Promises and Pomegranates by Sav R. Miller
Chapter 28
When I bringup my sisters, I’m certainly not expecting Kal to offer to take me to them.
I feel like that kind of goes against the rules of kidnapping, bringing the captive around the people who want her home.
Then again, I’ve never been on the business end of a situation like this, so what do I know?
Marcelline helps me pack, quietly taking clothes from my dresser and placing them into my open suitcase. I glance at her as she moves, toying with the journal in my hands, wondering if I should take it with me.
Before coming to the island, writing was as second nature to me as breathing. It was where I funneled the inspiration gathered from the poems and books I read, jotting down random musings or fictionalized anecdotes about my life.
I haven’t touched the journal since my arrival, inspiration few and far between, despite the serenity around the house. Technically speaking, the Asphodel is the perfect place for a writer’s retreat, though it feels odd creating anything in a place so plagued by death and darkness.
Perhaps that’s why I haven’t tried.
“What do you think, Marcelline?” Holding up the journal, I turn it so she can see the pink leather cover. “Should I try to pick up an old hobby?”
She purses her lips, twirling the end of a strand of her strawberry blonde hair. Most of our relationship up to this point has been me firing words at random, and her dodging every bullet, ignoring my comments and questions unless Kal is around.
“What’s the hobby?” she asks, her voice raspy, as if rough from lack of use.
“Um, writing.” I perch on the edge of the bed, flipping through the pages, my neat handwriting floating by with each turn.
“Like, stories? Poems?”
Heat scorches across my face, flames of embarrassment licking my cheeks. “Both, kind of. I used to do it all the time, but to be honest, I kind of forgot about it since coming to Aplana.”
She nods, widening her blue eyes. “Yeah, the island has that effect on people. Like you come here, and your previous identity kind of just... evaporates. Some locals call it the New England Bermuda Effect. I had an aunt who said Aplana was filled with an ancient, ancestral magic that replaces a person’s nature with that of the island’s.”
“Do you think that?”
“No, I just think it’s easy to forget everything the second your feet touch sand.” Marcelline shrugs, pointing at my journal. “Doubly so when you’re busy falling in love.”
The heat spreads from my face, scoring a path down my sternum, and finally settling in my gut. I lean forward, shoving the journal into the front pocket of my suitcase, and try to steel myself against her comment, even as my pulse beats so loud and fast, I think it might launch out of my throat.
“Definitely the sand,” I say quickly, over the bile teasing my esophagus.
Marcelline presses her mouth into a thin line, then nods, dropping one last T-shirt into the suitcase. “Yeah,” she agrees, clamming up like every other time I’ve tried to start a conversation. “You’re probably right.”
I don’t see her again before we leave the house, and I dart outside to the back yard before we load into the town car, speaking in low, soothing tones to the garden that still has not bloomed.
Staring out at the expanse of soil, I sigh, unsure of what exactly to say. “All the gardening blogs suggest talking to your plants. That, even though there’s no actual science to back that data up, they swear it makes a difference. So, here I am. Temporarily. We’re about to go to Boston for a bit, but when I come back, I expect a fully flourishing garden, okay?”
If Mamá could see me now.She’d probably accuse me of witchcraft and burn me at the stake.
“I get it,” I tell them, hoping the bulbs can hear beneath the dirt. “You’re afraid of what waits for you on the other side of the soil. You’re warm and comfortable where you are now. Safe, even. It’s terrifying, trying to find courage to take a leap of faith, but you can’t spend eternity hiding. Eventually, you have to take the opportunities that are thrust upon you, and trust that the universe knows what it’s doing.”
Hope bursts like a backed-up pipe in my chest, but I stuff it back down where it belongs, not wanting to entertain that thought.
“April is the cruelest month,” I add, quoting The Waste Land, like the flowers might appreciate the sentiment. “Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain. It’s time.”
When I turn around, I see Kal hovering by the back gate, watching me with an unreadable expression. I approach him slowly, shame heavy in my chest.
“Is your garden a big T. S. Eliot fan?” he asks, his face shifting into one of quiet amusement.
“Don’t laugh,” I say, glancing up at the sky, noting the thick clouds rolling in over the ocean. “Love is the greatest act of revitalization, and I happen to think poetry is the best way to relay that.”
He doesn’t say anything as I move around him, leading the way to the front of the house where our car sits, Marcelline already in the front passenger seat.
It’s raining when we take off, which doesn’t really do much to quash my nerves as soon as we board Kal’s jet. Once we’re able to get up and move around, I unbuckle myself from my seat and go to the bedroom, climbing under the luxurious covers, trying not to let Marcelline’s words from earlier take root in my soul.
“She doesn’t know me,” I whisper to myself and the pillow. “She doesn’t get to decide if I’m falling in love.” I pause, considering. At what point does an obsession become more?
Probably when you start to feel it’s being returned.
‘If you’re jealous, I’m a goddamn psychopath.’
Scoffing, I push the memory of him saying that to me to the dark recesses of my brain, where I push everything else I don’t want to deal with. “Besides, that would be crazy, right?”
A throat clears in the doorway, and my entire body locks up, fear streaming down my spine. I push up on my elbow, looking at Kal as he leans against the doorway, a martini glass filled with a red liquid in hand.
Just the sight of his devilishly handsome face causes my stomach to flutter, and I swallow over the lump that forms, blocking all coherent thought.
“Talking to yourself again?” he asks, entering the room, setting the glass down on the shelf above the bed. For several seconds, he doesn’t make a move to get in the bed with me, and apprehension floods my psyche, making me wonder how much he heard.
