14. Ella

Chapter 14

Ella

After Laya left her office, Ella spent the morning preparing for her first counseling session with Connor. She scrubbed the office from head to toe, sluicing the surface of her mahogany desk until a watery reflection of herself flickered over the polished wood. She sprayed her favorite perfume over the couch, the woodsy notes melting over the sofa, which Ella hoped would help create an environment conducive to self-disclosure. She opened a new packet of tissues, resting it on the coffee table. Ella then settled herself in her office chair, which was still arranged in front of the couch after her conversation with Laya. She stared at the door, waiting for him to arrive.

She waited.

And waited.

And waited.

He never came.

After thirty minutes of staring aimlessly at her door, hoping for him to materialize, she rose from her chair and strode out of her office, journeying to the Varmin sector to track him down. Her mind went rampant contemplating his absence: did he forget? Did someone prevent him from coming?

She braced herself outside Kellen’s classroom door, gulping down precious mouthfuls of oxygen to relieve the strange acceleration of her heart rate at the thought of seeing Kellen after this morning. Once the pounding in her ears died down, she twisted the doorknob and pushed the door open.

Her eyes swept over the rows of seventh-grade Primordials, her intent to search for Connor, but against her will, her gaze sought out the dragon-shifter at the front of the room. His back faced the class as he scrawled something on the whiteboard. His grey slacks clung to the contour of his ass, perfectly emphasizing its desirable shape, blending into the same wiry legs that Ella watched bend in her dream before he sunk to the ground in a kneeling position before her. Those fingers of his she’d felt pressed against the most sensitive part of her now wrapped around his marker, long and nimble and oozing masculinity, even while he scribbled the words What is a Cavalisha? on the board in surprisingly neat handwriting. When she’d pictured his handwriting—not that she had, of course—she’d expected it to be large, messy, and harsh, like the rest of him.

The words were written with careful consideration, like every letter deserved sweet dedication. He added a swirled flare to the way he wrote the letter t, with the tail end sweeping up to the right in a tiny curve. Kellen Kilic did not seem like the type of person who would add flare to anything he did, let alone to the way he fashioned letters. So many elements of this man contradicted themselves. If Ella didn’t catch herself, she could spend the whole day analyzing his micro-movements.

Kellen whirled around to face the class, opening his mouth to either begin or continue his lecture when his eyes snagged over Ella. Ella’s own gaze trickled down to his sweater—the hue of a raspberry, hugging his physique like the material was a disciple venerating its favored god. The images and sensations from her dream twisted together to engulf her senses, a phantom of his lips coasting over her body, the sandalwood aroma of his cologne surging through her veins, overpowering her ability to recognize what was real and what was fantasy. She was so engrossed in those memories that she nearly missed the fact that his right eye appeared as if someone had smushed the organ under a wrecking ball. It was disgustingly engorged and besmirched with purplish-black undertones, some dried blood crusting along the periphery of the eye socket. His eye hadn’t looked like that this morning. This had to have happened after their conversation in the hallway.

His gaze had darkened over her the moment she appeared in the doorway, his pupils transmogrifying into the slits of a dragon. The entire class shifted their heads back to look at her, sensing the powerful tension choking the air between Ella and Kellen. Neither educator took note of the students’ watchful eyes, completely absorbed in each other.

Why are you here? he spoke into her brain. His voice resembled crumbled stone in her ears.

Connor missed his session with me, she answered mind-to-mind. I came to check if he was here today.

He’s right by the door. Ella’s attention dropped down to the young Primordial whose desk flanked the entrance to the classroom. He was deftly avoiding her line of vision, drawing the hood of his sweatshirt over his face to escape her eyesight. Ella’s focus diverted back to Kellen when he asked, Can you please wait to pull him until I’m finished?

Sure. Ella didn’t mind waiting. With a twitch of her lips, she said softly, thank you for saying please for a change.

Kellen didn’t answer back. He broke their eye contact to address the class.

