That night, I couldn't sleep. My brain felt like a browser with fifty tabs open at once, and I had no idea where the music was coming from. The image of Caspian standing upright in the middle of a storm without a single drop of water touching his skin kept replaying in my head like a broken cassette tape. I repeatedly convinced myself that maybe it had just been an optical illusion, or maybe Caspian had used some ridiculously advanced waterproofing spray all over his body. But my logic kept saying: Avery, that makes no sense.
The next morning, I tried to act as normal as possible. I sat on the living room sofa, soft enough to make you forget the outside world was falling apart, staring at my laptop as I searched for graphic design jobs. But my focus scattered when my phone vibrated on the table.
The name on the screen made my stomach clench instantly. Mark.
I took a long breath, trying to steady my voice before sliding the green button. "Yeah?"
"Avery," Mark's voice sounded distant, as if he couldn't be bothered to talk to me. "I just remembered. My game console and vinyl collection got packed into the boxes I sent you. I need that stuff now. My girlfriend—I mean, Chloe—wants to listen to jazz this afternoon."
My throat suddenly felt like someone had stuffed a baseball into it. I stared at the toes of my shoes, counting the fibers in the carpet beneath my feet so my tears wouldn't spill over. "You called me just for that? After you kicked me out onto the street?"
"Don't start with the drama, Avery. You know I hate negative vibes. Just send it by a delivery service or whatever. I don't want you coming here. It could be awkward for Chloe."
Awkward? He was worried about his mistress's feelings while I was trying to survive in a house where the chairs could move on their own?
"Mark, I don't even have money for lunch, and you're asking me to pay the shipping for your stuff?" My voice began to shake. My hand gripped the edge of the sofa until my knuckles turned white.
"That's not my problem anymore. I'll wait until four this afternoon."
Click.
He hung up just like that. I stared at the dark phone screen, feeling completely trapped. The tightness rose from my chest to my throat, hot and suffocating. I dropped my phone onto the sofa and covered my face with both hands. I didn't want to cry, really. Crying was exhausting and made my eyes swell like they'd been stung by bees. But my defenses crumbled anyway. One sob escaped. Then another.
"You jerk... selfish bastard... unbelievable..." I cursed between sobs, narrating my own misery to the silent living room walls.
Suddenly, I felt something strange. The temperature around me dropped, but it wasn't the usual blast of air-conditioning. There was an unusual dampness in the air. Then—drip... drip...
A drop of water fell right onto my nose. I blinked, wiped my face, and looked up.
My eyes went wide. There, exactly four inches above my head, a small dark-gray cloud was gathering. It was no bigger than a sofa cushion, but it looked completely real, complete with tiny flashes of static electricity inside. And what was even crazier, the cloud started raining.
Only on me. Only above my head.
"What the hell is this?" I shrieked, trying to scoot toward the end of the sofa. But the cloud moved with me! Wherever I went, it followed like a loyal pet, relentlessly drenching me with water so cold it was practically cruel.
"Stop! Hey, stop!" I swatted at the air, trying to scatter the cloud of vapor, but my hand passed right through it, and the cloud only grew thicker. Within seconds, my T-shirt was soaked through, and my wet hair clung limply to my cheeks.
I slumped helplessly onto the floor, crying even harder out of frustration. "Great. Now I'm being stalked by a rain cloud. My life has officially become a tragic cartoon."
"What are you doing here?"
That deep voice cut through the sound of rain falling indoors. I turned around with my face smeared with tears and running mascara. Caspian stood in the doorway of his room, wearing a black silk robe that looked incredibly expensive. His usually impassive face now looked deeply annoyed.
He looked at me, then at the cloud above my head, then back at me.
"Mr. Vane, please..." I sobbed, pointing above my head. "It won't go away! I don't know why—"
Caspian stepped closer. Every step he took made the room's temperature plummet further. He didn't look sympathetic; he looked furious. He stopped a yard away from me, his gray eyes flashing sharply like swords.
"I told you not to bring your human emotions into my home!" he snarled. His voice was low, but it trembled with tightly restrained emotion.
"I didn't do it on purpose! I was just sad!" I protested, wiping away tears mixed with that supernatural rainwater. "Why are you yelling at me?"
Caspian didn't answer. He reached toward the cloud above my head, then clenched his fingers tightly. In an instant, the cloud dispersed into a puff of white smoke and vanished, leaving me sitting drenched on his expensive carpet.
He lowered his head, looking down at me with an unreadable expression. "Your emotions are the trigger, Avery. You're making my power leak into the world!"
I looked up, meeting his stare defiantly even as my body trembled. "Your power? What does that have to do with me?"
Caspian bent down, his face now only a few inches from mine. I could smell pine forest and something sharp, like the scent of air right before a storm.
"Because from now on," he whispered in a tone that nearly made my heart leap out of my chest, "every time your heart breaks, you risk destroying this entire place. And I won't let a human ruin my peace."
He didn't move away after he said it. His gaze traveled over my ruined face, the mascara tracks, the wet hair glued to my temple, and something in his jaw flexed as if he were biting down on words he refused to let out.
Then, slowly, he lifted his hand.
His thumb touched my cheekbone. It was cold—shockingly cold—but the touch itself was careful, almost precise, as he dragged it across my skin and wiped away a streak of black mascara and the last tear clinging there. The pad of his thumb lingered at the corner of my eye for one beat too long.
"Waste of water," he murmured, so close I felt his breath against my lips.
I couldn't answer. My heart had stopped crying and started doing something much more dangerous. A shiver ran from the place he'd touched all the way down my spine, and it had nothing to do with the cold rain soaking my T-shirt.
His eyes darkened, silver sliding into storm gray, and for a second I was sure he could feel exactly what that touch had done to me.
He straightened again, turning away as if looking at me were a heavy burden. "Take a shower. And don't you dare think about that bastard again unless you want me to drown you along with him."
Caspian turned and walked away, leaving me still trembling on the floor. I stared at his back, feeling confused, irritated, and... for some reason, there was a strange sting in my chest that had nothing to do with Mark.
His power leaked out because of me? What did he mean?