Chapter 12 The Burden of Unspoken Truths #2
Calista’s voice trembles as she meets my gaze. “You’re working with him.” The pain in her eyes—the pain in mine—feels like someone is taking a burning knife to a healed wound. “You said this was your mom’s!”
“Calista,” I say, reaching out—not just with my voice, but with my energy, desperate to tether her unraveling emotions before they slip completely out of reach. But I’m too slow.
She’s already moving, hands trembling as she grabs the paper. And then—she tears it.
“No!” I lunge forward as the first harsh rip begins to sound.
Only, the paper doesn’t tear. It doesn’t even budge.
The parchment holds firm, utterly untouched, as if reality itself refuses her rage. She stares down, stunned.
Then her fury slams into me like a wave, threatening to drown me. I reach into that storm and strip the emotion from her—stealing it, subduing it, swallowing it down into myself until the air stills.
“Don’t do that!” Calista shouts, knowing well what it feels like to have her emotion stolen by me.
I release my hold on her at once.
“It’s not what you think,” I say gently, raising my hands, signaling to her that I’ve ceased using my power.
“So you’re not working with Lucian?”
“What’s on the paper?” I ask, deflecting, as I take a step back.
Calista frowns. “You know.”
I shake my head. “I don’t.”
“A Weapon.” Her tone is harsh, laced with venom.
My face falls. My body almost does too. Why would Ma have anything to do with the Weapon? Ma, a Eunoia, the very last of us who would help create a Weapon of destruction. Ma, who believes in peace and healing and learning, never destroying.
Ma.
I manage a meek whisper. “You’re lying.”
I feel ready to pounce when she smiles. Pounce. I’ve never thought of violence the way I’m thinking of it now—as something I’m willing to partake in.
Calista’s eyebrow raises. “Fun, isn’t it? Finding out who your parents really are.” She shoves the piece of paper into my chest with enough force to knock the wind out of me. “Get out.”
For a moment, all I do is stand here, trying to catch my breath. A Weapon and Ma? It doesn’t seem possible.
“Did you not hear me?” Calista shouts. “Get out!”
My heart races with the need to explain, but I know Calista. No explanation is ever enough for her.
My mouth opens anyways, just before I turn, leaving her room and taking the paper with me. When I’m safe and alone, I lean against my door, looking at the page.
Design No. 27.
My breath catches as I realize what this is—the blueprint of the Weapon.
It looks more like a jumble of random parts.
Arrows point from one messy bit of metal to another, connecting them to a big, ugly lump that’s supposed to be the Weapon.
I have no clue what any of this means—there’s no real order, just scribbled lines and strange shapes that don’t make sense.
It’s like someone threw a bunch of ideas onto paper and hoped it would come together, but it’s hard to tell if it even can.
Or maybe I’m just hoping it can’t. Because this is too much. I could almost believe Ma wasn’t involved, despite this blueprint being found in her study. I could almost believe this was all a farce.
Except for the date at the very bottom of the page. A date when she was supposed to destroy this blueprint. A date, two days before Ma died. The impact of realization hits me, and I fall.
A secret Weapon. A blueprint meant to be destroyed—but now indestructible. A rogue monster attacking Ma and me.
Ma went against Folkara’s wishes. For some reason, she preserved this page, and the kingdom killed her for it. Calista’s parents killed her. All for a Weapon.
A small note in the margins reads, Do not power on Folkara. But by that logic, it’d be okay to power anywhere else. It’d be okay to kill anyone else, just not the Folk. Not the best of us.
By that logic, it meant that if they were to test this Weapon, they’d be testing it against innocents.
How could Ma help with something like this?
The emotional distance I tried to keep cracks, sucking me in. I am skin-to-skin with Lucian, mind-to-mind with his iron will. Because now I have to know what the Weapon is for.
Because now I’m willing to go further than even he might be.
Without a second thought, I rest my hand on the mirror, opening a portal to my old house. I move through the garden of my hometown, ignoring the spot stained by Ma’s last breath. The house creaks beneath careful footsteps as I slip inside, climbing the steps to Ma’s study.
I stare at the bookcase. For half a second, I see the spines, but my vision quickly blurs. A feeling so strong it steals my sight. A hatred that could boil my blood.
There’s no need to look to know who stands behind me, framed in the doorway like a shadow I can’t shake. As I turn to face him, I have to hold back his anger in my bones—keep myself from tearing my hair out.
My brother Terran, my brother who I haven’t seen in five years, stands a few feet away from me. I try to meet his eyes.
The second I do, I feel the pang in my heart.
In his heart.
I am nothing.
I’ve imagined this reunion a thousand times over. I would tell him how profusely sorry I am. Not only for failing to save Ma, but for disappearing. For everything before and everything after. I would beg for forgiveness.
But now, faced with reality, I am frozen.
Words I said to Calista once upon a time play in my mind.
I feel like if I wait, just enough, that the right time will find me, Calista said.
She was talking about Lilac. That’s what falling in love does—it makes you cross-eyed. The world away from that person becomes a blur.
Or so I’ve felt through others.