“You’ve heard this myth countless times since your Kindergarten year, so I’m expecting the entire class to raise their hands at my next question. Who can tell me the creation story of the Lantari empire?”

Fifteen hands shot up into the air—including Connor.

Kellen swooped his pointer finger to the right, landing on Atlas Ehann, a Meteoro water-bender.

“It formed when Edar Lantarian broke away from the Cavalian Gods,” Atlas supplied as an answer.

“That is the bare minimum of an answer,” Kellen said in a flat, dissatisfied tone of voice. “No candy for you.”

Atlas slumped in his chair.

He gives them candy when they get an answer right? Ella bit her lip to keep from smirking. Don’t find this cute, Ella.

Kellen’s eyes flew to Ella, her thought having leapt out of her brain and landed inside his ears.

You think I’m cute, Ms. Rose? he asked with a goading cock of his head. Ella narrowed her eyes in a scowl.

Don’t you have a class to teach, Mr. Kilic?

Believe me, earthborn, I’m trying, but you’re making it increasingly difficult to concentrate. Ella didn’t respond. She shut her brain down to avoid him eavesdropping on her internal monologue and to prevent him from having a real reason to blame her for disturbing his class.

“Who can tell me why Edar broke away from the Cavalian Gods to create the empire of Lantari?” He called on Anastasia Branwen, the same female he’d made stand at the front of the room last week when she attempted to cheat on her test.

“Edar fell in love with Aros Cavalian’s Cavalisha, Tala Milov. Edar stole Tala in the middle of the night and crossed the Middledeen waters to an unoccupied island that he claimed and named Lantari.”

Kellen reached his hand into the red velvet sack on his desk, procuring a tiny piece of candy encased in gold wrapping, and threw it to her. Anastasia snatched the reward with a squeal before unwrapping the chocolate square and popping it into her mouth.

“That’s the story that’s been passed down through generations for the last thousand years,” Kellen continued, leaning back against his desk. “Edar is depicted as the malicious abductor who stole Aros’s heart in a living form. But what if Tala wasn’t actually kidnapped? What if she’d willingly gone with him? How does that perspective challenge what we know about Cavalishas?”

“But that’s not how the story went,” another student near the front of the room blurted out.

“How do you know?” Kellen challenged her. “Were you there when it happened, Dalia? Did you see with your own eyes Edar steal Tala?” Dalia slid down in her chair, dipping her chin onto her chest.

You could’ve said that nicer, Ella criticized.

Get out of my head, Rose, he snarled back, though when Kellen spoke again, she noted that his voice rang softer.

“All Primordials are given a Cavalisha. A perfect match. A piece of our being we can’t live without, whether we accept the bond with an offering to Mara or not. Yet Aros Cavalian has lived a thousand years now without his Cavalisha, if we are to believe the story that Tala, whether she was kidnapped or left willingly, is no longer with him and now belongs to Edar. How do you think it’s possible for Aros to live without his Cavalisha if we’re taught that once we find our Cavalishas, we cannot live without them?”

“Maybe he can live without her because he’s a God?” Anastasia offered. “Gods have the power of immortality, so maybe it doesn’t affect him the same way it would regular Primordials to be separated from their Cavalishas, since his lifespan is eternal.” Kellen tossed her another piece of candy.

“Possibly.” He countered, “Or maybe a Cavalisha isn’t what we think it is. Maybe it’s not that we can’t live without them, but that we don’t want to, that we choose not to. Maybe that’s more meaningful than being unable to separate from someone because divine intervention demands you stay together.” Kellen’s eyes glassed over. Just like his sister, he literally shook off whatever unpleasant thought had plagued him and continued his lecture. “The Gods give us a Cavalisha, but we have the choice to either accept or reject that bond. Why do you think we’re given an option of rejecting the bond if supposedly, once we find our Cavalisha, we’re destined to never part?”

