Forbidden Devotion Ch. 03

Remi sighed and sucked in an inhale of frustration. "If only if it were that simple. A couple of my patients said some of the animals of the forest have become like savage beasts." She walked with nervous trembles in her legs and jerked back a sheet from an elf that had already joined the dead. "Looks like something chewed on him like he was tonight's supper."

Jayden and Ilana shrank back and turned away from the gore and accompanying nauseating odor of putrefying flesh. The victim had a chunk torn from his stomach with a blood red pool of guts and organs visible in the center of his body. The teeth marks surrounding the wound tripled the size of an elf's. The expression frozen in time on the dead's face spoke of the terrifying circumstances surrounding his final moments. Everyone knew they may come face-to-face with whatever caused those expressions.

Jayden asked, "Where do the flowers bloom?"

Remi hid the corpse from view. "There's a concentration of them on the other side of the forest. You can't miss them. They're so pretty."

Ilana felt ten tons of pressure fall upon her shoulders. Saving her people was going to take more than she could have imagined and she would have to become more than she thought was possible. It was a constant fight to keep the negative thoughts about how it was impossible from penetrating her psyche.

Before they could accept the mission, Remi was already scribbling on a parchment and both waited until she handed it to Jayden.

"The flowers are here. Please help," Remi pleaded.

Jayden read it like he was reading a foreign language and folded and stuffed it into his pocket hoping it would make sense when he needed it to. "I'll help any way I can."

Ilana wanted to believe that but she couldn't shake the feeling that he had more to share and things were getting serious to the point where she had to know. "You want to help us and what?"

Jayden scoffed and rolled his eyes. "Oh, God, Ilana. Give it a rest, will you?"

Ilana was getting irritated like a mosquito was dancing around her that wouldn't go away. "Why is it so hard for you to trust me? I've been nothing but honest with you!"

Jayden curled his arms over his torso. "There are some things I'm not ready to tell you. Is that hard for you to understand?"

Ilana edged closer to him and raised her frustrated voice with a menacing finger directed at him. "If I'm going to travel with you, I have a right to know who I'm traveling with! Can you understand that?"

Remi stuck her arm into their bickering and eased in the middle of it with a rush of bravery. "We're not doing this now! We're going to get along, okay?" Remi put her hands together like she was praying for peace. "We're not going to start a war with everything else happening, right? Please!"

"Fine!" Jayden and Ilana spoke at the same time but angled away from each other.

Ilana was reacting not only to the pressure she placed on herself but the turmoil surrounding them and the apparent mutual affinity Jayden and Remi seemed to have. Not to mention adding in the loss of her people and not knowing who might be next. Oh, and she was no longer of royalty. How much could one elf take in such a short time?

She never dreamed any of this would befall her and found herself asking that very question but its answer wasn't ready to reveal itself.

Ilana gathered herself and asked, "Remi, How is Nadine?"

Remi scampered to another patient that was moaning and tossing and turning. "She's doing the best she can. You should go see her. She'd be thrilled!"

"I'm well ahead of you, sis," she said as Remi threw herself into her arms.

Having her so tight brought her heart rate down to normal.

Remi spoke into her ear. "Be careful! Promise me that we'll see each other again!"

Ilana replied, "You bet we will. I didn't come this far to kick the bucket."

As they detached, Remi slipped a bottle of green liquid into her palm. "If you start feeling like something is wrong, take this."

She pecked Remi's cheek. "Thank you. I'll be back."

And like that, she marched right out and headed to climb the incline beyond the clinic.

Jayden, without a word uttered his way, hurried after her.

Ilana had a renewed determination to fulfill the purpose given to her. She hoped her piercing focus on her objective would shield out the rest of the noise.

"Ilana! Hey, Ilana!" Jayden called from behind but she kept marching until he caught up to her and blocked her path. "Ilana! What's your problem?"

She lowered her eyes, closed them, and exhaled slowly like she was trying to calm herself to keep her rage from rising to the surface again. Of the mix of emotions that bubbled within, anger was the most foreign. She was usually laid back and in control but the circumstances were causing her to be anything except. All she wanted was the nightmare to resolve itself and to be with the man that occupied her fantasies but neither were a reality and both seemed to taunt her as they seemed to sit just out of her reach.

