"Ella..."
I looked up from the soup that was on the table in front of me to see Daniel staring at me intently as he hovered over his own bowl.
"Why are you not eating?" He asked.
I looked down at the untouched bowl in front of me that was no longer steaming and the clean spoon that laid next to it.
"I guess I'm not hungry," I told him.
He sighed, dipping his spoon back into his own bowl.
"What's wrong?" He asked, giving me his full attention.
I looked around us at our audience, the busy kitchen where the chef and a few others were bustling their way around to prepare dinner for everyone else.
"Listen," Daniel said, "I understand that you're having a hard time..."
My head snapped back to face him and I leveled a glare.
"You understand?" I asked him. "You understand what it's like to be exposed to another dimension of reality that goes against every presuppositional belief you hold? You understand what it's like to find out that you have a predetermined soulmate, the likes of whom children around the world have nightmares about? You understand what it's like to be lied to for your entire life about what and who you are?"
He drew in a deep breath.
"You actually want me to believe that you understand?" I asked him.
"I can't say that I relate to you on every level of this situation," Daniel admitted. "But I can tell you that I do know what it's like to have a deep bond of trust broken. I do understand what it feels like to be lied to. But you know what? I also understand what it takes to heal that relationship and rebuild that trust. And guess what, Ella? I didn't do any of those things by sitting around and throwing a pity party for myself."
Daniel's angry tone had me at a loss for words.
"You want to make things right?" he asked me rhetorically. "You have the power to do it. So, get up and go do it."
He reached forward and put the spoon into my bowl before picking up the bowl itself and handing it to me. As it took the bowl from him, stunned, he stood up from his chair.
"I refuse to sit around and watch you sulk and starve yourself just because you were dealt a shitty hand. Don't be selfish enough to believe that you're the only one having a hard time with all of this. Have you stopped to think about how hard this might be for Cain?"
With that question looming in the air, he turned around and left the kitchen.
After finally recovering from the brutally honest verbal attack that he gave, I looked around and saw all the people in the kitchen looking at me.
The look on their faces said it all: Daniel was right.
Deep down, no matter how much I wanted to come up with another excuse to justify my feelings, I knew he was right.
Half embarrassed and half emboldened, I stood up from the table. The bowl of soup was still in my hands as I left the kitchen.
Daniel had already disappeared down the hallway, but I wasn't going to find him.
I ventured up three flights of stairs to that all-too familiar door.
I stopped in front of it, nervously shifting the bowl of soup in my hands.
It had been three days.
Three days since I'd seen Cain. Three days since I had seen Zak.
I had tried to see Zak the night that he had been locked away in that cell, but I was refused entry. The guard told me that he had been given strict instructions not to let me inside. That fact, however, didn't stop me from trying to see him every few hours for the past three days. But, despite my persistence, I still couldn't get in.
For reasons not limited to stubbornness and rage, I refused to see Cain.
He came to my room once to bring me dinner.
I kept the door shut and ignored his knocking.
It didn't take very long for him to take the hint and walk away.
And he stayed away... for three days.
There were many questions that ran through my head as I stood in front of the door that would open to lead me to the stairs up to his office.
Would he reject my company the way I had his? Would he be angry? Would he be relieved that I was finally willing to talk to him?
I decided after a few agonizing moments that none of those questions would be answered until I actually went up to his office to see him.
I wished, however, that I knew the outcome of the situation before I would have to put myself into it.
Confrontation and rejection were two things I did not deal with well and the possibility of having to deal with them both, likely all at once, wasn't something I was readily looking forward to.
I reached out and opened the door slowly.
Hearing it creak, I closed my eyes and sighed.
I knew he heard it.
There was no backing out of it now.
I walked into the stairwell and began to climb the iron spiral staircase. With each footstep that echoed off the walls, my heartbeat pounded against my ribcage that much harder.
When I finally reached the top, I thought my heart was going to explode inside my chest.
It was when I looked around the room and saw that he wasn't there that I felt my heart drop. I realized then that I had been anticipating seeing Cain more than I had been fearing it.
As I was turning to leave, my brain caught a glimpse of something in my peripheral vision that triggered a terrible feeling in my gut.
I turned back around slowly, my brain trying to process what I was seeing.
Laying on the floor beside Cain's desk was a strong hand and a long forearm; that portion of the limb being all I could see of the body that was concealed behind the desk.
Swallowing a knot in the back of my throat, I walked towards the desk slowly.
My hands were shaking so severely that the spoon rattled against the inside of the china bowl in my hands.
As I walked around the desk slowly, I gasped.
It was Cain.
The bowl fell from my hands and bounced against the floor, its contents spilling.
I ran around him, sinking to my knees beside his unconscious body.
"Cain, wake up," I said panicking.
I scanned his body for injuries, but I didn't see any.
I placed two fingers to his neck, but felt no pulse.
I felt my body and mind slip deeper into sheer panic as I laid my head against his chest. There was no rise and fall that indicated breathing and I couldn't hear a heartbeat.
