Chapter 1 Before This War Is Over, I’d Like to Ask #2
I walk only far enough to take the edge off the emotion, then I drop to the ground.
It’s better here, away from the party, alone in the woods, but not too far inside.
Any further in the woods, and I would approach the cottage.
I only go there once a year, and I will not give up my future for the present.
I lie back on the grass, just like I did with the boy earlier tonight. My eyes search the sky for constellations, landing on Ma’s favorite—my favorite, by inheritance. Hers are the only ones I ever look for.
The twinkling stars could dance forever, and I would lose myself in them.
However, I don’t get much time tonight.
A twig snaps in the distance, and footsteps approach. My head swings away from the sky, searching for the sound. My surroundings are empty—physically. But, by the gods, do I feel whoever’s nearing. Their anxiety fills my body. It doesn’t disorient my mind or clog my limbs.
It’s steady. It’s someone who knows how to handle themselves. So careful, it’s almost calming.
And I know who it is.
Quickly, I rise, running and ducking behind a tree before Azaire approaches. I hide beneath the thick bark, watching him carefully.
He sits on an unsteady rock, tipping back and forth, then pulls out a little brown journal and quill, touching the ink to the page.
My pounding heart slows, easing me into a lull as his anxiety settles slowly. Azaire takes on an entirely different emotion, something like discovery, but not so easily defined. I lean my head against the tree, drinking up the favored break from anger and fear. Still, I wait for him to leave.
I’ve seen Azaire almost every day for years—felt him every day. In Philosophy class this morning, even. He had an answer to the question of free will, one he refused to speak.
He’s one of the few people I can pick out from a crowd by feeling alone.
Watching him is like being a fish out of water. All of life is, actually. Watching from the outside. Looking, but never touching. Oddly, because I could. I know what Azaire feels for me—there’s no way I couldn’t. It’s a blessing and a curse. I’m forced to feel it.
I wonder if there would be more fun in the mystery of not knowing, or simply more misery.
As I rest my head against the tree, a nut falls crunching against the leaves and rolling in the grass. I curse the tree when Azaire calls, “Who’s there?”
For a moment, I duck further behind the trunk. But if I don’t come out, he will come in. He will look.
With a deep breath, I step out from my safe haven. The moment Azaire sees me, his anxiety spikes.
“What are you doing here?” My voice trembles—too territorial.
But he doesn’t think so.
Azaire holds up his notebook and shrugs, tugging at the back of his dark blue beanie. “I guess I was just following the silence.”
“Okay.” I duck back behind my tree, planning to go south and find some quiet on the walk back to my suite.
“Wait!” Azaire calls.
I surprise myself when I stop.
“Do you want to sit?”
Azaire’s adrenaline spikes, but he’s not drunk. I think he might actually be sober. I pull the tips of my gloves from each of my fingers, then back down. Over and over again while I try to make up my mind.
Up, down. Up, down. Up, down. Never off.
With a subtle nod, I whisper, “Okay.”
Loneliness, I think, makes you do irrational things. It makes me sit next to Azaire on his rock as he slides his journal into his pocket. He looks at me, and I immediately look at the sky.
His anxiety is no longer steady—now, it shakes my hands. It’s because of me that he feels this, and it’d be endearing if I didn’t have to feel it, too. If the only way I could know how he was feeling was by the heavy thrum of his chest.
From the comfort of my mind, I reach out to him. My body trembles as I close my eyes, turning down his emotions like a rusted dial on a record player. It isn’t hard; it’s only a small amount of resistance, twitching in my fingertips.
Once I’ve calmed Azaire, my muscles relax from his lethargy. All without touching him, too.
That’s something most of my kind, the Eunoia, can’t do—manipulate emotion without skin-to-skin contact.
It offers merit to the words I’ve heard my whole life: “prodigal child,” “gifted one.” But if I were to touch him, he’d die.
I’d override his mind with my emotion or the emotion around me that I’m forced to contain.
Truth be told, I’ve never found out which it is that kills.
All I know is that my touch does kill. I learned that the hard way, once.
And there is nothing prodigal about that.
I turn to the sky, tugging at my gloves as I watch the stars. My one comfort.
Until Azaire asks, “What are you looking at?”
I take a deep breath, contemplating if I’ll answer. But this is what I came here for—company, even if I can’t keep it.
“Surma,” I answer, my voice quiet but the name heavy. “A constellation.”
Azaire is intrigued, as if my words have painted a picture he wants to see or began a book he wants to finish.
“What’s the story?” he asks.
“A sad one… They usually are.” I fidget with my hands, pulling my gloves off and on, rubbing my fingers together, aimlessly searching for a way to soothe myself.
“Yeah?” he murmurs in response, and yet there’s a finality to it. As if he doesn’t mind the sadness I’m about to offer on a silver platter.
