Beginning Note: So here I finally am with another chapter… Took me long enough. Well, here is another chapter of our beloved Kartik!
Part II
'Your destiny is joined to mine,' she whispers, voice floating along the howling wind.
She stands in front of me in her white school uniform. I am close enough to smell her. She smells like home. Like India.
She coughs suddenly, drops of blood spraying from her lips, the color of rubies.
'Kartik," she moans, hands tightly gripping mine, nails digging into my flesh. 'How could you?'
Blood slides down her chin and I stare into her startling green eyes. They are lined in pain. Confused, I look down our clenched hands and feel all the blood drain out of my face.
My hands are gripping a dagger that is buried to the hilt in her stomach. A spreading stain mars her virginal uniform, a splash of red on a field of white. I look up again, horrified, for the dagger is my own, a small sharp blade topped with an effigy of Megh Sambara, a protector against enemies.
Her pale green eyes pierce me through as I drop the bloody dagger to the dirt. She slumps forward, forcing me to catch her, allowing me to hold her, a forbidden act.
Her silken red curls glide against me cheek as she leans her face towards mine.
'I thought I was yours,' she says, her lips brushing the shell of my ear, causing goosebumps to ripple across my flesh and desire to course through my veins. 'How could you kill me?'
Her words were no more than a breath, labored, soft, and laced with pain.
'I'm sorry,' I say. 'Please don't die. I did not mean to kill you!'
She doesn't respond as she breathes her last breath, her life slipping away in my arms. I feel her heart stop beating and I let out a yell, full of regret. I sink to the ground and bury my face in the silk of her hair.
'I'm sorry,' I whisper again to a girl who can no longer hear me. Whose brilliant eyes are empty with death. 'I had no choice. Forgive me.'
I bolt upright in my rented room, my thin shirt sticking to the cold sweat on my body. My breathing is heavy as if I've just run a long distance.
It was just a dream, I tell myself.
Problem is, I believe in dreams.
At that thought, my stomach turns and I barely make it to the sink without throwing up my meager dinner. I rinse my mouth out with water from a pitcher after I finish retching helplessly.
I sit down on the cheap cot that occupies most of the space in the dingy room at the pack of the pub. Loud, obnoxious laughter breaks through the quiet, but then again, it is rarely quiet here.
I rub the heel of my palms in my eyes against the burning sensation that I know to be me fighting tears.
This dream scares me.
The Rakshana have ordered me to kill the girl that haunts my every dream and every thought. She is the keeper of the Realms, the very thing the brotherhood wishes to possess. A place where dreams are reality and magic is at your fingertips.
Last year, I was supposed to keep on eye on the girl and her overly curious friends and failed, shaming myself as Rakshana. I had vowed to do better until they gave me my task. I was to kill the girl with hair like fire and eyes the color of sea foam.
A girl that both intrigued me and frustrated me all at once. The girl I had grown to care about as a friend and possibly something more. Mother Elena told me to not be afraid to love. But everything I had ever loved was always ripped away from me, like Amar.
I lie back down on the cot and stare at the dirty and cracked plaster on the ceiling, thinking. There was no way I could keep my secret from her for very long. It would eat me up inside, lying to her. She trusted me too much when she shouldn't trust me at all. She was constantly testing her boundaries. With the Realms. With me. The slight smile that always graced her full, pink lips drove me mad.
How could I betray her? I didn't know if I could, but how could the Rakshana expect me too? If I admitted it to myself, I knew they wanted me to kill her because they saw what I fervently had been denying. It was impossible anyway, these growing feelings. She was rich and I was her family's coach driver. She was a girl of class and I was just the youngest son of a merchant. She was English and I was an Indian.
I rolled over and punched the lumpy pillow out of frustration, a familiar pricking behind my eyes. I would no longer deny my tears.
So for the first time in many years, I start to cry. I cry for what I've lost. Amar, Mata, India. And I cry for everything I could lose. My place with the Rakshana, a place where I belong, my life, and above all, her.
Her long copper hair, her freckles, her full, tantalizing lips, her wit and her laugh. And those beautiful and haunting eyes. To never gaze at her face again, to never argue with her, or to never be in her presence are what I fear the most.
As I cry, I let her name roll of my tongue, sweet like the summer rain. It's no more than a whisper, spoken like a prayer, and all I am allowed to possess.
"Gemma," I sigh into the night air.
And again I cry for what I cannot have, Mother Elena's warnings about not being afraid to love mocking me.
Love.
What is the point of love when you cannot protect what you hold dear? Taking deep, quavering breaths, I slow my tears and steel myself for the task ahead; praying I won't have to do what is expected of me.
Love was all I had left. If it could not dace the both of us, then we were doomed.
A/N: Mata means mother in Hindi. I hope you enjoy the second installment. I would really enjoy sleeping since it is 4am on my side of the planet. Leave me love!