Chapter 12 The People with Power
The People with Power
One Year Ago
B
eneath the canopy of trees, Calista and I sit in the woods. She lies on her back, gazing up at the sun. I pluck a blade of grass from the ground and make it grow back, twice as tall.
“Azaire was looking at you again today,” Calista says, smiling as she turns her head toward me.
“He’s always looking.” The grass pushes up, tickling my palm.
Calista flips onto her stomach, meeting my gaze. “My apologies.” She laughs. “I should have said you were looking at him again today.”
A laugh escapes me. If I were a normal person, I think this would be a moment for a playful push. But I’ve long since learned to keep my hands to myself. “Yeah.”
“Quite the vocabulary, Wendy.”
I shrug. “You already know everything.”
What am I supposed to say? That Azaire was my friend before Ma died and I retreated from the world? That he was my friend before I created the boy and lost my mind?
Not that Calista knows about the boy—or that anyone ever will.
Calista rolls her eyes, lying down on her back. “You’re a poor gossiper.”
I’m bad at talking, period.
Bitterly, I think about how I’m not Fleur or Eleanora or any number of her other friends. She’d prefer any of them to me.
“Are we ditching second period, too?” I ask when I find the strength to speak.
“Up to you.”
Calista didn’t want to go to her first class. I didn’t want to go to any class. I never do, truthfully. If I could live in a cave, I might.
“It’s Lilac, right?” I ask.
She picks at the polish on her nails and looks up at me. Her eyes say it all: you already know. Her mouth says something different.
“It’s everyone,” she sighs, dropping her head in the grass.
“Yeah… Me too.”
“It’s settled then,” Calista says. “We avoid the world together.”
“Isn’t that what we’ve been doing all these months?”
Calista smirks, but I can’t smile back.
“You know you could just go back,” I say. “All your friends, Fleur and Eleanora, even Aralia—they’d take you back.”
She pushes herself up, tilting her head as she meets my gaze, sun shining on her face. “And how do you feel about them?”
I drag my bottom lip between my teeth. “It isn’t about me.”
Calista pulls a joint out of her pocket. Holding it between her lips, she lights the end of it. She uses her ring finger to scratch her eye, gracefully blowing the smoke before saying, “They’ll know something is wrong.”
Hm. I kind of wanted her to say something about me, as opposed to herself. Something about our friendship.
But I suppose that is what drew us together—loneliness. Calista’s is shiny and new; mine has been rusting away for years.
She hands me the joint. I don’t often use intoxicants—secondhand emotion is enough. But sometimes it’s easy to smoke with Calista.
The drugs ease her out.
Calista’s doubt subsides, and she asks, “Do you want me to go back to them?”
“No,” I answer. “I’d rather not lose you.”
Her finger touches my glove as I hand her the joint.
She stares at the smoke, and I don’t think I’ll like what she says next. “Is that why you won’t take my love away? You’re scared you’d lose me if you did?”
It’s the subject I feared. One I don’t want to talk about.
“Calista…” I sigh. “You know that’s not why—”
“I don’t know that.”
I fold further into myself, eyes on the grass. Pulling the blades out and growing them back. Tug of war.
“If I took that kind of emotion from you, there would be a gap that needed to be filled,” I finally answer. “Like a black hole, whatever comes close would be sucked right into you.”
It’s not entirely that. Not to me. I’ve never manipulated emotions before, only ever turned them down for my own peace of mind.
The truth is, I’m not entirely sure what would happen.
I wouldn’t have to touch her, like the rest of the Eunoia would. It wouldn’t be a repeat of Xander—not exactly.
But either way, my power is dangerous. I’ve known it my whole life, even before I killed Xander.
We were playing tag on a cliff in Eunaris when I understood the extent of my danger. We were laughing, our feet slipping on the sharp rocks as we raced around. I’d caught him finally, and Xander kept laughing. He never bothered to care about losing.
But then something went wrong.
I must have left my hand on his shoulder for too long. I must have made a mistake.
A gasp escaped him—perhaps his final exhale—before his eyes rolled to the back of his head.
His pupils vanished, replaced by white. His legs gave way, and he fell to the ground.
The second half of his body dangled off the cliff, his hands hanging limp at his sides, not reaching for safety. He couldn’t.
Xander was convulsing.
I lunged forward, reaching for him. My fingers were inches from his wrist, a breath from pulling him back.
Then he twitched, slipping away like water.
Xander rolled off the cliff.
I watched as his body disappeared over the edge. Then I fell to the ground, and my head started bleeding. It felt as if I hit rock after rock.
As if I’d tumbled down a cliff.
When my parents found me, I was crying and nearly unconscious.
I said, There’s so much blood.
Little Thorn, Pa said, you aren’t bleeding.
The pain subsided in that moment, replaced by worry. It was later that I put it together; it was Ma and Pa’s worry I felt. It stopped me from reliving the pain of Xander’s death.
A few days after, his body washed up on the shore, his skull cracked open.
They said the tide ran him into a rock.
But the green of his eyes was gone, replaced by nothing but white. No one had an explanation. And no one knew what I’d done.
At least, no one said it.
I always suspected Ma knew. She’d seen the look in my eyes, the way I flinched whenever anyone mentioned Xander.
She never said a word, but I think that’s why she pushed so hard to get me into Visnatus Academy.
Maybe she thought they could fix me, that they could stop what happened to Xander from happening again.
Calista rolls her eyes, and her secondhand smoke stings as I take a deep breath.
“Maybe then it’d be a boy,” she says, responding to my concerns about her loving the next person who comes close.
“Calista—”
“Father tells me it’s because I am to marry Lucian,” Calista says hastily. “But I know that if Lilac weren’t a girl, he’d have no problem with the fling. Gods, even if I were married, I could probably have male consorts.”
My homeworld, Eunaris, never had any qualms with sexuality. It was a question of what you like, never a fuss, as simple as whether you preferred sweet or salty. As a Eunoia at Visnatus, I’m familiar with her worlds’ customs. We’re here to serve Ilyria and Folkara.
“When you’re queen, couldn’t you do it anyway?” I ask.
Calista scoffs, an emotionless laugh. “The crown is an invisible cage,” she remarks. “I am held in place by public scrutiny.”
“Couldn’t you change it?”
“The only people who believe in change are those without power.”