“Are you?” he whispered, searching my face for something.
“You want the truth?” I goaded faintly, unable to muster enough anger to put an edge to my words. “I’m a lot of things. I’m a daughter, but I have no real parents; I’m a sister, but I have no real siblings; I’m an Atmá, but do you see anyone claiming me?” I continued, not allowing him to answer. “The truth is… nobody owns me. My family is mine to choose. My heart belongs to me. Stop concerning yourself with who owns me, because nobody ever will. I will choose my partners in life, bonds be dammed.”
“You can’t go against your bond,” Cabe warned me, even as his eyes flicked downward and his forehead drew tighter into the frown that had been slowly forming. I wasn’t sure if he was staring at my mouth or simply trying to look away from my eyes, but I could suddenly feel his attention prickling over my lips.
“I can,” I whispered. It tasted like a lie, so after a moment, I amended the statement. “I could. I might.”
“Why does that sound like a threat?” he inched closer, and suddenly I could feel more than just his attention. I could also feel the sweep of his breath.
“It is.”
He backed away slightly, his face creased in pain. He lowered me, his hands falling away, and I thought that he was simply pulling away as was his habit when we got too close, but instead, he was stumbling. He struck backwards against the door, clutching at his head, moaning low in his throat.
“Cabe?” I tried to reach for him but he thrust out a hand, keeping me away.
“It’s nothing. Just a headache…”
I frowned, twisting my hands together instead of reaching for him again. “You didn’t have a headache a second ago.”
He started to straighten, pulling his hands over his face and then through his hair. His brow was still creased into a painful expression, but he side-stepped me, and I watched as it slowly cleared the further away from me he got.
“I just… when I think about…” He shook his head, taking another step away from me. “Never mind. Go to Miro.”
“You get a pain in your head when you think about something?” I pressed, making no move for the door now that my path was clear. “When you think about what exactly?”
He laughed, and the sound was sarcastic enough that my forehead crinkled up in question. He clenched his fists by his sides as though bracing himself and then he stalked back to me, raising a hand and laying it against my chest, right between my breasts, smoothing over the stretchy material that still bore the punishment of his grip.
“You want to know what I was thinking about when my hand was nestled right here?” he asked, his voice as dry as his laugh had been. “When you were leaning into me like a starving person in the desert about to drink water right from my mouth?”
I opened my mouth to object, but I was doing it again. I knew I was doing it again, because his hand was now pressed between us, and he sucked in a sharp breath, a small tendon popping out in his neck. He was in pain again. The hypnotist—Jayden—wasn’t infallible. Just like me, his ability wasn’t all-powerful; it had its limits; it played by its own rules. Cabe was fighting back against the memory block. I wanted to push, to break apart that barrier altogether, but I knew instinctively that this was a delicate battle. I might break the barrier, but I might also break Cabe in the process.
Or myself.
He pulled back from me again, stumbling as he had the first time. But this time he recovered faster, his hand notched against the wall as he sucked in a few deep breaths.
“I’m going to figure you out, Seraph Black,” he warned me quietly, his heavy brown eyes drowning me in promise and suspicion. “I’m going to dig up all of the pretty little secrets that you hide away behind those eyes. I’m going to unpick them one by one, thread by thread, until you’re completely unraveled. Completely…” he shook his head, turning away from me to deliver his promise to the window. “Bare.”
I slipped out of the room without answering him, a tremble in my step as I fled to Quillan’s room. Quillan barely stirred as I slipped into his bed, but he turned onto his back and allowed me to curl into a ball against his side. It wasn’t until my tears began to wet his skin that he spoke, his usually hypnotising voice roughened by sleep.
“Seph.”