There is never a right time, I told her, thinking about my family. You make the time and hope it’s right.
My words ring true. There will never be a right time to face them. I’ll never be ready.
Terran steps into the room and closes the door. Looking at him sometimes feels like looking at myself. The same freckles around our noses and cheeks, the same green eyes—Ma’s green eyes—the same small nose and big mouth. Only, his isn’t marked by a scar, solidifying the day he failed.
The day I let my mother die.
“You’re not welcome here,” Terran says, his voice shaking on the precipice of fury.
My stomach tightens. I focus on him, that hatred, that blame. An invisible pipe between us deposits it into me. At what point does it become my own?
My silence doesn’t seem to be welcomed, either.
“What are you doing here?” he asks me. “I’ve heard about the monster attacks on Visnatus. Do you have something to do with those, too?”
I know what he’s doing. Possibly better than he does. I can feel his desire for my response. He wants me to lash out—because he wants to lash out.
He wants to punish me, but he will never know that my guilt is punishment enough.
I want to rip the thorns that stitch my lips shut. If only they weren’t metaphorical. If only there was such a simple way to reclaim my voice as pulling thorns from my skin.
Terran doesn’t stop—he has no idea what I’m feeling. Unlike me, he has to try to sense emotion, to even brush against them. But he never tries. I’d know if he did.
“Dad will tell you he loves you,” Terran spits. “Jasper and Cassius will tell you they miss you. But it will always be a falsehood in their hearts, even if they tell themselves they believe it in their minds.”
I’m finally able to croak a measly two words. “I know.”
“No, you don’t. You killed the love of dad’s life. You killed your brothers’ mother.” His voice cracks as he shouts, “My mom! They can play at forgiveness, but they will never win.”
“I know, Terran,” I say, this time a hint louder.
“Don’t come back here.” He turns to the door.
There’s more to this than you think, I want to say.
I want to say anything that could tempt him to listen.
Perhaps even forgive me. The only thing stopping me is the fear of what he’d do if I planted those seeds of revenge in his mind.
Because I don’t know what I’ll do in the end if I am to find out that Folkara orchestrated Ma’s death.
So I let the door slam.
I decide to save him from himself, while preparing to throw myself to the sharks.
Terran and I were never close. There were few times that we got on. Times when I would see him laughing, face to face and not from afar. Times that I cherish, because that’s all I have left to hold onto. My love for my family.
It’s why I’ve stayed away.
If it had been someone else that killed Ma, I wouldn’t want them around.
So I’ll make myself scarce as quickly as possible.
I begin to really look at the books. I don’t know what to look for. If there is anything in here regarding the weapon, it’d be glamoured like the last. But I don’t know if I can hope for such a sloppy mistake again.
After too long of staring, I go to Ma’s desk, daring myself to sit in her chair. It smells just like her, almost feels like her. I close my eyes, visiting the boy. But he’s not here.
In my mind, I’m standing before her desk, instead of behind it. Here, Ma is sitting in her chair. Her hand reaches out to me, her skin resting on mine.
“Is this what you need?” she asks, but I shake my head—I know it’s the boy.
“I need something that no one can give me,” I reply. “I need to be normal. I need to be able to touch someone. I need to stop being suffocated by other people’s inner voices.”
Ma nods. “Only you can give yourself what you need. Only you can find your meaning of peace.”
“It’s not the meaning of peace I’m looking for. It’s fucking peace!” I pull my hand away, turning around.
The bookcase blurs as I lay my eyes on it. There are no titles on the spines, not in my mind, just dark colors splotching together.
“Don’t try to tell me what she would say,” I sigh, staring at the blob of books. “Just be the boy.”
I turn back, and Ma is gone. Only the boy sits before me now.
I miss her instantly. I didn’t think I would—I thought I’d understand it’s only an illusion. But suddenly my mind is screaming: come back.
“I’m sorry, my love,” the boy says. “I thought it’d be helpful.”
“To speak as the woman I killed?”
The boy flinches, his features squishing in anguish, as if I’ve said something far worse than the truth.
“You did not kill her, Little Thorn.” His voice is soft—much too soft for the lament written on his lips.
“You’re the only person in this house that believes that.” I turn away, just to turn right back. “If you know what Ma would say so well, riddle me this: whether accidental or not, if my actions led to a death, does that make me the one who killed them?”
The boy opens his mouth, but he does not speak.
“Did I kill her?” I repeat.
“It’s more complicated than that—”
“What would a philosopher say?” I ask. “What would Ma say?”
When he doesn’t answer, when he doesn’t tell me, “No, you did not kill her,” I open my eyes, escaping my mind. Tears flow from me in the real world.
My head crashes against the desk—the desk that still reeks of her, the room that clings to the echo of her presence—and I break.
Each tear slices through me like it’s ripping me in half, each tear like my mother’s blood, coating my cheeks, filling my mouth with salty sin.
I cry until my throat is raw, until my chest feels like it’s caving in.
I cry until I can’t breathe, until my ribs bruise under the weight of it.
Guilt or grief, I can’t decide.
Either way, it’s agonizing.