"Oh my God," I whispered.
I stood up and ran across the office.
"Daniel!" I screamed down the staircase.
The echo of my voice down the stairwell reverberated in my ears, making me flinch.
"Daniel!"
No matter how loud I screamed, I knew my voice wouldn't carry down three flights of stairs.
I had begun to lose hope when the door at the bottom of the staircase opened and I saw Jai enter the stairwell, looking as concerned as I'd ever seen him.
"Why in the bloody hell-"
Before he could even finish his sentence, I interrupted him.
"He's not breathing," I choked out.
Jai's eyes widened before he bounded up the staircase, taking three stairs at a time.
He followed me as I ran back into the office and behind Cain's desk where he laid.
"Shit," he said as his eyes landed on Cain.
Instead of kneeling next to him like I did, Jai ran across the room to the wet bar that was in the corner.
He pulled an empty blood bag from the cabinet. After reading the date that was stamped on it, he swore before throwing it to the ground.
"What's wrong with him?!" I asked.
"The idiot's been fasting," he said angrily as he began to walk quickly out of the office.
"What do we do?"
"He needs blood!" Jai called out as he began to run back down the staircase.
I leaned forward and pulled Cain's head into my lap.
"C'mon, Cain," I said, gently holding his face in my hands.
A few minutes passed by and I began to feel the terror set in.
Something's wrong, I thought. Why isn't Jai back yet?
I looked back down at Cain.
There was something that set aflame inside of me seeing him like that. I wasn't sure what it was but it burnt in the pit of my stomach until I could hardly bear it.
I can't lose him, I thought.
That was the last rational thought that I had.
As if I was in autopilot mode, my body began to move without me telling it to.
I reached up and opened a drawer of his desk.
Blindly, my hand moved around in the drawer before I found what I had been looking for.
I pulled the letter opener out and stared at it.
Before my mind could even process what I was doing, I ran the blade against the inside of my wrist.
I sucked in a sharp breath as my brain registered the pain, but I could do nothing to stop my actions.
I reached my arm forward and placed my wrist in front of his mouth.
I used my other hand to open his mouth as I held my bleeding arm above it.
No sooner than when the first three drops of blood had touched Cain's tongue, I heard Jai running up the staircase.
I looked at him as he entered the office.
As soon as he saw what I was doing he dropped the bags of blood in his hands.
"No!" he screamed.
Realization of what I had done hit me like a tidal wave of ice-cold water.
Time slowed.
I looked down at Cain just as his eyes opened.
His hands grabbed my arm quicker than my eyes could register his movements and, before I knew it, his mouth had latched onto my arm.
I gasped feeling his teeth pierce the skin, the white-hot pain of him doing so made me see spots in my vision.
I hovered over him as I struggled to even catch my breath.
The feeling of his lips against my skin and his mouth sucking the blood from my arm was one I couldn't describe as anything other than painfully exhilarating.
Cain's eyes were nearly pitch black as they glazed over, focused on nothing other than the task at hand.
I watched as blood slipped out of either side of his mouth and dripped down the side of his cheek, pooling in my lap underneath his head.
My arm was going numb—a tingling sensation shooting up from my wrist towards my elbow—when I felt Cain stop.
He froze and I looked down at him to meet his eyes as they looked up at me.
Cain sat up quickly, letting go of my arm.
It fell limply to my side and I placed a hand over the wound that was now bleeding profusely.
Cain's wild eyes looked between myself and the blood that stained his hand as he touched his lips.
"What have you done?" He asked, rising to his knees and backing away from me.
I could do nothing but stare at him.
My mind couldn't process things as quickly as they happened.
He just drank your blood.
I looked from Cain to Jai, who stood in the entryway of the room, speechless.
At his feet laid the three bags of blood that I had been too impatient to wait for.
I looked down at my wrist to see blood seeping between the fingers of the hand that held my wrist tightly.
"Oh my God," I said quietly, realizing fully what I had just done.
"Wrap your arm up," Cain said urgently, yet still remaining a safe distance away.
"What?" I asked. My mind was still reeling, not comprehending what he said.
"Wrap your arm up!" He said, beginning to look panicked as he watched the blood drip down my arm.
I looked around to find something to put over my arm.
Beginning to get impatient himself, Cain pulled his shirt over his head and threw it to me.
I grabbed it with a shaking, bloodied hand and wrapped it around my wrist the best I could.
"Put pressure on it," he said.
I pressed down on the wound, wincing as the tingling in my arm turned to sharp pain and spread up to my shoulder.
I slouched against his desk, feeling lightheaded.
My breathing began to get shallow as my vision clouded from the outer corners inward.
I saw Cain kneel in front of me, his mouth that was stained with my blood saying something and a panicked expression written on his face.
I couldn't hear him, though. The sound of blood rushing through my ears overpowered any external sounds.
Little black dots began to dance in front of my eyes and they slowly grew larger until all I could see was an inky black nothingness in front of me.
As I slipped unconscious, only one thought was running through my head.
What have I done?
- - -