“I’m great company,” I say, lifting one shoulder so it’s outside the blankets.
“Can’t argue with that.” Reaching up, he grabs the drink again, holding it out to me. “I had Marcelline make this. Thought it might help with your apparent fear of planes. Don’t ask what’s in it, because I have no idea, except I told her to use pomegranate syrup.”
Eyeing the drink, I arch an eyebrow. “You keep pomegranate syrup stocked on your jet?”
“I do now.” His gaze doesn’t waver from mine; it’s strong, bold, daring. Everything I’ve always wanted to believe myself to be, he manifests without even seeming to try.
“You know I’m not twenty-one yet, right?” I joke, tension thick in the air between us.
“Age, I do defy thee,” he says, Shakespeare rolling off his tongue as he gestures for me to take the glass. I’m not even sure he realizes he’s done it, or if he even notices the way it changes the atmosphere and rewrites the coding of my DNA.
Maybe he’s just so used to quoting poems to me that it doesn’t taste any different falling from his lips now. Maybe he doesn’t mean anything by it.
Heart in my throat, pulsing until I can feel nothing else, I take the drink from his hand and sip. As the cool, sweet liquid glides down, cooling me where his gaze makes me warm, I know.
In the pit of my stomach, in the fabric of my soul, I know.
I’m in love with my husband.
* * *
When we land in Boston,I’m not expecting every news camera in the city to be waiting at the airport gates, desperate to get an exclusive first look at the girl kidnapped by Doctor Death.
I don’t know why—maybe because the people in Aplana didn’t seem to care, or believe the story—but it certainly never crossed my mind that people would be salivating to hear my side of it.
Kal follows me down the plane stairs, sticking close to my side as we’re greeted immediately by a security team. The one in front, with a neck as thick as a tree trunk and olive skin, nods at Kal when we approach.
Cameras flash from behind the glass windows, making me a little dizzy even as I keep my gaze trained on my shoes. For the first time since leaving Boston, I’m wearing pink Louboutins, paired with a black Givenchy lace and velvet minidress I’d never have dared wear while under my parents’ roof.
Or with Mateo, considering the top is sheer and the skirt barely grazes mid-thigh. He’d have considered that an invitation.
Half of me had been expecting Kal to balk at the attire, or at least try to get beneath it, but when I came out of the jet’s bathroom, he’d barely noticed the change at all.
“Best course of action is to just take her straight on through,” the security guard is saying. “There’s an SUV waiting for you in the parking lot, and it’s scheduled to take you right to the Riccis’ home front.”
I blink up at Kal. “We’re going to my parents’ first?”
He looks at me quizzically. “Of course. That’s the entire reason we flew in.”
Butterflies erupt in my stomach, a swarm taking flight all at once. I wrap my arms around it, trying to ignore the sensation.
Kal’s features harden, and he asks for a second alone. “Elena. What is it?”
Dread pulses in a harsh stream up and down my spine, my skin burning up with the weight of my parents’ judgment. Now that we’re back in town, I can already feel my soul clamoring for their approval, even though neither of them fully deserve it.
“It’s nothing,” I say, giving a little shake of my head.
The creases at the corners of his lips deepen the more his frown curves down, and then he’s stepping into me, reaching up and fisting the back of my head, tilting my chin up so I’m forced to keep eye contact. “Don’t lie to me, little one. Don’t shut me out when I’ve not done that to you.”
Not entirely true,I insist silently, although he has given me more than I’d ever anticipated. Maybe I should learn to be happy with what I’ve got.
“I just didn’t realize I’d be seeing them so soon.”
“Do you not want to? As far as I know, your sisters still live there—”
“No, it’s okay. Really.” I flutter my lashes, eager to move on from the subject. “I think I was just hoping we’d get some alone time before.”
“We were alone on the flight.”
Rolling my eyes, I glance out my peripheral at the crowd around us; they mill about, paying us no attention, and we’re facing away from the windows. “I meant this kind of alone time,” I say, lowering my voice along with my hand, cupping him through the fabric of his dress pants.
His fingers tighten, pulling at my roots, and he grunts. “Be careful what you ask for, little one. I’m liable to bend you over the stair cart and fuck you in front of the whole city.”
The thought sends a delicious tingle racing down my back, warming in my core. “Then why don’t you?”
Stepping even closer, so my hand is trapped between our pelvises, Kal grins wickedly. Craning his neck, he presses his lips against the shell of my ear, making me shiver. “You want them to watch while I fuck you? Show them how wrong they were about the bad doctor and his little captive? That you’re not only a willing participant in all of this, but a desperate, needy little cock whore who begs for my cum every night?”
Do I want that? For people to bear witness when he’s inside me, claiming me, marking me as his?
“All the men would be so fucking angry with me for getting to be with you.” His voice breaks, as if he’s losing himself to the fantasy. “And the women, too, mad that you’ve attained what none of them ever could. And all they’d be able to do is watch.”
“Fuck,” I breathe, the word slipping out before I can stop it, my pulse jumping between my thighs. That one syllable is confirmation, though, and all he apparently needs to know.
Groaning, he retreats, and I’m left cold and unsatisfied, choking on how much I want him. His grin widens, revealing those perfect teeth that spend so much time sinking into my flesh, and he wipes the corner of my mouth where a little drool has leaked.
“We’ll put on a show,” he promises, squeezing the back of my neck. “Just not yet. First, we have business.”
I nod, letting him lead me back to the security team, lost in the thoughts swirling around in my brain, coagulating to solidify just how gone I am for this villain.
