Chapter 131: The Unfolding Truth XI

Third Person POV

Sonita turned the page. The words on it did not reach her. She had read this section three times already and each time the sentences slid through her mind and left nothing behind.

She kept her eyes on the page anyway because the alternative was sitting in a quiet cottage with her thoughts and her thoughts were not cooperative today.

She looked up.

The room was still. The fire had settled into a low steady burn. The second cup on the shelf had not moved. The extra sleeping mat was rolled against the wall where it always was in the mornings.

Helen was not in the cottage.

Sonita had not noticed the exact moment she registered this, but she registered it now. The particular quality of the silence was different from the silence of someone being quiet in a nearby room. It was the silence of a space that only had one person in it.

"Helen," she called.

Nothing came back.

"Helen." Louder.

Still nothing.

She set the book down and pushed herself up from the chair and went to the door. She pushed it open and stepped outside.

The garden was empty. The fence was empty. The path that ran along the front of the cottage toward the tree line had no one on it. She stood for a moment and looked in every direction and found the same thing in all of them.

She walked toward the stream.

Helen was not there either.

But on a flat stone near the water’s edge, something dark caught Sonita’s eye. She crouched down and pressed her fingers to it. They came back black. She rubbed her thumb against her fingers and looked at the color.

The dye.

The one she mixed and applied to Helen’s hair whenever the white started showing through. She looked at the stone and then at the water moving past it, clear and unhurried, carrying nothing.

"It must be fading again," she said to herself. She straightened up. "I will do it when she gets back."

She kept walking.

Until she heard it before she saw anything.

A sound coming from somewhere ahead of her, past the curve where the stream bent and the trees grew thicker.

She stopped and tilted her head. It was low and soft and she could not place it immediately, which was unusual. Sonita was good at placing sounds. She had grown up in a house where listening was a survival skill.

This sound she knew. She just did not want to know it.

She followed it anyway.

The cave was tucked behind the trees near the far bank, half hidden by the way the rock formation came down and the vegetation had grown up to meet it. She had seen the opening before. She had never gone inside.

She walked toward it now.

She stepped through the opening and stopped.

The light inside was dim and warm, coming in through the entrance in one long slant. In that light she saw them clearly and completely and for a moment she did not move and did not speak.

Kai’s shirt was not on him. His back was bare, smooth and warm-looking in the dim light, the muscles across it shifting with his breathing. Helen was beneath him, her gown pulled up, her hands on his back, her head tipped slightly to the side where his mouth had been moving against her neck.

They were pressed close together and moving together and Helen was making a sound that Sonita had never heard from her before and immediately understood.

"Helen."

Her voice came out sharp. A single word, clipped and clear, cutting through the dim of the cave like something thrown.

Helen froze.

Every part of her at once. Her hands stopped. Her breath stopped. Her eyes came open and went wide and found Sonita standing in the entrance with the light behind her.

Her hands pushed at Kai’s chest. He lifted himself slowly, without panic, without any of the guilty scramble that Sonita would have expected from anyone else. He looked at her with those green eyes, calm and steady the way they were always calm and steady, and said nothing.

Helen was already pulling her gown back into place, her fingers quick and fumbling, her face going from pink to deep red in the space of a few seconds. Her hair fell forward around her face as she moved and it was white. All of it. The black was completely gone, the natural color back as if it had never been hidden.

"Sonita..." Helen started.

Sonita was already walking away.

****

"Sonita. Wait."

She kept walking. The trees moved past her. The stream was somewhere to her left.

"Sonita, please."

A hand caught her wrist from behind. She stopped but did not turn. Helen had run after her. She could hear her breathing, still a little fast.

When Sonita finally turned around Helen’s face was still flushed and her white hair was still wet at the ends and her gown was still slightly off where she had straightened it in a hurry.

"What," Sonita said. Flat and cold.

"I can explain."

Sonita looked at her. She took in the white hair. The gown. The cave somewhere behind them where Kai was presumably finding his shirt.

"What happened to your hair," she said. Quiet. The quieter she got the more careful her words became and Helen knew that. "Do not tell me you showed him. Do not tell me you are already sharing things with him that you have not shared with most people in your life."

Helen’s hand went up to her hair automatically. Her fingers touched the white. She had forgotten about it.

"He is kind," she said. "He is easy to be around. I have never had someone like that who was not you."

