Kaleida and Sypher drag themselves into the patch of trees, dirt-caked blood streaked across their faces and splotches on their clothes. They drop their packs and collapse on top of the worn fabric, using them as pillows. Kelter is last, heaving a tired breath and leaning against a tree.
Eli lifts his hand from the puddle. Ruby red blood bathes his fingers and palm, trickling down his wrist in sporadic lines. The green flecks from Kelter are gone from his eyes now, overpowered by a dark brown mix of rage and control. The deep cave scent of his darkness is near pungent.
“Look at the beautiful mess you made.” Without the slightest glance away, he holds his wrist to his mouth and extends his tongue, licking my blood. Then his lips. Then each finger with a quietsmack.
The simple act mesmerizes me. Maybe it’s that he’s swallowing up a part of me that’s run through my veins—through my heart—countlesstimes. Or the way his lips and tongue take on the red as though they crave it. Or maybe I can’t look away because it’s him. Becausehe’sthe beautiful mess.
“Uh, I have a rag.” Milo offers him a scrap of fabric.
Eli ignores him, madness flickering behind his inky gaze.
Milo tries to hand the rag to Eli again as he watches him scoop up a runaway drop of blood with his tongue.
Kaleida gives a tired wave. “I think we got all the guards in this group.”
A slingshot falls from Sypher’s hand, the scarver creature squirming in the other. “Remember when everybody didn’t want us dead?”
Kaleida laughs from her belly and turns her head toward Sypher, smiling wide enough for all of us. “Remember ten minutes ago when you hid in the trees while we fought?”
“I was looking for Wendell! He jumped out of my pocket.”
Milo passes canteens around, then makes me lift my shirt so he can check my back again. “You can walk now, but take it easy, okay?”
“I’m fine,” I say.
Eli stands, the slap of his boot splashing blood onto my face. “Let’s get moving. No cuffs. We’re almost at the border.” He stomps away with Milo a step behind.
I follow him, the others on either side of me. “It’ll be night by the time we make it to the city edge.”
“We’ll go to your house,” Eli says.
“I don’t have a house. It’s a room. And I’ve probably been evicted.”
“Probably not,” Kelter says, hesitating. “I left a note at the coffee shop saying you were taking some time off and staying with me, and I paid for a year of your rent so no one would try to look for you.”
A new level of rage circulates through my veins. I hold back from revealing that no one would have looked. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“We can go to my place,” he offers.
“We’re not tucking her into your little come-stained bed,” Eli says. “Hurry the fuck up.”
“It’s big, actually,” Kelter argues.
Kaleida drapes an arm around his shoulders and leans her head against his sleeve. “I love how you don’t try to deny the stains.”
Milo staggers to the side. “Woah, what in Malachite’s Eye is this?” With a bored expression, Eli slowly turns around and yanks him a foot farther by his elbow. Milo looks all about then down at the ground, bewildered. “I felt like I was flat. Or stretched. Or inside out. I don’t even know.”
Sypher catches up to them, and within a second confusion hijacks his face. The scarver jumps from his hands and scampers off in the direction we came from. “No, Wendell!”
Kaleida stops short and grips her chest upon reaching the same spot. “What is this?”
“It’s only the border. Keep going. The feeling will go away,” Kelter says as we approach, quite unlike his silence when I first experienced the sensation while smashed up against him and stuffed in a sack. Why didn’t he comfortmefor fuck’s sake?
I bury the hurt and cross the invisible barrier separating the realms, my mind collapsing, my breath stolen, my muscles limp.
Then nothing.
The Calderan forest welcomes me back with a shifting sky, the dark gray falling away behind us and hints of a bright sunset stabbing through the tree branches.
