out.
He ignored the little voice in the back of his head asking why he even wanted to.