This is my first attempt at a Sydney/Adrian multichap (and the first multichap I've attempted in a while)! I don't own anything, and I won't throughout the entire fic.

It's set after The Golden Lily, but it'll be AU to The Indigo Spell (primarily due to the state of the relationship between Adrian & Sydney)

Love is clockworks,
And it's cold steel
Fingers too numb to feel
Squeeze the handle
Blow out the candle
Blindness
Jack White, Love is Blindness

I sighed. During the two weeks since the whole Warriors of Light incident—a small part of me was still amused by the cheesiness of their name, no matter the danger that they posed—I seemed to have sighed a lot more than was normal for me. What with everything that had gone on, and the consequences of decisions I'd made…well, things weren't exactly how I had hoped they'd be.

First off, there was Jill. I didn't have to guess at the origin of her coldness towards me; the bond passed to her what Adrian was feeling, and I didn't exactly think he was at his warmest towards me. More than that, ever since I had known her I knew that she had a special bond with him—even before the spirit intervention—and she felt that I had wronged him to new levels. We were barely speaking, our only communication being forced conversation between the members of our 'family' who attended Amberwood on feeding days, or when there was something which came up that she couldn't avoid talking to me about.

Next, there was Angeline. Whilst she had settled down after her initial issues—not to mention her digression from normal behaviour when the sexual health group visited the school—things continued to pose an issue for her, especially dealing with people who had double standards. We agreed on something in this sort of behaviour being unacceptable in anyone, but the way that Angeline dealt with it continued to be wrong; a girl's entire chemistry work had been disintegrated by a mixture of compounds tipped on it in class, and whilst there was no obvious link to Angeline, it was clear that she was the main suspect. Underneath my disapproval at her reacting with actions rather than words—slightly hypocritical from me nowadays considering my growing presence in the magic world—I was actually slightly impressed with her correct use of the chemicals. She had asked me for help with identifying different chemicals' functions, then put it all together to form a revenge plan which hadn't actually resulted in any consequences for herself. Still, I had to worry about her; one of these days, she'd have a tail on her, and if they saw her doing anything like that, she'd be expelled faster than she could say her fake name. Not even my ability to twist truths and utilise technicalities could save her then.

And then there was Adrian. By no means was he my smallest issue, I just couldn't bring myself to think about him or anything that related to him; doing so either made me far more sad than I ought to be, or infuriated. In the many social calls I'd had to make with him there during the past fortnight, I had avoided him as much as possible, just as he had me—besides for the odd look, which held a mixture of sadness and volatile anger within it. I was sure that he was talking behind my back, but I didn't want to confront him or ask anyone else at the risk of sounding like I cared—I didn't. I missed him more than I ought to—far, far more than I ought to—but there was nothing between us. Or, perhaps more accurately, there was nothing that could be between us. So whatever we had thought we had felt—or at least me, as I couldn't speak for any vampire, even one like Adrian—it was probably just fantasy, or a reaction to the situation we had faced earlier, at the Warriors' base. He had saved me and I had saved him (though, admittedly, my saving him was only necessary because I had used something which made my skin crawl to think about) and we had just tried to show appreciation to one another for that. That was it.

I groaned. Once again, unwittingly, I had found myself thinking about Adrian and everything I had sworn to push to the back of my mind and forget about. Somehow whenever I didn't have anything to actively think about, my mind always ended up back here, looking at his face when I told him I didn't feel anything for him and that we could never be together. Usually, it was in my final few seconds of consciousness before falling asleep, replacing chemical equations I had never thought I would miss. And yet I couldn't do anything about it because to bring it up would be to acknowledge it had happened, something which would only bring Adrian pleasure—if he would even speak to me long enough for a short discussion on the matter.

Anxious to push Adrian Ivashkov from my mind, I looked out of the windscreen to see whether there was anything I needed from any of the shops around here. It was too much of an inconvenience to return to Amberwood whilst Jill was at Clarence's with Eddie and Angeline, and I hadn't had any particular destination in mind when I had drove into Palm Springs. There was no need for me to buy any more clothes, my kit had been replenished last week, and the only shop that I would possibly want to go in around here—the bookshop—was closed for refurbishment. That left me one option: Spencer's.

My heart yearned for coffee, and I couldn't think of any reason why I shouldn't have any, so I found myself locking Latte and almost running to the shop. If I had been a legitimate senior at Amberwood, I would have spent the past four years campaigning for coffee to be provided at breakfast, lunch—anytime, any place. As it was, I had a small machine in my room and my privileges provided me the chance to go out and get coffee any time before curfew—but having a steady, constant stream would definitely have been my preference.

Opening the door to the coffee shop, the familiar aroma of coffee hit me, and I almost swooned at the scent. I hadn't had any coffee today, due to a power shortage in my room fusing my plug; whilst I fixed it, it didn't leave me enough time to make coffee and get to central campus in time for class. If it wasn't for the fact that the aroma increased in intensity further into the shop, I would have stood in the doorway for sometime; the bar lured me in, however, with the promise of coffee made for me.

