Field of Innocence (The Euphoria Series) (16 page)

Her heart shatters as the realization hits her and takes her breath along with it. The colors are emotions. The shots are his way of feeding in the absence of humans. She gulps the rest of her drink down and slams the empty glass back on the table. She quickly grabs another and begins to walk away from the table, unable to be around Jarreth at the moment.

After two steps, Jarreth grabs her arm and spins her around and brings her back to him. “What?” he asks, his voice sincerely confused.

“You let me take that … whatever emotion it is and didn’t even tell me!” Her voice is louder than she’d meant for it to be and a few people stop dancing and turn to stare at them.

Jarreth clears his throat and walks them further away from the crowd. “I told you that drinking stuff when you didn’t know what it was wasn’t the brightest of ideas, but you still drank it. And need I remind you that both times you’ve drank them, you did it all on your own? Don’t act like I forced it down your throat!” he informs her.

“Don’t give me that, Jarreth! You know that had you told me I never would’ve drank it!” She tries to pull free of him and head back into the crowd, but his grip tightens around her arm. “Let go of me! I don’t even want to look at you right now!” She spits the words out and laces them with more hate than is probably necessary.

It gets her point across as his eyes flash light purple and his face goes blank. His mouth opens to say something and immediately closes again. He drops his arm from her and she storms off into the crowd. She has no clue where she’s going, especially since she is already in her favorite place to go when she needs comfort, but getting away from Jarreth is her top priority. Faces keep turning toward her as she makes her way through the dancing bodies surrounding her. Everyone is twisting, turning, swirling, and Calandra is no longer sure if she is walking across the crowd or going in circles along with them.

Her mind is clouding over in confusion when she feels a hand on her back and a familiar chill goes through her body. She doesn’t have to turn to know it is Drake touching her. He is wearing all black, as usual, though some of the sequins on his coat seem to be giving off a midnight blue shine. His mask is all black and it has a long nose that slopes down and comes to a point just below his mouth. She can see the corners of his mouth curl up into a smile as he pulls her into him.

“Dance,” he says simply. It is a statement, not a question, and his voice is laced with temptation.

She doesn’t respond, but she also decides not to fight him either. She’s away from Jarreth, and if he by chance decides to come after her and sees her dancing with Drake, it will be a nice bonus thrown in to increase his irritation. She goes along with the twirling movement Drake takes her into, feeling the music pulsing through her harder now that the odd chill from Drake’s touch pulses through her with it.

He breaks their silence. “Where have you been hiding the past couple of weeks?”

“I haven’t been hiding.”

“Well, I haven’t seen you around, not even here. I looked for you a few times. I wanted to be sure you were coming tonight.” He winks as he says it.

“You know where you could have found me if you had really wanted to.”

“Eh,” he scoffs, “I did want to find you, but had no desire to see Jarreth. I have to pick my battles.”

Calandra rolls her eyes.

Something seems different about Drake tonight. He’s not quite as snide as he usually is, he seems to actually be somewhat sincere for once. He is giving off a vibe of something that Calandra has never felt from him before, but she’s having trouble placing it. She looks at him, watching his eyes for any sign of changes, but is left with nothing. Desire … Is that what it is? Maybe, but desire for what exactly?

“You know,” Drake leans in and whispers in her ear, “if your little argument hasn’t ended before the party is over, my invitation is still out there.”

And there’s Drake, the one Calandra is used to, he’s come full circle for her.

“No thanks!”

Luckily the song ends and she turns away from him without another word. She is hoping for an escape to the other side of the crowd like she had originally set out for, but she instead ends up face to face with Tristan.

Chapter Nineteen

Mystery

“So, do you wanna talk about what happened in the field a couple of weeks ago?” Tristan asks as he takes her in his arms and begins circling her through the crowd again.

Calandra hasn’t seen him since the day in the field when she had taken his anger for her away from him. If she was to be totally honest, she had been avoiding him, but she hadn’t fully admitted that to herself yet. Tristan is wearing a normal black and white suit. It is not very Masquerade looking, especially compared to everyone else. His mask is a plain black mask on a stick. He certainly doesn’t look like he had much time to prepare for the night. Nonetheless, he still looks like Tristan, which is oddly comforting for her.

Calandra looks at him confused; he isn’t supposed to remember what happened at the field. She had taken his emotions, and in turn, his memory of the events away. Jarreth said he wouldn’t remember it and he certainly seemed to lack the memory when he left the field that day.

Tristan frowns at her lack of response, “Drake told me.”

Of course he did
, she thinks and rolls her eyes to herself. She should have known better than to think Drake would keep quiet about what happened. Knowing him, he has probably told the entire world about it. She knew better, technically, but somehow at that particular moment all sense had failed her.

“I just … I wanted you to …” Words fail to come to her, at least any that can explain away what she did.

