Iridescent Chaos (Enchanted Chaos 3)

“And I hate being rained on,” I quip, moving my hand downward to tickle his thigh.

Tension suddenly ripples through his body and the rain abruptly stops. I start to smirk, but frown when I realize how in pain he looks, his lips set in a firm line, his muscles are all locked up, and his face is a bit pale.

“Did I hurt you?” I ask, worried I somehow accidentally zapped an electric voltage through his body or something.

He offers me a tight smile. “Nah, I just hate losing.” He carefully picks me up, moves me to the side, then stands up. “I’ll be right back.” He jumps to his feet and hurries out of the room.

I scratch my head. Is he really that upset that he lost our little what I thought was a playful fight?

“Just ignore him,” Foster tells me, drawing my attention to him. He’s standing in the kitchen near the island and has a weird, worried look on his face. “He’s just having a tantrum because he lost.”

I lower my feet to the floor to stand up, but instantly pull my feet onto the cushion as water soaks through my socks. “Is it that big of a deal to him that he lost?”

Foster lifts a shoulder as he turns to put the pizza into the oven. “East may joke around about a lot of things, but he hates losing. Hunter and Porter are that way too.”

“What about you?” I ask, even though I’m pretty sure I already know the answer.

A smile plays at his lips as he turns around again and rests his arms on top of the counter. “What do you think?”

“Hmm…” I thrum my fingers against my lips. “Well, when I first met you, I totally would’ve guessed you were a sore loser. Now, I think you might be too sweet to be that competitive.”

Amusement plays at the corners of his lips. “You think I’m sweet?”

I lift my shoulders. “You are to me. Well, or you started to be after you found out what I am.”

An elemental enchanter, just like him. As far as we know, we’re the only two of our kind, which wouldn’t be so weird except our kind can only be intimate with each other. Which leaves Foster being the only person I can ever intimately be with. That isn’t completely awful—I like Foster a lot—but sometimes I wonder if we’ll end up together only because there’s no one else we can be with.

His amusement fizzles as guilt creeps through the link. “Sky, I’m sorry—”

I hold up my hand. “Stop apologizing. I didn’t mean anything by that. I was just stating a fact.” I lower my hand to my lap. “I know you never wanted to treat me the way you did when we first met and I’ve already forgiven you for what happened.”

How could I not after how he showed me that he’d been drawn to me way before I ever worked up the courage to talk to him? How he wished he could actually like me, but thought he couldn’t because he believed I was human.

He rubs his lips together then steps back from the island and heads toward me with an intense look on his face. But as he enters the living room, he halts, his gaze dropping to the puddle-covered floor.

“I guess I should clean this up before it ruins the floor.” He lifts a hand and his skin begins to crackle with blue sparks of lightning.

I push to my feet and wade over to him. “Can I help?”

“Let me take care of this, okay? You’ve used your powers a lot today. I think that’s why you were having such a hard time channeling them when you were battling it out with East.”

“I think it was partially because the water was making me cold.”

“A little bit of chilliness shouldn’t affect your powers.” Without drying up the floor, he lowers his hands and inches toward me, his feet splashing in the water. “Are you feeling okay?”

I nod, tucking a strand of my hair behind my ear. “I’m just a little bit tired.”

His head angles to the side. “That’s understandable, especially with how much you’ve used your powers over the last week, but…” A crease forms between his brows. “Have you been getting enough sleep or is nightmares of darkness still keeping you up?”

While Foster knows of my nightmares about darkness, I haven’t told him how bad they’ve gotten since we became stuck in this world. I swear every time I close my eyes, darkness is able to slip into the cracks of my mind. It frightens me how vivid the dreams are and how clear I can hear the voice of darkness whispering

to me. It’s part of the reason why I played down the nightmares when I told Foster about them, because I’m worried something might be wrong with me.

What I’m worried about is that maybe I’m weak and that darkness is starting to get to me.

Granted, there are a few times when darkness manages not to take over my nightmares. Those are the nights I dream of the Porterson brothers, but most of the time those dreams freak me out almost as much as my nightmares of darkness. Take the dream I had the other night about Hunter being a vampire and drinking my blood. It felt so real that I worry it could be. After all, I may have a dream seer ability, an ability that allows others to visit me in my dream and supposedly, I can visit other’s dreams as well, but I haven’t figure out how to do that just yet. The people and creatures that visit my dreams can’t touch me, but they can send messages and communicate with me, like the god of darkness has.

Back before we knew I was a power source and he was after me, I had dreams of him telling me he was coming after me. And then he did, which makes me worry that maybe my nightmares and dreams could be a form of omens or something. If that’s the case then does that mean Hunter really is a vampire and is going to drink my blood? The idea would seem impossible, but impossible is my life now, so…