Silence swelled through the room. Kellen waited, then inevitably answered his own question.

“The Gods can select who they deem to be a perfect partner for us. They can entice us with the promise that accepting the bond means we will experience a power proliferation, but they can’t force love upon us. Love isn’t surefire just because the Gods manufacture for us a soulmate, throw them in our path at some point in our life, and say, ‘Here’s your perfect match. They are the only person in the entire universe you are predetermined to love.’” Kellen demonstrated cupping something precious between his hands and shoving it forward to emphasize his point. “Yes, in all cases of having a Cavalisha, love has been proven to develop through time spent together, but that’s because these two people happen upon each other in the world and choose to take that time to develop that love. Love isn’t just a feeling. It’s a deliberate action we take. Love is something we may be gifted, perhaps something we fall into with no control, but it requires work to remain solid. It’s not a structure that can continue standing without support, without nurture. It’s a choice made every single day, to look at the person you love and say, ‘This union may have been predestined, I may have fallen into love with you, but I am choosing to walk into love with you too.’ Our Cavalishas may’ve been fated for us by the Gods, but perhaps the Gods fated us to be together because it’s something we would’ve independently chosen anyway, because they know our souls that well. They toss us this person, this other half of our heart, and give us the space to come to that realization all on our own, so it feels like an organic decision we made for ourselves. Maybe that’s why the bond can’t awaken until the first time those feelings are articulated into the ether, because it needs to be ignited by the choice to walk willingly into love.”

No words.

Absolutely nothing graced Ella’s head or tongue.

Kellen had been looking at Ella the whole time he’d been speaking, like he couldn’t stop his eyes from falling onto her, falling into her, when he spoke about the concept of love. Ella forgot the proper measures required to breathe. If she wasn’t leaning against the doorcase, she would have toppled over.

Someone in the room squawking a strangled sound shattered the trance Ella and Kellen had tumbled into. Their eyes ripped apart as they were thrust back to Cavale and recklessly dropped back in the classroom.

Kellen cleared his throat, then said, “Take out your journals. I want each of you to write a three-page essay answering this question. If Tala had left Aros willingly despite their bond as Cavalishas, how does that challenge what we know about Cavalishas? I expect all three pages completed by the end of the class. You have thirty minutes, starting now.” Kellen peeked back at Ella.

Take Connor now, he told her, then turned on his heel before she had a chance to respond, busying himself with cleaning the board, which Ella sensed was an excuse not to remain in her line of vision.

“Connor,” she whispered, keeping her voice low to not draw attention. “Can we speak in the hall?”

“I need to write this paper,” he argued, glancing nervously at Kellen.

“It’ll only take a moment.” Connor sighed, then laid his pencil down between the pages of his notebook and followed her out into the hallway. “You missed our session today. I just wanted to make sure everything was okay.”

“I’m sorry, Ms. Rose, but I can’t see or speak to you anymore.” Fear drenched the outer surface of those words.

“Why not?” Connor twisted the sleeve of his sweatshirt around his fingers.

“I made the mistake of telling my parents I’d agreed to begin counseling with you. They told me that if I associate myself in any way with the human, they will disown me.” Ella couldn’t contain her horror.

“I’m so sorry, Connor,” she expressed, her voice trembling under the weight of her own emerging tears. “Please know that no matter what, my door is always open. Anything you say to me will stay confidential between us, but I understand if you don’t want to take that risk. I will always be here if you need anything.”

“Thanks, Ms. Rose.” Connor lingered there a moment, leaving her with the impression that he wanted to speak to her, but familial responsibility crushed that desire into powdered dust beneath his hoodie. He awkwardly retreated back into the classroom, gathering his pencil to begin writing.

Ella made eye contact with Kellen through the still-open door. She had no doubt that he’d heard every word Connor said to her, whether that be through his heightened Varmin hearing or with the looking glass he’d implanted for himself in her head. He wasn’t looking at her now like he hated her.

