Chapter 10 Loneliness Within Reach
Loneliness Within Reach
K
eeping my distance proves impossible.
Azaire is brought to class once more, his presence commanding despite the fresh wound along his cheek. He weaves between the long tables—strewn with herbs and vials—until he reaches me.
His cut isn’t as severe as the last time, but it’s enough to draw a stark line across his otherwise flawless skin. The room falls into a tense hush as we prepare for today’s lesson: working on aesthetic healing.
It’s important, Ms. Ferner said before the Nepenthes arrived, for Royals and government officials. They must always appear strong—unmarked.
My task is to restore Azaire’s skin, erasing the evidence of pain without leaving a trace. If I fail, that wound will become a permanent reminder of this moment. A record of how the universe chews him up and spits him out at its leisure etched into his face forever.
In some cruel way, it’s a mirror of me. The scar along my chin holds the memory of Ma.
Only his memory wouldn’t be a death—it would be the moment that the academy took him, doing what they pleased with his body.
Azaire rests in the stool beside me, the jars on the wooden table rattling as he scoots closer.
Despite everything, I can tell something’s changed between us. As he sits, his gaze lingers longer. His hands hover just above my skin—as if he heeds my warnings but aches to defy them.
In turn, I do the same.
I clear my throat, scooting closer. Because I have to heal him—not because I long for his nearness.
But I do.
The room isn’t as bad today. The pain around me is bearable. None of the wounds inflicted upon the Nepenthes are deadly. They’re merely for aesthetics.
This time.
I grind the gotu kola into a fine powder, adding just enough water to form a thick, greenish paste. With careful fingers, I coat Azaire’s wound, hoping to erase the memory of the cut before it has time to settle into a scar.
With every stroke, my hands tremble more.
“It’s okay,” Azaire whispers, his smile creasing his skin. “There’s no way I’m dying this time. It’s just a little cut.”
As I pull my hand away, my glove is coated in red. “And just a little blood,” I mutter.
I wipe off my gloves, raising my hands again.
Azaire gently catches my wrists. His grasp stills my trembling.
His eyes meet mine. “Feel me, not everyone else.”
For a moment, I stumble. My hand stays in the air. My wrist stays in his hand, my skin just beneath my shirt sleeve. My head tilts to the side, staring at him in awe.
“I always feel you.” I hardly realize the words are coming out. “It’s what I was telling you at the ball.” I shake my head, trying to shake the words from me, but they come out anyhow.
Expressive Little Thorn.
“In philosophy…” I trail off. “You always have something to say, but you never do.”
Azaire shrugs with a smile, then lets go of my hand. It returns to my side, denying the part of me that wishes he held on.
“I’m just holding my insights close,” he jokes. “I can’t have someone in class stealing my ideas.”
I smile, a small laugh escaping me. “Steal your ideas?” I ask, still smiling. “So you want to be a philosopher?”
Azaire nods. “I do.”
“My mom is a philosopher,” I say, before I realize that those aren’t the right words.
They aren’t the truth.
Ma was a philosopher.
“I can tell,” he says.
I swallow my sorrow, narrowing my eyes at him.
“You can tell?”
Once more, he shrugs. “It’s in you, the nature of pondering. You question what you see—it’s the best way to learn.”
“That’s what you do, isn’t it?” I ask, though I’m sure I’ve felt it before.
Azaire tugs at his beanie, growing shy. I’ve all but forgotten about the gash on his cheek—and he has, too.
“I guess,” he murmurs as I unbutton one of my gloves. Instantly, green vines of light wrap around my fingers, as if my magic is waiting to jump out.
I raise my hand to his face, healing the wound left on him by the faculty of this academy.
“Tell me,” I whisper, “what you were thinking about the free will question?”
Azaire stares at me blankly.
“I felt you in class,” I add.
He nods, his shoulders deflating. His posture sinks just slightly. It makes it easier to heal his skin without touching.
“Promise you won’t steal my mighty insights?” he asks.
A joke.
It’s been so long since someone joked with me.
“Oh, I couldn’t possibly promise that. What if I get rich off your mind?”
“Then it’d be a fair trade,” he replies. “I’m already getting rich off yours.”