“Don’t, Cal, just don’t!” Oddly enough, he doesn’t look mad. He is calm and collected, more so than she’s seen him since their arrival here.

“I’m sorry.” She settles for a simple apology, it’s really the only thing that seems even slightly appropriate.

“Tell me something, Cali.”

“What?” Her nerves peak as she wonders what he may want to know. She pulls from her powers to calm herself.

“Do you even know who you are anymore?”

Calandra is entirely offended. After what she did to him, she probably doesn’t have the right to be, but that’s exactly what she finds herself feeling. “I will not respond to that!” she scoffs.

“Really?”

“Really. Look, I’m sorry for what I did, I regret it greatly, but that doesn’t give you the right to act like this, Tristan.”

“I think I have every right after everything.” The attitude returns to Tristan’s voice.

“To be upset, yes. To be flat out rude to me, no.”

Tristan sighs, “Look, I’m just trying to understand all of this, Calandra. So much has changed, about you, about us. I just don’t get it. This isn’t you. This isn’t my Cali. My Cali is a good, sweet girl that knows the difference between right and wrong and always puts others before herself.”

“I’m sorry.” She realizes that she has said that every time she’s seen Tristan since their arrival and she feels stupid for it. Surely there has to be more she can say.

“Do you remember the kiss in the rain, outside of my car at your house?” Tristan smiles as he recalls the memory from several months back, before things had gotten complicated with another world, and back when Tristan was the center of her universe. “You had always wanted to have a romantic kiss in the rain like couples do in the movies, you said. So, when we got to your house and it started raining, I took the chance to fill that for you. But it was so awkward to have all the rain sloshing over us. We were cold, and all we could do was laugh. It may not have been the blockbuster romantic event you’d hoped for exactly, but it was one of the greatest nights I’ve ever had because it was genuine.”

“Tristan, don’t.” She puts her hand over his mouth to stop him from continuing the story.

“Talk to me, Calandra, please.” He looks desperate, he is begging and pleading with his eyes, so she gives in. She takes her mask off and holds it to her side.

“I’m fragile right now is all, in a bit of a damaged state.” The pain is clear in her eyes and Calandra takes a deep breath to push it away quickly. She feels powerful and resolved with the mask of blank emotions pulled back over her face, which is quite fitting at a Masquerade Ball.

“I guess you don’t even need that thing at all, do you?” Tristan points to the actual masquerade mask in her hand by her side. “Your powers give you a mask of your own apparently.” Feelings flash across Tristan’s face one by one; hurt, betrayal, confusion, and desperation. Calandra finds herself wondering what colors his eyes would flash for those emotions if he were Fae.

“Don’t—” Calandra replies simply, breathing harder to ensure her true emotions don’t come through.

“What, Cal? Don’t make you feel what you actually feel? Don’t remind you of who you really are? Don’t tell you what you actually believe? What you know deep down in your heart to be true? Don’t tell you that you’re ignoring every moral that your father worked so hard to instill in you? The morals that you used to know how to stand up for.” Every emotion but irritation drains from him immediately.

“I just can’t deal with my past right now, Tristan. I need to focus on my future. I need to focus on me for once.” The excuse even has her fooled, at least momentarily. She is taken aback at how easily she came up with it. It flows out of her mouth naturally, maybe a bit too naturally. Calandra looks away from him, pulls her gaze to the ground, ashamed, and looks back at him once she’s sure the emotion is gone.

Tristan unexpectedly pulls her to him with a desperate force behind it. She buries her head into him and nuzzles into his neck, doing her best to keep it together. It’s so easy to fall to pieces with Tristan, he knows exactly what to do when she needs it, but that’s not who she is anymore.

“You know that your past influences your future no matter how hard you try to fight it. What you know to be true will never fully leave you, Calandra, even if you try and force it to. The truth can’t suddenly become untrue,” Tristan whispers into her neck. The words touch her neck and she feels them against her skin before they register in her mind.

“You know that I love you, Tristan,” Calandra says softly, lifting her head and gazing off into the distance somewhere.

Tristan knows where this is going. He knows exactly why she’s suddenly confirming her feelings for him. She’s gone again and the rejection is coming once more. He takes in her scent again before he pulls away from her, readying himself for what is to come.

“I just can’t do this.” A tear threatens to fall and she quickly wipes it away before it has a chance.

“I miss you. I miss my Cali, and if she ever decides to come back, please let me know.” Tristan’s voice is intense, more so than Calandra’s ever heard it before.

“I’m right here,” Calandra replies simply.

“No, you’re not, you slipped away, long ago. The moment that it happened is etched into my memory forever and, at this point, I’m not sure you’ll ever be back again. Nothing will ever be the same because of it.”