The smile on my face at entering the coffee shop faded, however, when I looked to see the barrista behind the counter: Brayden.

Whilst things hadn't exactly ended badly—other than him dumping me, that is, as I never expected not to be in control of a situation—it didn't mean that I wanted to see him when I was trying to find a distraction from Adrian. Even though we had some issues following the discovery of his secret identity, Trey continued to be a friend, and I had wanted the chance to bounce some banter off one another. He was pretty much the only person I could do that with now, and it would have been good to alleviate this slightly melancholy mood with a bit of witty sarcasm. It was a shame that it wasn't to be.

"Sydney!" Brayden didn't seem any different to how he normally greeted me; if anything, he seemed almost cheerier. "Would you like your usual?"

"I'll have it iced, if that's alright." I made a split-second decision to go for the cooler version, having realised that as the coffee aroma increased, so did the heat. It really didn't feel as though we were closer to December than October.

Brayden got on with making the drink straight away, methodical with the steps, something I appreciated; I usually couldn't watch as people made my coffee, otherwise it made my skin crawl to see them add things in such a random order. As he pushed it across the counter to me, he stopped, his hand still on the cup.

After a few seconds of silence, I looked up at him, wondering whether he thought I didn't have the money to pay for it—I was irresponsible, after all. The puzzled look on his face dissuaded me from that line of thought, however, so I simply asked, "what's wrong?"

"There's something different about you," Brayden responded, his lack of specifics irritating me. Of course there was something different about me; there were lots of things which had changed over the course of the past two weeks, my access to coffee one of them.

I replied without thinking of who I was talking to. "Yeah, I think I adapted to become more like your true soul mate," I responded, realising only afterwards what I had said. "Um…" I trailed off, not sure how to damage control this. I was used to dealing with dead Strigoi or making humans forget that they'd seen a Moroi's fangs; I wasn't used to correcting what had come out of my own mouth.

Brayden's reply had a blush on my face within words. "Uh, I sincerely doubt you could have had a complete personality overhaul in the space of two weeks—it isn't scientifically possible. Unless you had a crash or fall of some sort and then suffered from amnesia, allowing you to change how you acted, though I'm sure Trey would have said something about you being in an accident—and you have no physical injuries to back up such a story." His next words mortified me even more, especially because I had argued against such a thing with Trey before he had set us up together. "Also, there's statistically no such thing as a soul mate."

"I know," I tried to say, but he cut me off again.

"I think I've figured out what's different about you," he continued, looking me up and down, though there was no chance that it could ever be mistaken for a 'romantic' once over (though how anyone found the idea of someone appraising them like a pig for slaughter, I have no idea). It was clinical, through and through. "It's that cross necklace, you're not wearing it. It's the first time that I've seen you without it."

As he spoke, my hand went to my bare chest of its own accord, resting against skin when it should have been coming into contact with the cross which held so many memories for it. It was such an integral part of me, I felt lost without it—an emotion only heightened now that someone had actually noticed it was missing.

"I, uh, yeah," I said, more on autopilot than actually thinking about my answer. "My brother's going through a rough time, and I thought that a closer tie to religion might help him. He's always had an easier time with things when he can visualise it." I wanted to smile as I said this, my mind instantly jumping to Adrian's creativity and (when sober) his intriguing artwork designs, but my brain didn't want to smile when thinking of the Ivashkov Moroi.

Brayden shrugged. "I didn't think he would be the type to wear jewellery, but I guess everyone's got their own personal tastes," he said, blowing the only hole in my cover story. He didn't seem to think it too important, though. "That's three fifty."

I handed over the cash without even really thinking about it and took my coffee to a table in the back corner. Normally I would have left straight away, but considering I had nothing to do and a lot to think about, I didn't want to potentially get into a situation where I wasn't paying full attention on the road. As I sat down, my hand gravitated towards my chest once again, and I set the coffee down on the table, my mind engrossed in the cross and who had it in their possession.

I gave Adrian my cross, something I've had for years, something I treasure like a second skin. If you'd have asked me a month ago if I would have given anything of mine to a vampire—mortal or not—I would have recoiled in disgust; it was bad enough even touching their hand in a brief handshake. Now, I had not only given something to a Moroi, but I'd given them something I adore, something which symbolises more than anything else I possess. And it showed something else—it showed that no matter what I felt about Adrian, I trusted him. Otherwise, I would never have given him something which means so much to me.

How long I spent sitting there, I have no idea, only that my iced coffee wasn't quite so iced when I finally tore myself away from thinking about Adrian and my trusting him to return my attention to my favourite drink. Even though I drank it quickly, it didn't hold the same appeal as it normally did for me, and I found myself wanting to leave Spencer's faster than I usually would.

As I left, I made myself a promise that the wacky correlations I'd made between trusting Moroi and loaning out crosses (something I actually wanted back, not that I knew how to ask) would remain in the doorway of Spencer's, not to be touched again until I knew what my own thoughts meant. Not that I expected that to happen for quite a long time.

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