I laugh under my breath, soaking in the sensation. I’ve missed it, the lightness. I’ve only ever felt its residue these last few years.
But right now, this smiling, this laughter—it feels like I’m glowing.
“Go on then.” I lower my hands. “Make it a fair trade.”
Azaire rolls his eyes playfully, clearing his throat mockingly—the same way our professor does.
I would never think this boy was being tortured by the academy he attends.
His voice is wholly serious when he says, “I think our professor misunderstood the question. It’s not about free will, but something grander, a piece of a soul, the nature of a person, beyond the experiences that shape them.”
A piece of us, unblemished. A piece that stays unblemished.
Something in me that is not destroyed by the events of my life.
“So, if there’s something beyond our nature and experiences,” I ask, “wouldn’t that fit into the professor’s argument about the gods? Something predetermined?”
“It might be from the gods.” Azaire shrugs. “And it might not. I only think that we carry something with us into this universe. We’re not blank slates, waiting to be filled by nature and nurture. There’s just… something else.”
“I, for one, cannot wait to get rich off that idea.”
“You wish,” Azaire laughs.
I drag my fingers across my lips, like a zipper.
“So, what do you think, Estridon?”
“I think free will scares me,” I say, the words slipping past me. Yet I’m glad to speak them aloud. To finally share my mind and be the expressive Little Thorn I was born to be. “I prefer it to be some weird, grand design or a total accident, rather than thinking that I orchestrated it.”
“Yeah,” Azaire whispers. “I understand.”
?
Calista is awake—I can feel her. I sit on the couch in the common area, allowing the fullness of her emotion in.
To be sure I’m there in the event she can strip the glamour.
But Calista doesn’t seem to have made any progress.
The boy in my mind asking me to make him human reminds me of Calista asking me to steal her love for Lilac. On the surface, they sound like things that shouldn’t be done. But with the boy—how could I hurt him if he is simply me?
How could he hurt me?
It could be my best hope of true companionship.
“We can take it slow. Start with something small.”
I don’t like how tempting his offer is, but still, I say, “I’ll think on it.”
I rise, knocking on Calista’s door frame. She sits huddled in the corner, the book sprawled open on her bed.
“I can’t do it,” she sighs. “I can never do anything right.”
If it were a year ago, I would sit with her. Try to console her. She might not want me near her anymore, though.
I keep my distance.
“You’re too far in your head,” I say. “You can’t think your way through magic. You have to feel it—”
“I don’t need lessons from you!” Calista shouts.
I think of sitting. Staying and helping. But I feel people drawing near. Injured and worried, on the hunt for something.
Lucian.
Instead of staying, I escape to my room. Minutes later, a knock sounds on my door. Pain is on the other side of it.
How many times will he come to me, on the verge of death?
I open the door, and my eyes immediately fall on Lucian. He feels… like a corpse. As if a dead body is rotting inside of him. I stare at him, searching for that reeking emotion.
He looks all but normal.
“What happened to you?” I ask, barely audible.
Lucian clears his throat, stuttering as he says, “Desdemona needs your help.”
My gaze shifts to the girl in his arms. I’d hardly felt her through Lucian’s torment. Shaking my head, I try to understand what happened to him. But instead, the pain from Desdemona’s broken body slowly takes over.
The pain is in my shoulder, but also not. It seems further than that, like fire in my bloodstream.
“What happened to her?”
“Dislocated shoulder,” Lucian answers.
It isn’t the full answer, yet I wince, understanding the pain that seeps through my shirt like blood.
“Okay.” I nod, turning to get my herbs and leaving the suite.
I stay a few paces behind them as we walk through the academy, Lucian carrying Desdemona in his arms. She nuzzles her head into his shoulder.
And Lucian cares. It emanates from him like smoke from a bonfire. It reeks so strongly, I could never miss it.
It clings to me.
It’s hard seeing that even someone as calloused as Lucian can care for a person.
Even someone as scared as Desdemona can reciprocate.
I must be the most wounded of us all, because I don’t know that I could ever be on either end.
That is why I stay a few paces behind as we walk. It is why I watch from afar.
It’s the best I can do.
I think of the boy. If he were tangible, would he hold me like this?