Calandra starts to say something but stops herself. She is afraid of how much her comment would reveal, so she swallows it down instead. She stares at him in bewilderment and wonders how they managed to get to this point.

Tristan’s light touch is on her shoulder, tracing her mark and sending a shiver through her. “One side is blue and the other is purple.”

Calandra looks down at it and realizes she’s never noticed the contrast of the swirls in the wings. It’s like a ying yang with one side baby blue, the other lavender. She looks into the crowd and sees them off in the distance, standing on the same sides as they are represented in the mark. Jarreth is to the left and has his mask with baby blue swirls hanging at his side. Drake is on the right and his lavender eyes smolder into her. Calandra brings her gaze back to Tristan, who still stands in front of her waiting for her to piece his meaning together. And in that moment she realizes, there is no color to represent Tristan. He’s not a part of this and the truth that she’s been keeping buried deep down inside of her, unwilling to deal with, comes up suddenly. The tear escapes finally while she stares at Tristan and this time she doesn’t stop it.

Tristan watches it trail down her face and knows she’s finally put two and two together in her mind and he can feel the loss that it leaves him in. He puts his plain black mask back on to cover his own emotions and uses his gloved hand to wipe the tear from of her face. “You can’t have one without the other, just like light can’t exist without the dark. One day you’ll understand that.”

“Don’t leave …” The words are barely audible as she fights to keep them from escaping.

“You know I’ll always be here for you.” Tristan looks at the ground as he says it. Then his gaze comes up through the mask, though his head doesn’t move from the ground. “But I’m part of the past that you can’t deal with tonight. This,” Tristan motions around him at the masquerade scene that surrounds them, “is the future you are focusing on and I’m not part of it, so I guess I’ll leave you to it.” He leans into her, one gloved hand on her cheek, and places a quick kiss on her other cheek. He catches the new tear tracking down her face in the process. “I’ll be … around, should you ever decide to go back to your roots again.” With that, he turns and walks away.

Her body tries to pull toward him. There is a gravity that is telling her to go after him, but with one quick breath she fights it down. Another breath brings in enough power to bring her emotions back under control. She pulls her masquerade mask back to her face and walks over to them. She stands in between her ying yang. Jarreth to one side, Drake to the other. Their masks are in place as well as they watch the ball unfold around them. Calandra takes one more look at her shoulder, and realizes that she is the body of the dragonfly while they are the wings.

The realization stuns her and leaves her hungry for Tristan’s place in it all.
I’ll always need him
. The words fill her head and she does her best to fight them back down. Jarreth reaches his arm out to her, inviting her for a dance, which is just the spell she needs to clear her mind and emotions. His eyes flash a cobalt blue before returning to baby blue. She turns and steals a glance at Drake; green crosses into his eyes before they fade back to lavender. She smiles wickedly as she turns back around and takes Jarreth’s hand, letting him lead her to the dance floor and losing herself in the bodies that swirl around them. Just like that, she’s forgotten about the good and bad and old beliefs talk from Tristan and given into what’s around her instead.

Tristan waits just outside of the field, hoping she is still coming after him. He believes that some part of what they used to share can fight through her newfound love of power and desires and that she’ll rush out to fix what has become of them. He knows that she has to know what is right and wrong. She has to know that she is falling into sin and temptation, all of the things that she’s been warned to stay away from. Even if she’s in another world, the same rules still apply. He resolves to do whatever it takes to remind her of the values and the God that she once dedicated her life to faithfully. After several minutes, he sighs, realizing he has indeed truly lost her completely and he leaves with a new level of hurt going through him.

Jarreth returns her to the concession table after their dance. Their fight has been completely forgotten. Calandra can’t remember exactly when she had decided to forgive him, but somewhere on the dance floor she found herself no longer mad or upset at all.

A strange mask catches her eye out on the dance floor. He is a tall, sturdy man and dressed in an all black suit with a matte finish. His hair is messily thrown about and a familiar shade of copper. His mask is what really sets him apart from the other people that crowd the field tonight. The mask is black, with eight points that come up over his head. The points make out what look like antlers that range in size. The longest ones are on the outside and the shortest on the inside. The eyeholes are not the same oblong shape as the other masks. Instead, they are squared on one side. The bottom of the mask has two more points that come down and cross over each other to make an X just under his mouth.

He is staring directly at Calandra and Jarreth. Between the shadow of his mask and the shadows of being in the dimly lit field at night, Calandra can’t make out his eyes. But even without seeing them, she can sense that he is staring at her and Jarreth. Something is vaguely familiar about him; his hair color and the way he stands. She feels as if she has seen him before, but she can’t place where. Maybe it is too many emotions mixing with too much dancing that is causing her to lack the sense to be able to put two and two together. Whatever it is, something deep down tells her that it is important she figures out who this man is.