"You do not need someone like that," Sonita said. Her arms were crossed tightly. "I am here. I have always been here."

She looked away. Her jaw moved.

"These men are not honest, Helen. They are not loyal. They do not stay."

A short laugh. Nothing happy in it. "You met this one weeks ago." Her eyes were wet at the edges. "And you are already in a cave with him. With your gown around your waist."

She shook her head once and pressed her lips together.

"Sonita."

"You do not know him."

"I am getting to know him." Helen’s voice was rising slightly, the steady tone she used when she had decided something and was not going to be moved from it. "I know this is uncomfortable for you. I understand that. But I want things too. I want to be a normal girl who likes someone and lets herself like someone. I want that."

Sonita went still. "So you are in love with him now."

"I did not say that."

"You just said you want to let yourself like him. What else is that?"

"It means I want to try." Helen looked at her directly. "Sonita, what is the actual problem here? What is it? Every time he comes you act like he has done something to you personally. What has he done?"

"He is the problem," Sonita said. "Ever since he showed up you have been different. You are distracted. You are out of the cottage every time I turn around. You are washing the dye out of your hair in streams where anyone could walk past. You are not thinking clearly."

"What is wrong with not thinking clearly?" Helen said. Her voice had an edge now that Sonita rarely heard from her. "What is wrong with wanting a man around me? Am I only supposed to exist in this cottage with you forever? Is that what you want?"

Sonita’s jaw tightened. "You do not get it."

"No." Helen’s grey eyes held steady. "You do not get it."

They looked at each other. The forest was still around them. Even the birds had found something else to do.

"I have noticed how you look at him," Helen said. Her voice had come down from the edge. She was not angry now. She was more careful than angry. "I have watched you. I know you might have feelings for him. But you will not let yourself admit it."

Sonita’s expression went very still.

"What nonsense are you talking about," she said. Low.

Helen exhaled. Not the slow kind. The kind that came out all at once, like something she had been holding had gotten too heavy and she had finally decided to put it down.

"I don’t know much about people." She looked down at her hands. Her fingers were twisting together. She caught herself doing it and stopped. Then started again.

"I haven’t been around enough of them to be sure about most things." A pause. She tucked a piece of white hair behind her ear.

"But I know what I see." She looked up at Sonita.

"The way you look at him when you think no one is watching." Her voice was quiet. Not soft. Just tired.

"The way your face changes when he talks to me." She swallowed.

"The fact that you can’t be in the same space as him without something in you going tight."

Sonita opened her mouth. Helen kept going.

"The fact that he doesn’t feel the same way about you." She said it more slowly this time. Each word was separate.

"That’s what’s making you furious." She pressed her lips together for a moment. "And you’re taking it out on me."

She stopped. Her hands were still now. Her hair was still tucked behind her ear. Her grey eyes were steady on Sonita’s face.

Sonita stared at her.

Helen kept going. "I understand what jealousy looks like. Even if it is not something you would call it. It is fine to feel what you feel. But Sonita." She looked at her friend’s face. "This is my life."

Sonita breathed through her nose. Her hands were at her sides and they were still but the stillness was the kind that required effort to maintain.

"Even if it is your life," she said slowly, "you are not meant to be with someone who is not like you. You know this. You know what you are. He does not. Does he?"

Helen said nothing.

"Being with him would produce something that has no place in this world," Sonita said. Her voice had gone quiet now, the sharp edge gone, something flatter and more final taking its place.

"You are the last of your kind, Helen. The actual last. And you want to spend your life with a werewolf? You want to create something that neither world would accept? In the name of what? Feelings you have had for a few weeks?"

Helen’s face went still.

Not cold. Not angry. Still. The way things went still when they had been struck somewhere real and were processing it before responding.

"Sonita," she said. Her voice was even and quiet and completely certain. "I appreciate that you care. I know you do. I know everything you do comes from caring." She held Sonita’s gaze without blinking. "But you do not decide how my life goes. Not this part. Not any part. If I want to be with someone. I will, and I will do it on my own terms."

Sonita looked at her.

The forest sat around them quietly and unhurriedly. The stream moved somewhere nearby. The light was coming through the trees at the angle it came through in the late afternoon, shifting and warm, falling across both of them without preference.

Sonita shook her head then laughed, painfully

It was small. Almost to herself.

"I cannot believe this," she said quietly and turned away.