His voice fills my mind, “I would hold you however you wished me to.”
“You make a compelling offer.”
We make it to the Royals’ room, and Lucian lowers Desdemona on the couch. I watch, pretending I’m not, as he tucks her hair behind her ear. Their eyes meet, and my heart picks up its pace.
There’s familiarity and fear in their gazes, but more than that, adoration. They hide from it, yet neither can deny it.
They are a seesaw, as one comes down, the other goes up. A dance, a game, and it’s one I want.
I shake my head, rushing to their side to do what I came to. Lucian breathes heavily beside me, not because he’s tired, but because he’s worried.
He doesn’t know what he’ll do if something happens to her.
I’d like to leave soon. People-watching is fun in spurts, but it grows weary over time, and I can only take so much.
Lucian has filled Desdemona’s wound with shadows, keeping her from bleeding out. For a moment, I only look. Wondering if someone would do that for me.
“Can you?” I finally ask, turning to Lucian, and he waves a hand. The shadows pour to the ground, regrouping with the rest scattered around the corners of the room.
I dip my gloved finger in valerian root powder and place it under Desdemona’s nose, telling her to inhale. With fleeting peace, Desdemona slips out of consciousness.
Working quickly, I begin to mend the flesh around the stab wound. Then I move to the burns. Nothing I do helps to cease the pain or refurbish the skin.
“How did she get the burns?” I ask, threads of green magic flowing from my bare palms… and doing nothing.
“There must have been poison on the blade.”
It doesn’t feel like a poison, but there’s no other plausible explanation. There’s a burn around the stab wound and on her palm. I try harder to heal her, but the ashen flesh continues to reject my power.
The sensation seeps into me, like water corroding metal, slowly burning through my skin.
Shaking my head, I say, “I can’t fix it.”
Lucian’s worry grows louder. In between the cracks of emotion, I can only feel how much he cares.
“Try again,” he says.
“I am trying!” I snap, dropping my hands.
I stare at Desdemona, reaching for the peace of her unconsciousness. All I can feel is Lucian.
“Apologies,” I mutter. “Just—can we talk about something else? I need you to get your mind off her.”
“My mind off of her?”
“Yes.” I sigh. “Your emotion for her—it’s too much stress for me to take at once.”
Lucian quiets, his confusion palpable. He might not know exactly what he feels for her. Yet, whatever they are, he can’t ignore them. Not now. Even as he tries. It helps, for a moment. But soon that bottle will crack.
“The glamour,” he says softly, tapping his foot in a steady rhythm. “How’s it going?”
When I pop Desdemona’s bone back into place, she jolts up, about to scream. I cover her mouth before the sound can escape.
My mouth opens involuntarily, desperate to let out the cry for her.
“Calista’s working on it,” I answer before turning to Desdemona. “It’s all right.” I hold her cheek gently with my gloved hand. “You can rest.”
Lucian doesn’t continue to ask questions. His focus goes back to Desdemona, aching in my chest. That plus the death within him is unbearable. I feel it manifest physically in my back, making it hard to stand upright without pain.
After several moments, I ask, “What’s that about?”
“What’s what about?”
He knows what I’m asking. His feelings around Desdemona linger, but the ones around the death inside of him increase.
“That feeling.”
“Is she out?” Lucian tilts his head toward Desdemona.
She isn’t, not entirely. But slowly, she loses consciousness. Her lethargy could pull me down with her.
“Yes,” I answer. “Now, are you going to tell me what happened to you?”
Lucian shakes his head, looking away from Desdemona. To the ground. He doesn’t want to answer.
It’s bad.
It’s worse than bad. The sorrow—it makes me wonder if I’ve misjudged him.
“You don’t feel the same,” I add.
When Lucian says, “I’m not the same,” I know that there has been a misjudgment on my end. Though I’m not sure where. “But what matters now is Desdemona. Then the book.”
“She’ll be fine.” I nod.
Lucian’s gaze slowly makes its way back to Desdemona. It lingers there lazily, as if he is looking but not seeing. As though he is in a trance and cannot shift out of it.
As though he wishes he never looked in the first place.
“Yeah,” he says at last. “She will.”
He means it with full sincerity.
He will make sure of it.