Watercolour Smile

  “He saw my marks.” I felt like I was in a dream, and some terrible part of me wondered if Clarin would betray us. Or if he already had. Weston had killed his mother… would he lie again? If I was in his situation, would I have the strength to lie again? “I didn’t even think about it at the time… but he definitely saw them. He kept saying that he needed to know what he was working with. I thought he meant the clothes.”

  “I’m surprised it took you this long,” Clarin remarked lightly, as Cabe shifted from foot to foot.

  It seemed that he was wrestling with the same indecision as me, which didn’t bode well, since he had more reason to trust Clarin than I did.

  “We didn’t want to put you in a position where Weston would hurt you again,” said Noah. “Otherwise we would have told you. You know that, right?”

  “I know,” Clarin said. “And you don’t need to worry. I haven’t told anyone. I’ve been spreading rumours about her imaginary pair in Seattle.”

  “You don’t have to lie for us,” Cabe said gently. “You didn’t need to do that. You could have pretended to know nothing.”

  “Don’t mention it.” Clarin was casual now that it was clear that none of us were going to freak out.

  “Seph?” It was Cabe that spoke, and I realised that I was clutching his shirt a little too tightly. I quickly released it and stepped away from him.

  “You should have told us that you knew,” I said to Clarin, sitting back on the stool and twisting my fingers in my lap.

  “It was fun to watch you all trying to cover it up.” He shrugged. “But I was serious, you two need to get out. People are probably already downstairs and it’ll take me a while to get the Duchess ready.”

  “You too?” I groaned. “Enough with the Duchess thing.”

  Clarin smiled and shooed the others away. I was equal parts relieved and dismayed when the door closed again.

  “It’s Seraph,” I said, once it seemed like Clarin wasn’t going to immediately go back to work. “My real name. Not Stephanie.”

  “Is Seph a real nickname?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well then it doesn’t really matter, does it?”

  I returned his smile, feeling some of the tension leak out of me. “Thank you,” I said. “For protecting us.”

  “There’s no us in that equation, mouse. I’m protecting you. Those guys aren’t in any danger from their father—except Silas, I guess. It’s always been about protecting you, even before they knew you. I guess I’m protecting them by extension, and that’s how it started… I mean, it was a given that they’d be hurt if their Atmá was hurt, but you’re no longer a means to an end. You’re my friend. I don’t want you to get hurt because you’re a nice person.”

  “I know that it’s dangerous…” I hesitated. I wasn’t sure whether to keep going, to ask the questions on the tip of my tongue, knowing that the more information in my head, the bigger a threat Weston would become to me. “I know that Weston has been searching for their Atmá for a long time—”

  “Their whole life,” Clarin corrected. “Ever since the twins were born, their birthmarks matching. Ever since Cabe was born with a mark that matched Noah’s. Weston had hoped that Noah was an Atmá for a while, but then Cabe came along.”

  “Okay… what I don’t understand is—”

  “Why?” he interrupted again. “Why he’s been searching for their Atmás?”

  “Yes.”

  He reached for a bottle of foundation, testing the shade against my skin to busy himself, and then he tossed it back into his case. “You don’t even need it,” he mumbled.

  “Clarin?”

  He sighed, turning to face the mirror. “I don’t know,” he finally admitted, echoing Poison’s earlier sentiment. He stared at something in the mirror’s reflection. “Nobody seems to know. Once I thought that Miro did, but he’s never said anything about it. Maybe Silas does—he knows a lot, and he never lets on, because it’s not like people actually tell him things. He hacks them. Borderline stalks them, until he knows everything about them. He doesn’t like loose ends. Or secrets. If Noah or Cabe know, they haven’t told me anything.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah. Twenty-five years of Weston’s famous Atmá Hunt, and nobody seems to know the real reason behind it. My guess is that he’s angry that his sons are pairs, instead of Atmás. He would have just kept having babies until he got lucky, I suppose, but Yvonne got sick after having the twins. She got some tumours or something. I don’t remember, but they had to remove her uterus. Tabby was worse. It took her seven years to carry a pregnancy full-term. I don’t know how many miscarriages she had before Noah. It would explain why Weston has so many bastard children, too. I mean, if your aim is to have an Atmá, and both of your wives can’t have kids… why not keep trying with other women? Of course… the chances aren’t good, because the magic is strongest with an Atmá and their pair, not other ordinary Zevs. But anyway, that’s just my guess. The Zev powers are heavily genetic, and the Voda power is hereditary, so with the way he’s slept around, it’s actually a little surprising that none of his bastards have turned up an Atmá.”