He was looking at her like he was trying to see inside the depths of her psyche, like the clod of his power he’d left to nettle in her brain wasn’t enough and he needed to invade the rest of her.

It was too much for Ella to bear. She hurried down the hall without a further glance.

“They told him they would disown him for speaking to you?” Josefyn gasped. The females had commandeered a bench on campus close to Ella’s office to meet for lunch. Ella enjoyed her kale salad with parmesan croutons and apples, courtesy of her special fridge, while Josefyn picked at a bird carcass that Ella worked very hard to dodge looking directly in the eyes while she ate.

“I can try to understand that Primordials are raised to hate humans, even though, to be honest, I don’t understand, but what I can’t understand or accept is that they hate humans so much that they would seriously disown their child for speaking to one.” Ella rammed a parcel of kale into her mouth.

“The hatred of humans comes from the myth of Aros and Tala.” Josefyn tore a chunk of fat off the quail with her teeth, the streaked and stripped upper part of the bird hulling from the side of the bone. “Tala is Aros’s Cava—”

“I know the myth. Tala was Aros’s Cavalisha who Edar stole in the middle of the night that started this war between the Primordials and the Sireres.” Josefyn flung Ella a curious look, grinning around the quail bone.

“So you finally got Kellen to tell you the story.” Not exactly, Ella thought to herself. After swallowing her last mouthful and chucking the bone into the grass, Josefyn wiped her mouth off on a napkin provided by Ella and said, “What I doubt Kellen added is that Tala isn’t a Primordial. She’s a human.”

“ Human?” Ella sputtered. “There are humans in Cavale?”

“Not for the last thousand years. After Tala vanished, Aros eliminated the existence of humans in Cavale. Since her disappearance, she’s been condemned for causing the Primordial and Sireres war.”

“For causing the war ? What did she do?”

“People seem to think that if she wasn’t a human, she would have been able to fend Edar off. They blame her weakness for the war.”

“That is unbelievably sexist,” Ella burst out, finding this so outrageous that she couldn’t breathe. “She was stolen by Edar! And everyone turned around and decided to blame her for the actions of a man?” The thought made the kale in her mouth turn stale and tasteless. “It’s just like Helen of Troy.”

“Who’s that?”

“It’s a Greek myth on the Earthly Plane.” Ella closed her salad and rested her fork on top of the plastic covering, swinging her legs onto the bench. She balanced her chin between her knees. “Helen was the daughter of the Greek God Zeus and a mortal woman. She was best known for her beauty. She had countless suitors pinning after her and ultimately married a man named Menelaus from Sparta. Helen ended up leaving Menelaus for Paris, who was a prince of Troy, sparking a war between Sparta and Troy. In different versions of the story, it’s questioned whether or not she went willingly or was abducted. Like Tala, Helen was denounced for her part in causing the Trojan War. It’s fucking ridiculous that these women are falling on the sword in the place of the men whose actions caused all this strife. It further perpetuates the belief that female lust pollutes male intellect and all women are toxins and long-live-the-patriarchy bullshit. It’s bullshit, Jo!”

“Tell us how you really feel, girl.” Ella playfully kicked at Josefyn. Jo jerked back to circumvent the swing of Ella’s foot, which resulted in Josefyn losing command of her balance and tumbling off the bench. The females disintegrated into laughter before Ella proffered a hand to pull Josefyn back onto the pew.

“Have you spoken to Akio since this morning?” Ella asked before picking her salad back up.

“I know what you’re really asking,” Josefyn laughed. “Did he tell me whatever vision he saw when he entered your head this morning?”

“He told you about that?” Hope burgeoned in her chest.

“He didn’t tell me what he saw, and if he didn’t tell me, there’s no way he’s telling you.” Ella’s hope staggered off a cliff and plunged to a painful death.

As if their conversation had pulled on an invisible rope to summon him, Akio’s silhouette split apart the horizon. He veered off the path he’d been following to traipse across the asphalt and sunk to the ground in front of Ella and Josefyn, folding his legs into a pretzel amongst the long stalks of grass.

