Still, I pressed the button to play the song. It was so unlike anything I thought Silas would listen to, and that gave me enough pause to actually hear the lyrics. This didn’t seem like a message in the literal sense. ‘You’re the one that I want’ wasn’t a statement that was likely to come from Silas in this lifetime. Perhaps, ‘You’re the one that I want to strangle,’ or ‘You’re the one that ruined my life,’ but certainly not the words the little phone was currently echoing into the paper room. It was more than just the words, too. I was pretty sure that the song was a cover of an up-beat, eighties, pop song. The lyrics were enough to spark something familiar, though the haunting male vocalist soon drove away any memory of the original song. It was all too bizarre. There was no way that Silas liked that song enough for it to be the only song on his phone.
I replayed it several times before one of the lines finally grabbed my attention.
If you’re feeling some affection that’s too hard to convey,
Meditate in my direction, Baby feel your weight…
I was always feeling hard-to-convey-affection: the bond had started to rule my life the minute Cabe jumped in front of Noah’s car to save me from being hit, and it was only getting worse. I didn’t understand what meditate in my direction was supposed to mean, especially since Silas was currently locked up in an unknown location, under the mercy of Weston, and I didn’t really feel that I had much weight…
“Dammit,” I grumbled, starting the song again from the beginning. “More riddles. Always riddles.”
Something in me seemed to snap, then, and I kicked the phone halfway across the room, the haunting melody sending a chill down my spine as I stood and surveyed one of the walls. There was a way to get closer to Silas, even if it showed me a Silas that I didn’t want to see, even if it opened me up to a world of consequences that I might not be able to handle. I kicked the tin of turquoise paint closer to the wall, absently working the lid off as I stared at the paper.
You’re the one that I want, the song taunted me, as I started to stir the paint, fetching a black and a white tin to blend different shades. The one that I want, the one that I need…
The paint dripped off me like a liquid coat and I inhaled the toxic fumes, sucking the undiluted scent into my lungs. My pupils dilated as I sank into the vision of a pain so absolute, it went beyond pain. It should have rendered me unconscious, it should have affected my ability, it felt like it should have killed me. As it was, the pain distracted me so badly that I was unable to focus on any other details. I painted turquoise wounds that wept turquoise blood onto the paper floor, and when I was finished, I painted more. I painted the walls, the floor, the back of the door and the boarded-up windows. I covered the room in wounds and fumes, and then I curled up in the middle of the mess, weeping my heart into my paint-covered hands.
The phone still sang to me, wrapping my throat in pleas born from the words it had planted in my brain, and when the noise of a door opening cut through the song, I barely even noticed. Arms wrapped around my shuddering body and I flinched back from the feel of clothing being pressed against my wounds… until I remembered that I didn’t really have any wounds, and then I collapsed against the familliar chest, the scent of Quillan replacing the scent of wet paint. He whispered something against my hair, his hands turning my face up to his.
“Seph, focus. You’re fine, I’m right here.”
His thumbs swiped over my closed eyelids, mixing my tears with the paint that I could feel sticking to my cheeks. I forced my eyes open and twisted my hands so violently into his shirt that I could hear the sound of material tearing.
“What on earth…” a breathless Cabe spoke from somewhere behind me.
Quillan’s attention switched to something over my head for a moment, his eyes narrowed in warning. “We’re not done here. Cover it all up. Fresh paper. Now.”
As soon as he was finished giving orders, his eyes fell back to me, and he drew me up, hooking an arm beneath my legs and bundling me against his chest. He began to walk out of the room and I turned away from the two people that stood just inside the doorway, their expressions alarmed.
I didn’t know why Quillan had brought Noah and Cabe to witness this, but I had no choice but to trust him. I had no choice, because there was nothing left inside me but drowning, clawing, screaming pain.
“Is he still… does he…” Quillan’s confused words buffered warmly against my temple. I knew what he was trying to ask. Was Silas hurt too badly? Was he still sane? Whole?
The answer was that he hadn’t been sane, or whole, for a long time.
I turned to see Quillan’s face, to witness the sorrow that was etched into his expression. It softened my heart toward him, and I realised with a cringe that I had allowed the bond to flow open, sharing everything that I was feeling with him. I reached for him, my hand shaping to the side of his face, feeling the rough texture of the stubble that he never quite seemed to be able to rid himself of. Something had changed with me and him, and I had been too busy to properly examine it. Maybe it was because Cabe and Noah had been wrenched from their familiar roles as my pair, or maybe it was because Silas wasn’t there… but Quillan was occupying more of my time, more of my head, and in some strange manner… more of me.
“He’s holding on,” I confirmed, my voice shaky.
Concentration was etched into the slant of his dark eyes, and I realised that he wasn’t just looking at me, he was looking past me, into me. He was sharing in my realisation that things had changed.