  “Why does it even matter? Whether he has an Atmá or not?”

  “It matters a lot. Like I said, the Voda power is hereditary, and Zevs with magic usually have an ancestor with the same, or a similar, ability. So the long line of Vodas—Weston’s ancestors, have mostly been Atmás. It’s one of those bigoted, unspoken traditions. A member of a pair has never been a Voda. We’ve had a few normal Zevs, but mostly Atmás.”

  “Hmm,” I replied, grappling with the wrong piece of information. If the Zevghéri power was heavily genetic… then why had my parents been normal? Why had I known nothing about my valcrick or the Zevghéri people before Noah and Cabe?

  “You’re very good at resisting the strain,” Clarin noted as he returned his attention to my makeup. “But it’s a terrible idea. I watched Aiden and his pair do it for years. It’ll mess you up, mouse.”

  “How did you know I was resisting the strain?”

  Instead of answering, he dropped a hand and absently touched my fingers. I stopped twisting them together and he touched my chin. I pulled my teeth out of my bottom lip, feeling a tingling indent where I had been biting too roughly.

  “Right.” I sat on my hands. “But resisting the bond is better than what happens when I give in to the whole strain thing.”

  Clarin barked out a laugh. “Don’t tell me you’re actually attempting to be platonic with those guys?”

  “I’m trying.”

  He paused, a mascara brush wavering before my eyes. “Seriously? But I found you literally tied to your bed the other week.”

  “I was straining…”

  “So… wait… they’re helping you keep things platonic?”

  Instead of answering him, I knocked the mascara brush out of the way before it could poke out one of my eyes, forcing him to rummage through his case to find it again. He pulled out a few brushes, and then frowned, his forehead crinkling in confusion as he extracted a tiny scroll of paper.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Dunno.” He tried to wipe it off. “One of my powders spilt onto it.” He unfolded it and his frown deepened. “Trash,” he decided, throwing it onto the counter. “Just some nursery rhyme. Probably Poison’s. She’s always scrawling creepy notes to people.”

  I gripped the stool beneath my thighs, fighting off a sudden wave of nausea. Clarin continued to hunt through his case, and once I thought I could manage it without my hands shaking, I released one of my hands and snagged the note from the counter.

  Tell tale tit,

  Your tongue shall be slit;

  And all the dogs in town,

  Shall have a little bit.

  “Seph? What is it? Your face has gone all white.”

  “Nothing,” I said quickly, folding the note up into my fist. “Did… did you tell anybody that you were going to be dressing me up tonight, by any chance???
?

  “I don’t think so. I wanted the full effect of a surprise entrance. Why?”

  “Just wonder—”

  “Wait, I did. The guy from the place I got your dress from, but that was last week.”

  “Which place?”

  “It’s this amazing boutique store called Babylon. They don’t sell clothes for men, but I used to go in there all the time.”

  “Have anything to do what the guy?”

  “That, and other things. With the right people on staff and a pumpkin spice latte, they’ll let you do just about anything. The designer works on-site—in an office out back, isn’t that cool?”

  “Yeah. I’ll have to check it out some time.”

  “I’d take you, but…”

  I chuckled, proud that the sound came out steady. “But you got banned, I know. What happened? What’s the guy’s name?”

  “I can’t remember exactly. Jay, or Jasper, or something. It wasn’t a lover’s spat that got me banned, actually. The guy isn’t even gay. He thought I was flirting with his girlfriend.”

  “But you’re—”

  He extracted the mascara brush with a sound of triumph, and then brandished it in my face again, narrowing his eyes into a glare that promised retribution. “If you’re about to remind me of my sexual orientation again…”

  “I was going to say that… um… your morals are inscrutable—”

  “I’m basically sterilised I’m so pure.”