“Quail?” Akio quipped to his wife when his leg jostled the bird bone discarded in the sward.

“You know me so well,” Josefyn crooned, beaming at him. Akio’s brown eyes floated over to Ella.

“Hey, Rosie.” He flicked the end of her braid so it thwacked her cheek. Ella squinted at him.

“Don’t act all sweet now. Are you going to tell me what the fuck happened this morning?” Akio grimaced, flinging a quick look at Josefyn that Ella wasn’t given enough time to decipher.

“I can’t,” he eventually said.

“Can’t,” Ella disputed, “or won’t? ”

“Can’t and won’t. I legitimately cannot tell you. I would if I could, El, but I was told—” He cut himself off from finishing. He swallowed a desperate breath before spluttering it out in a heavy sigh. “I was given a directive from the Gods—”

“The Gods?!” Ella squeaked, her heart leaping into her throat.

“Yes, the Gods,” he confirmed, urgency powering his words now. “From Aros Cavalian’s lips to my little, insignificant ears, I was told not to tell you what I saw until you were ready to hear it.”

What the fuck? “How will you know I’m ready?”

“You’re going to have to trust me, Ella.”How the fuck was Ella supposed to sit with that information without begging for more detail? He’d given her an ocean of knowledge, and yet at the same time, a measly pond.

“You shouldn’t have told her that,” Josefyn reproached with a shake of her head. “Now she’s going to want to know even more.”

“Would you have rather I’d said nothing at all?” Akio posed to Ella.

“Yes and no. I would have kept asking if you hadn’t.” Her concern had centered around wondering if he’d been handed a vision of something from her past that had caused him such distress that he couldn’t handle being in the same room as her. The little information he shared with her, that the vision had been a message from the Gods and not some extract of her life on the Earthly Plane, had assuaged that concern enough that she could let her fact-finding mission go—for now.

Akio’s gaze raised above Ella’s head, his eyes brightening. “Kellen!”

“Kellen?” Ella repeated in a gasp, her head whipping around. Her eyes engulfed Kellen’s figure as he strolled down the path to her office building, most likely on his way to the teacher’s lounge to grab lunch.

Kellen ceased movement when he heard his name called. His gaze descended instantly over Ella, as though he had no choice but to meet her stare, as though there was no world in which he could possibly keep walking without returning the look. Confusion splashed over his features when he realized the voice that had shouted for him wasn’t her soft, feminine cadence, but a male’s tenor.

His gaze passed onto Akio—apparently with some reluctance, displayed in the way he had to jerk his head to the side to peel his eyes off Ella.

“Come sit with us,” Akio called out, both Josefyn and Ella gaping at him with barefaced bemusement.

“What are you doing?” Ella hissed, Josefyn smacking Akio’s arm. “We hate him!”

“Trust me, Rosie,” was all Akio said when much to Ella’s surprise, Kellen began advancing towards them.

Kellen mumbled a clipped, yet warm greeting to Josefyn before lowering down into the grass next to Akio, keeping three feet of space between them. Inevitably, the person he ended up sitting closest to was Ella, with the way he’d angled his body away from Akio. Kellen looked between the three of them like he was trying to search inside their eyes for the reason why he’d felt inclined to sit down, while the three of them looked back at him wondering the exact same thing.

“What happened to your eye?” Josefyn gestured to the enflamed, puffed-up flesh surrounding his eye socket.

“Daniel Madix punched me in the face,” Kellen answered with a grim frown.

“I thought you two were friends,” Akio said. If it was possible for Kellen’s frown to droop lower down his face, it did, like his mouth was melting.

“I deserved it,” was all he supplied as an answer, his tone not inviting further inquiry into the matter. His focus latched onto the salad resting at Ella’s feet. “Are you going to finish that?” he asked, not looking at her as he addressed her, keeping his eyes pinned on the salad.