The cure for the plague may take a miracle to acquire but Jayden was in front of her and she felt she could do something about the mounting tension he was causing to flood inside her. If they had a chance of being together, the burning question she kept asking him would need to be answered and now.

Nadine wasn't far away and Ilana hoped she would provide her the answers she sought. For the time being, would answer his question with a deflecting shield to hide her frustrations.

Ilana forced a disingenuous smile at him. "I'm okay. Why do you think I have a problem?"

The whites of Jayden's eyes were being overtaken by bloodshot red. "You know why! You stomped off like that without me."

"I'm sorry. I'm going through a lot and I think I know what to do about our situation so I wanted to get right to it. We don't have time to spare."

Jayden calmed himself with a release of breath. "We're in this together. I told you that. I won't leave your side."

Ilana's urge to melt was halted by the distrust that had formed but she needed him near for a while longer to get the truth for which she hunted. "I won't forget. Come on, let's go to Nadine. I can't wait for you to meet her."

Jayden didn't appear to be wild about the idea for some reason but he had to move his feet to catch Ilana who was in a full sprint towards the rear of the forest.

It wasn't long before the two breached a dense group of trees to find a small clearing.

The peace and singing of the orioles were a vast contrast to the terrors in the rest of the woods.

Before them was a tree that sprouted through the hunter green canopy and seemed to reach to the clouds. A purple tree with branches that grew pink leaves. Many of those branches were curled around elves and surrounding them with a blue cocoon of light.

Jayden was in a daze of awe while he absorb the spectacle. It was something no human eyes had ever seen but was no less impressive to the elven races.

"Wow, I've never seen anything like this..." Jayden said still mesmerized.

Ilana was empathetically happy. "She's quite the marvel isn't she?"

Jayden redirected his gaze at Ilana. "She?"

Ilana opened her hands towards the tree as to present its magnificence. "Yes. Meet Nadine, the lifeblood of the forest!"

"Nadine is a plant? Unbelievable."

"Well, she used to be a forest elf, one of the elders, but when she died, her soul occupied this tree. She gives life to everything you see here. So, what do you think?"

Jayden's jaw nearly detached with his attention back on Nadine. "I think it's the most amazing thing I've laid eyes on." He looked at Ilana again. "Oh, I meant the second most amazing thing."

Ilana giggled with a blush. "Thanks, but looking beautiful isn't all she can do. See those elves entangled in the branches up there?" Jayden nodded. "She's healing them. That's the blue light you see. When she's finished, they'll feel like a brand new elf again."

"Nice..."

"Welcome, Jayden," spoke the tree in a voice of what sounded to be an elderly woman.

Jayden gasped with a frightened back step. "Wha, what? The tree...talks?"

Ilana curled her brows and scratched her head. "I guess you don't have talking trees in your world? That's strange."

"Do not be afraid, hehe," Nadine spoke once more with a quickly contained chuckle. "I exist to serve those that require my aid."

Jayden's expression of suspicion faded into a look of relaxation though an uncomfortable one. He had to trust her because it wasn't as though he had an option B.

"This is the first time in my life I've been laughed at by a plant," Jayden said releasing most of the tension from his body. "But, I can take a little ribbing."

"I know your secret," Nadine said telepathically to Jayden. Her voice echoed between his ears. He almost started to panic but with her friendly tone, realized they were on the same side. "If you truly love Ilana, you will do what you know in your soul to be the right thing."

"I don't want her to misunderstand what I'm doing," Jayden replied in his thoughts.

"She might understand more than you think but you can't do this without her. The longer you wait, the more she will..."

"Hate me, I know. That's the last thing I want but you're right. I don't have a choice. Sigh..." Jayden replied to Nadine. He had Ilana in his sights with sorrow and a regret for something he'd yet to speak. "Ilana, I have to tell you something."

"What's wrong?" Ilana asked with her ears perked up desperately waiting for his confession.