  “You’re beyond reproach.”

  “I know!”

  “How dare he!”

  “I know!”

  We laughed and Clarin grabbed my chin, forcing my head up so that he could continue working on my eyes. The touch made my skin recoil more than usual, and I sat on my hands again, keeping the messenger’s note beneath my palm.

  “So let’s figure out what to do,” he said. “Have you fully formed the bond with all of them?”

  “Just Silas and Miro. It wasn’t something that we planned. It just happened… they didn’t really have any other choice at the time.”

  “Why not the other two?”

  “I asked for more time. I’m trying to deal with it in a mature way.”

  “So you’re ignoring it until it disappears?”

  “Something like that.”

  “That’s almost the literal opposite of mature, but okay. Does the bond strain you more towards Silas and Miro now that you’re bonded to them, or more toward Cabe and Noah, since you’re trying to prolong their side of things?”

  “The bond seems to feel the same with all of them.” Except for the blackouts and the itching.

  “What happens when you go to Silas? No offense, but I don’t think that guy has ever had a girlfriend before.” He dusted something across the line of my cheekbone as he spoke. “We thought he was gay for a while, but then Hunter followed him back from Ukraine and told all of us that she was his fiancé—”

  “What?” I knocked his hand away from my face again, and he frowned at me.

  “Get some control over that strain, mouse, or you’ll end up looking like a clown by the time I’m done with your makeup.”

  “Silas was engaged? But he’s still so young.”

  “No, she was lying. Or at least we think she was lying. Silas got really angry and told her to leave, but she’s more or less been following them since—from city to city, I mean. She always has a passing legitimate excuse—especially since she and Silas are two of the best Klovoda agents, so they’re usually crossing paths anyway. But that’s all beside the point. I want to know what he’s like with you. I’d threaten to beat him up if he has ever hurt you, but I value my limbs. I could still do something, I suppose. Trash his car? Yeah, that would work. As long as he doesn’t have cameras in the garage.”

  “Easy.” I laughed. “He hasn’t hurt me. He…” I thought back to the hotel room in Portland and my hand rose instinctively to my neck. A flash of light winked through the bathroom and Clarin lurched back, crashing into the towel rack, his eyes wide.

  I didn’t think that I had zapped him, but he was significantly more afraid of the valcrick than I had thought him to be.

  “You really need to do something about that,” he choked out.

  “Sorry.” I coloured. “Silas is… it’s complicated, I guess.”

  “Well… shit. What about Cabe or Noah?”

  I made a frustrated sound in the back of my throat, thinking about Noah in the janitor’s closet, and Cabe in the garage when I had accidently given him the wrong kind of happiness. It was the whole reason I had held onto this strain as long as I had. I was learning to smother it, to push it to a part of my mind that was guarded, a part of my mind that required permission before action. It placed me more on edge, shortened my temper, and gave me a whole host of nervous quirks, but it was better than waking up in Quillan’s lap and having to see the guilty look on his face, or having to be tied to my own bed so that I didn’t do anything embarrassing.

  It was all too much.

  Clarin grabbed a hold of my hands, squeezing. I blinked rapidly, realising that the valcrick was flashing around the room.

  “Crap, sorry,” I said.

  Clarin wasn’t listening. His focus was on our joined hands, and I looked down, realising that the valcrick was arching over his hands. His eyes rose to mine, slowly, and I saw heat there for the first time since I had met him.

  “Uh… I know what’s happening right now…” I bit down on my horror, making my tone as level as possible, not wanting to spook him. “I’m going to let go, and whatever feeling you’re having right now… it’ll pass.” I started to pull my hands away as I spoke, but Clarin’s grip tightened, and he stepped closer until his hip pressed against my knee.

  I pulled harder and his eyes squinted in determination. “Let me run with it,” he ground out. “Feels interesting.”

  “Either you let go right now or I’m never letting you dress me again,” I warned.

  He backed up instantly, the webs breaking off as he drew away. As soon as the connection was severed, he breathed out a staggered sigh of relief and fell away from me, pressing the backs of his hands over his eyes.

  “I will never get those thoughts out of my head!” he cried out dramatically. “I’m scarred for life, Seph! What the hell was that?”