“No. Take it.” Ella tendered to him the salad and her fork, their fingers brushing in the middle when he accepted the plastic container. They sprung apart at the first graze of skin. Ella tucked her hands underneath her ass on the bench to calm the outlandish outbreak of electricity effervescing through her fingers.

“How’s your day going, Kellen?” Akio asked with sincere interest, in his thoughtful, inimitable way.

“It’s been uneventful.” Kellen smirked with a mouth full of kale. “Nothing could be more eventful, which includes getting punched in the face, than what I experienced last night.” Ella rolled her eyes.

“What happened last night?” Josefyn questioned Ella with a smirk and a nudge.

“Ms. Rose had a sex dream about me,” Kellen revealed with a grin that rivaled the luster of the stars.

“I hate you so much,” Ella growled at the same moment Josefyn and Akio gasped in unison, “She did?”

“Why don’t you ask him how he knows that,” she snapped. Kellen met the challenge in her eyes.

“Would you like me to go into excruciating detail for your friends about how you pushed my head between your—”

“I had an idea I wanted to float by you guys,” Ella exclaimed to change the subject, then flung begrudgingly at Kellen, “I guess you can hear it too.” She swung her braid off her shoulder and sat up against the arm of the bench, resting her forearms on her arched knees. “I’ve been trying to think of creative ways to teach the students behavioral and coping skills, since the majority of them don’t want to work one-on-one with me. I thought, for the elementary school students, we could start giving out character awards each month. I’ll pick a word for the month, like integrity or resilience or kindness, and the teachers will dedicate their morning circle lessons to teaching skills associated with that word. The students in each class who exemplify the word the most by the end of the month will be chosen by their teachers to receive a character award. If the students respond well to it, we can implement it within the middle and high school too, though they may need something more concretely rewarding than a paper prize to be motivated to participate.”

“I love that idea, Ella,” Josefyn approved. “I can definitely see the little ones wanting to win so badly that they actually try to learn the skills.”

“It’s like drowning vegetables in cheese to trick children into eating something healthy,” Ella said. Josefyn barked out a laugh at the analogy.

“Using the natural competitiveness ingrained in all Primordials to get them to change their behavior is a great idea, El,” Akio prided, giving her hand a friendly squeeze. Kellen’s gaze tracked Akio’s hand to where it grasped Ella’s, plumes of smoke raging from his flared nostrils. Akio’s fingers quickly slipped off Ella’s when billows of Kellen’s soot glided along the wind to abrade his knuckles.

“It’s a cute idea, Rose,” Kellen said, taking Ella by surprise with the fact that his answer was supportive and not disparaging…until he added, “Except no teacher will agree to supply you with a new student name each month, because that would require them to actually speak to you.” Ella’s mouth thinned.

“Maybe I’ll just have the department heads give me the names for each class,” she seethed. “How does that sound, Varmin chair?” From the corner of her eye, she caught Akio stifling a grin behind his index finger.

Kellen tossed a parmesan crouton into his mouth and grumbled, “That sounds like a shitload of work I have no interest in doing. Stick to asking the teachers. Just be prepared to plan your own funeral.”

Is that your twisted idea of a warning? she asked through the conduit connecting their minds.

Whatever helps you sleep at night, sweetheart, Kellen replied, a smile laced through his words despite the fact that his lips outwardly remained in a flat line. Other than fantasizing about my tongue between your legs.

Ella was about to snap back, but just as an argument stained her tongue, her amulet vibrated between her collarbones, sending rays of purple light to scatter across her chest and lick up her throat.

A frisson of something cold and spikey scraped through her back. Somehow, she knew who this was about.

Jarion.

“Rose,” Kellen yelled, having heard his brother’s name appear in her head. Ella scrambled to her feet.

“Don’t follow,” she ordered, gathering her things. “I’ll find you later.” She sprinted off before he could respond.