She began to subconsciously mimic the emotions in his heart as she awaited him to unravel some of his mystery. As much as she needed to know, in a way, she began to wonder if she wanted to given his difficulty bringing what's inside to the light. It had her stomach collapsing upon itself but she braced herself for it.

"Ilana, uh, I know where my sister, Becca, is right now," Jayden struggled to spit out. "I've known the whole time."

Ilana, knowing how much Becca meant to him, instinctively drew closer to Jayden yet she withheld the comfort of her touch and care until she heard the entirety of his admission. "Where is she?"

"In Drakkus. I tracked her there but I ran into the small problem of the magical barrier your people surrounded their homeland with. The dark elves took her captive soon after she traveled here. She was looking for adventure by visiting a foreign land but found more than she wished she had."

Ilana was rocked with disbelief. "So, you tried to get through our shield, didn't you?"

"Yes," Jayden said though his words barely registered in her ears.

"And you knew if you got in, they could get out?" Ilana said with her blood on verge of igniting.

Jayden was finding it more possible to beat a rock troll into submission with his bare hands than to line his eyes up with Ilana's but he forced himself to do so. "Yes, but I obviously didn't get through it."

"You know what dark elves can do and you still risked letting them out? Did you forget how they halved the size of the mountains near here? You suppose that black smoking hole in the ground we saw on the way here made itself?"

"I know!" Jayden snapped but some of his anger was turned towards himself. "I thought better of it, okay? I was hoping someone might help me find the special artifacts and we could fight them together if they escaped. That's why I'm here."

Ilana's fantasy was shattering into a million pieces. Her fingers couldn't stop vibrating as her eyes drenched in tears.

"So, you...don't care about me? You're here...only for your sister?" Ilana said as her speech was overtaken with her cries.

She angled away from Jayden and an uncontrollable waterfall covered her face. She tried her best to cover it as she burst into a bawl that started with sniffles but morphed into loud cries. It was like she wanted him to hear her hurt in the hopes he would feel at least some of it himself.

Ilana couldn't recall a time she was so crushed and she didn't know what to do with herself.

She peeked at Jayden through her blurred vision and he looked as though his confession had destroyed him just as much.

Jayden walked forward. His natural response was to reach with a hand of comfort but he thought better of his ill-timed gesture. "Ilana, I do care about you. Really."

Ilana cried for a few minutes before she could calm herself enough to talk. "How can...I...believe anything you say?" She sniffed and tried wiping her tears but more replaced them. "You...were...going to get us killed for...your sister? How can I forgive that?"

"Because I really do like you. A lot. I want this to work between us."

"How?" Ilana yelled with a scoffing chuckle while wiping her emotions again. "How can you say that when you could have ruined our land? My land?"

Jayden pointed in the direction of her sister's clinic. "What would you have done if Remi was captured? Would your first instinct not be to rescue her?"

"We're not talking about Remi!" Ilana hollered louder than before. "This is about you lying to me! I put my trust in you! Gave up my life for you! Well, yeah, sure, the barrier is weakening around Drakkus because you're going to help it, right? I guess it's not a total lie, huh?"

Jayden tossed his hands up in a show of ignorance. "I don't know what I'm going to do! Trust me when I say that I don't intend to hurt you or any of your people! Believe me when I say that I want to be with you!"

Ilana stepped with a forceful foot forward in front of him. "Why didn't you tell me this in the beginning? I might have helped you. I was crazy about you! I would have done anything you wanted me to do."

Jayden sighed. "Your reaction just now is the answer to your question. I didn't want to hurt you but I screwed that up, too. Watching you cry, especially because of my stupidity, is tearing me apart. I understand if you hate me. I deserve it. You can tell the king he was right about me if you want."

On some level, Jayden was penetrating her, but she couldn't be sure if it was for the best. She was still beyond devastated and her feelings were being taken through a blender.

Ilana was staring off in the distance at nothing in particular purposely failing to make contact with his eyes. "Is it normal for human males to not talk to their women?"

"Sometimes. I know it's something I need to work on."

Ilana was on the brink of emotional breakdown. With the plague, her people including her sister being in danger, and the possibly of having to fight monsters in the forest, it was becoming too much.