  Despite the fact that I had almost tumbled into full-blown panic only moments before, I was now battling the urge to laugh, and losing. His obvious distress put me at ease, even though I felt guilty that it was my valcrick that had ‘scarred’ him in the first place.

  “I can’t believe you’re laughing right now!” he accused me. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re freaking evil?”

  “I’m sorry.” I pressed my lips together to hold in a giggle. “I did try to break it though.”

  “What. Is. It?”

  “It’s valcrick?”

  “No way, mouse, it’s… something else. Normal valcrick doesn’t do stuff like that.”

  “It can heal people too.”

  He froze in his scramble for the little compact of glittery powder that he had dropped. “No shit.” When I didn’t answer, he continued with my makeup, touching me hesitantly at first, and then with more assurance. “I suppose it makes sense that you’d have some kind of next-generation valcrick if you have two pairs.”

  “It would make sense… except that I still have a power for each pair.”

  “I’m beyond letting you surprise me tonight. What’s the second ability?”

  “Forecasting.”

  “Like visions and shit? Holy… you… forecasting… it’s been centuries… Anything else you want to tell me? Are you an alien? Is this a reality TV show? Is there a room of producers out there somewhere laughing at my brief foray into heterosexuality?”

  I laughed. “No. And not visions exactly. Paintings.”

  He shook his head and pinched my lips. “No more talking. I can’t take anymore. Didn’t anyone ever tell you that—in the age of the Weston-dic
tatorship—information is a dangerous thing to give another person? He’s probably sitting in the mansion next door with his creepy ability, listening in for the right secret—and I don’t want it to be my head that he hears that secret in!”

  “Can’t you just shield your mind? That’s what I did.”

  “You met Weston? When?”

  “When we went back to Seattle. He suspected, but then he cut Silas and I didn’t react. I think we threw him off, because he seemed pretty angry.

  “And you’re not rotting in a dungeon.”

  “That too.”

  “Well… I don’t know what you mean by shielding my mind. That’s not a thing that people can do.”

  I frowned, my eyes flicking away from his face so that he couldn’t see my disbelief. I hadn’t imagined it. I had been shielding my mind. Silas had even mentioned the way I kept my emotions out of our connection when we were in Portland, and that was through the use of the same technique that I used on Weston, so it definitely worked. Maybe Clarin simply hadn’t tried it properly.

  “You should—”

  “Nope.” Clarin pinched my lips again. “Didn’t I just say no more information? Do you want me to be tortured by the Klovoda? Yeesh. I need to work on your lips anyway.” His eyes flicked down and he shuddered. “I swear, Seph. You’re going to haunt my nightmares. I need to go and find an easy guy from drama club after this, just to scrub the feeling off my skin.”

  “Wow. You like your stereotypes, don’t you? Since when are drama club guys easy?”

  “Since I’m Clarin.” He narrowed his eyes, and clipped me beneath the chin a little harder than necessary.

  It made me smile, because I’d never actually seen Clarin riled-up before. It made me realise that I didn’t actually know him all that well. He probably knew more about my hair and my closet than I could ever hope to learn, but in other ways, we were virtual strangers.

  When Clarin was finished with my makeup he pulled me out of the bathroom and snagged the bags that Cabe had brought in, throwing various items of clothing at me. I retreated into the bathroom to dress in private because of Clarin’s ‘brief foray into heterosexuality’. The dress was a pale, peachy colour with a whimsical, high-waisted swing skirt that floated around my thighs in a tickling cloud. The bust was a constricting pattern of different textured materials, having the normal shape of a bustier, except that the middle section rose into a second set of panels that looped over my shoulders alongside the normal straps, creating a high-collared effect even though two rectangular strips of skin were visible between the panels and the straps. The high neck ended around my throat in an embroidered collar, the panels secured together in the front to hide any cleavage, though the back revealed a slit from the neckline to the top of the skirt, and was edged in the same fancy embroidery as the neckline. It was the most intricate thing that I had ever worn. It looked hand-made. It probably was. I remembered what Clarin had said about the store he had bought the dress from: With the right people on staff and a pumpkin spice latte, they’ll let you do just about anything.