Chapter One-Hundred-Two
He loves me, she thought, drawing the sheets tighter around herself. Her hair was still damp from the rain, her skin clammy and cold.
The bedroom door slid open. Fai always checked on her before she went to bed. Sometimes after she was supposed to be asleep, too.
He smiled faintly at her movement. "Having trouble sleeping?"
"A little bit," she admitted. Fai crossed the room, moving silently over the hardwood floor. He knelt down beside her bed and rested a hand on her forehead, smoothing her hair back.
"Is something bothering you?" the magician asked.
"No. Something good happened, actually." She pressed her tongue against the inside of her lips. Somehow, they felt different than before. As if her first kiss had changed them somehow.
Fai smiled now, relieved. "Oh? What happened?"
She hesitated, not sure whether or not she should keep the kiss a secret. Apart from herself, Fai had been the coldest to Syaoran while they'd been in Infinity. If there was any lingering tension, the news could damage the tenuous trust building between Fai and this Syaoran.
"Is it a secret?" Fai probed, his voice a little more subdued.
"No, nothing like that." She brought the blankets closer, bundling them up over her heart. After a moment, she decided to test the waters with a less dramatic confession. "Syaoran told me he loved me."
Fai blinked, his face going blank. "And what did you say?"
"Nothing, at first." She squirmed under the quilt, suddenly too warm. "But . . . I think I love him, too."
Fai was silent for a long moment. Sakura watched his face for any sign that he was going to revert back to the aloof vampire he'd been in Infinity. Instead, he smiled. "That's wonderful."
"You're okay with it?"
He ruffled her hair, but lost his smile. "I'm the last person with any right to criticize him. Even though he wore the same face as the boy before him—" He lifted his hand to his eye patch. "—they're two separate people. I assumed, because they'd shared part of a soul, they would turn out the same, and we paid grievously for my assumptions. So I'm going to trust your judgment, Sakura-chan. If you love him, I wish you both the best."
She watched his face carefully for any sign of deceit. But Fai seemed completely earnest. "Thank you," she said.
He patted her head. "Good night, Sakura-chan. Try to sleep."
She nodded into her pillow. "Good night, Fai-san."
Sleep didn't come easily for Syaoran, and when it arrived, the nightmares returned.
The Other held one of Sakura's feathers, examining it with his mismatched eyes. After a moment, he looked up.
Syaoran stared down at him, trying to ignore the fear piercing his gut. For a long moment, they watched each other in silence.
"You're weak," the Other said, something flickering through his lifeless eyes.
Syaoran's hands coiled into fists. "I'm not."
The Other pulled the feather into his body. In his other hand was a knife, with a handle made of bone. He extended his arms in a nonchalant gesture. "Yet here I am."
Is he taunting me? Syaoran wondered. Though his clone had become a mass-murdering sociopath after Tokyo, Syaoran had assumed he had no emotions. Hearing the mocking edge to his voice put him on edge.
"What do you want?" he demanded. "Why are you in my dreams?"
The corner his clone's lip twitched. "To keep you from dreaming about her."
What's going on? "But why?"
The Other said nothing. Black tendrils of magic wrapped around his body, swaddling him like a cocoon. He's moving to another world, Syaoran realized, just before he was pulled into the glittering blackness. Thousands of stars twinkled around him, each a separate world. One speck of light grew brighter than the others.
With the same feeling of disorientation that accompanied every jump between worlds, Syaoran arrived with the Other in a new dimension. Rain pelted his clone's hair and clothes, but passed through his own as if he was nothing more than mist.
As if he was a ghost.
The Other stood, then turned his head. Syaoran turned with him, wondering what had drawn his clone's attention.
It was Shirasagi Castle.
No, he thought, stomach dropping to his heels. "No!" His nonexistent hand shot out to restrain the Other, but passed through his shoulder instead. "No!"
The Other walked closer to the castle, ignoring his silent shouts. Syaoran darted in front of him, hoping his presence would deter his clone. The Other walked through him as if he didn't exist.
I have to get back, he thought. I have to wake up so I can stop him.
He hesitated, unsure how to wake himself up when he already felt perfectly lucid. By all rights, the adrenaline should've pulled him from this nightmare already. He should've been racing down the halls to protect Sakura from the threat.
He couldn't. His body wasn't responding to his commands. Maybe if I find my body, he thought, racing toward the castle as fast as his translucent legs could run. All the while, rain kept falling around him, never touching his skin, unaffected by his presence.
Shirasagi Castle wasn't very familiar to him, given how little he'd explored it since arriving here. Even after he ghosted through the exterior walls, he still had to run to find some familiar landmark. All the while, the Other drew closer to his target. Who's he coming after? Me? Fai? He frowned. If it was him, that meant the Other had at least some compulsion to seek him out and destroy him. If it was Fai, the Other was likely trying to acquire more magic.
Syaoran found the small room where Sakura had baked bread for him. He stood there a moment, trying to remember which hallways led to his room. Then, he bolted in the right direction.
Why did it have to be now? he wondered. Why did he have to come when things were finally getting better?
He passed the corridor where he'd hallucinated the other day. Suddenly, it occurred to him that the hallucinations weren't a product of insanity, but the Other slowly pulling him further and further from everyone. I've been so stupid, he thought. If he can slip into my dreams, surely he's been able to appear in my waking thoughts. I've been careless . . .
He reached his room then, and found his body, still asleep, swaddled in blankets. He reached out, hoping the contact would snap him awake. But his nonexistent hand merely slipped harmlessly into his shoulder. It's useless, he thought, reeling back. I can't wake up.
Across the palace, a door opened.
Sakura stirred at the sound of her door sliding open. Fai-san must be checking in again, she thought, feigning sleep. The last thing she wanted was for the magician to worry.
Normally, Fai would close the door after ascertaining she was asleep. When Sakura didn't hear the distinct whisper of the door sliding across its frame, her eyes flashed open.
"Syaoran?" she asked, startled. The figure stepped forward, allowing her a closer look. His face was just the same, but even in the dark, she could perceive the faint difference between the color of his eyes.
It's him, she thought, sitting bolt upright.
Her Syaoran stared at her, eyes devoid of all emotion. But instead of running away, Sakura found herself staring at the boy who had helped her through so many different worlds. "Syaoran-kun?"
He extended one hand to her, his lips parting slightly. Her heart quickened, pulse pounding in her ears. Her legs moved forward of their own accord.
His hand caught hers and pulled her close to his chest. As his skin brushed against hers, an image flashed through her mind—an underground reservoir at the base of a tower. Blood running down the real Syaoran's thigh as her Syaoran stabbed him through the leg. Fai lying, broken and bleeding, on a bed.
Sakura pulled back, reaching for the sword Kurogane had given her. Her fingers had just coiled around the white hilt when his arms pulled her in, holding her so tight that the air vanished from her lungs. She managed one weak cry before she felt the tendrils of magic wrapping around her arms. No, she thought, gripping her sword. No, he can't take me away.
Sakura felt the icy brush of magic across her skin and disappeared.