She shook her head and waved him off with a turn away from him. "I can't look at you now. I don't want to talk to you anymore."

Jayden asked, "Anymore ever or anymore right now?"

Ilana, firmly and as seriously as she could speak it, said, "Jayden, it's best that you just leave now. Go away so I can talk to Nadine."

Jayden hit his own jaw with his knuckles a couple of times. He took in the sight of Ilana for a few lingering seconds as if it might be the last time he had the pleasure of doing so.

A minute later, Ilana heard the rustling of leaves and flora, the sign that Jayden had disappeared into the forest.

*****

Jayden was shuffling his way down the slope approaching Remi's clinic.

His verbal melee with Ilana was the only thing that occupied his mind despite the horrors he found himself the center of. Despite every breath potentially being his last. There was no greater nightmare than losing Ilana especially when the finger could only be pointed at the man in the mirror.

He told her the whole truth and nothing but the truth and maybe there was some peace to be found in that. Telling the truth was supposed to lift burdens but his grew heavier. Almost enough weight to drag him to the dirt but it did slow his paces.

He found no error in needing to rescue his sister but it was in not putting his trust in Ilana.

No, maybe it was more than that. The lack of trust he had for Ilana, sure, was an issue for the elf. There could be no relationship without it but Jayden drilled deeper. Anyone traveling alone in Nevin was always at risk of coming into contact with certain death with the monsters roaming the land. She told him this before. Ilana said she'd given up her life for Jayden but it likely meant more than simply her title and royal standing. Without someone at her side, she may have had to face those dangers alone, and as talented as Ilana was with a staff and magic, survival would be questionable at best.

It was perhaps in that as to why the elf was tormented more so than him nearly unleashing hell on Nevin. It wasn't unlike a man to completely miss the point of an argument with his woman whether she was human or elven.

In retrospect it was nothing short of a fool's folly going into the homeland of some of the deadliest beings in existence alone. He never had a way to navigate the barrier anyhow. One rarely functioned under any semblance of logic when loved ones were in peril. It was a blessing for everyone that Jayden didn't succeed. Still, Becca was in Drakkus with no foreseeable way to bring her out safely. Not without alienating the entire continent and most notably, the elf he desired so greatly. He could only pray for a second chance.

The reality was Jayden would struggle to find reason to exist without Becca.

When they were born, their parents were still teens and more interested in nightclubbing and barhopping than raising kids. That was too much of a dent in their lifestyle.

Jayden and Becca did some hopping of their own from orphanage to adoptive home and back to the orphanage.

While Becca could take a cursory glance at a complex equation and decipher its answer, she was also after the ultimate thrills be it finding her adoptive siblings' stash of weed and having a party with it, taking the family's car for a joy ride without permission, or leaving in the middle of the night seeking adventure in the roughest part of town.

This made it quite the challenge to find a family that wanted to keep them. They would grow tired of being passed around like they were some kind of disease but through it all, they had each other.

Jayden was always the older brother protecting little sis. Whether it was from gangs using only a stick for a weapon or pit bulls showing their canines and foaming at the mouth, nothing was going to touch his sis.

By sheer luck, they eventually were taken in by a family that were able to turn both their focuses towards school and keep them there. It was a breeze for Becca and she would go on to become a scientist for the military. While she helped her brother along the way, Jayden took a detour from college to become a firefighter. He had the thrill-seeking bug himself, though to a smaller degree than Becca, but his main desire was to help others in need that couldn't help themselves. Show them someone out there cares of their wellbeing.

It was easy to be bitter and angry at the sperm and egg donors that birthed Jayden and Becca, even more so after what their brilliant children had become. Though Jayden's frame was chiseled from a stone, he would sometimes become weak like a kitten when he heard stories about the times his friends spent with their parents especially around the holidays. He loved his adoptive family, of course, but nothing could replace the love he missed from his blood parents.

He would gravitate towards nearly anyone that took an interest in him no matter who they were in a fruitless attempt to fill the void but Becca was always there to remind him to do the right thing. To remind him that she was still there.