I chuckle bitterly beneath my breath, forcing my gaze upward, drawn to the stars that witnessed this story unfold.
“Surma was the first child of the first two people—Amun and Eira. He was forced into battle against the monsters and was quickly deemed the best warrior in the universe. The people loved him. Eira loved him.”
I pause, the words sinking like stones. I don’t know why. It isn’t my story; it’s only my words. But I feel as if they’re a part of me. Or maybe I’m borrowing emotion, somehow tapping into a dead woman and her motherly grief. One of the first people to ever live.
“But Eira’s sister, Elysina, was bitter,” I continued.
“Greedy. She wanted that title for her firstborn—the power, the glory. Elysina, in her jealousy, manipulated a fatta’s subconscious.
And it killed Surma. But… the fatta doesn’t just kill the body.
” I nearly shudder. “It destroys the soul, too. Everything about you, erased.
“Eira was devastated. She carried her son’s broken body to Sulva, pleading with the lunar goddess to let Surma live on—somehow. Some way.” My words hang in the air, thick with the gravity of the tale. I steal a glance at Azaire, his face bathed in the light of the stars, holding his breath with me.
“Now all we have is a cluster of stars in his name,” I mutter.
Azaire glances at me for a quick moment, then back at the sky without a word.
Is he going to say something? Is he contemplating?
He must be. But this is the first conversation I’ve had in weeks, and he’s not saying anything.
I suppose I no longer understand how the mind works, how to communicate.
It’s been so long since I’ve had company.
I’ve learned that emotions are different from thoughts.
Thoughts tend to be linear—you can trace the rabbit’s trail from point A to point B.
Emotions come in waves. You’re at their mercy as much as dust is to the wind’s.
So why am I upset that he isn’t answering me? There’s nothing more to say.
I may have taken too much of his emotion earlier, turned him into a shell of himself. In that case, I have to leave immediately, let him find his way back. He should be fine tomorrow, when he awakens from a night’s worth of sleep.
I begin to stand.
His voice stops me.
“Even the most powerful of us are flawed,” Azaire whispers.
He’s right. Eira and Elysina, two of the most powerful Lyrians of all time, killed one another’s children out of spite.
“Maybe it’s the price of duality,” Azaire finishes.
I nearly smile. He responded.
I wasn’t expecting him to.
But I dearly wanted him to.
“You know I see it in everything,” I respond, leaning my body back down against the grass. “The good and the ugly.” I tug on the hairs standing up on my arms. “I’m beginning to believe that you can’t have one without the other. It’s kind of exhausting.” I laugh.
It’s the truth.
“I like the way you speak.” Azaire’s voice is soft, and I’m blindsided by the sentiment. That’s something I’ve never been told, not even something in its likeness. Then again, I don’t often speak to people.
“Why’s that?” I ask, my voice tight.
“I—” He pauses. “I don’t know. I guess you just highlight the good.”
I laugh again. If only he knew.
Then Azaire says, “You understand that someone can do evil and still be good.”
I shake my head. “That’s not what I said.”
I’m sure he’s not listening to me.
“Isn’t it?” he presses.
We’re looking at one another now.
He’s looking at me now.
“The good, the bad—the ugly—it’s in everything,” he continues, “all tangled together. You can’t have one without the other, so everyone is both.
” Azaire adjusts his beanie, pulling at the edges like he’s coaxing his thoughts from it.
“You spoke of a couple losing their son, but you made sure I knew they loved him.”
I watch him thoughtfully, looking for any underlying emotion. Anything that may deem him insincere. There’s nothing. Nothing but a boy in front of me, being good. Nothing to show me where his dark edges lie—the ones he has to have. He told me as much, in not so many words.
“Yeah.” I shrug. “That is what I said.”
At least, it’s one interpretation. But I prefer the way he sees it. That there is good in evil, not just evil in good. I think I’d prefer him believing that’s what I meant.
“I appreciate it.”
I pucker my lips, watching him while I contemplate.
“Why?” I finally ask.
“You helped me put something into perspective.” He smiles, his venomous canines poking out—the reason the worlds hate the Nepenthes, his kind. I’ve only ever found kinship in them. A part of my body is deadly to the touch, too.
“Do you want to come back to the party with me?” He asks.
It’s endearing how nervous he is. I imagine his heart hammering in his chest, hoping it’s racing as fast as mine, even if it’s for a different reason.
A sigh escapes me, but the longing inside of me doesn’t. The desire to join him.
But people are safer at a distance.
“No.”
Azaire nods softly. I can feel his disappointment in my blood, but there is no animosity. Only a small pinch of sorrow.
“I’ll see you in philosophy,” he responds.
I’m only subtly relieved when he gets up and walks away.