Chapter 15 Maybe Paper Is Painless
Maybe Paper Is Painless
T
he first thing I do when I return to Visnatus is search for Lucian. For better or worse, we’re kin now. Kindred spirits. What he wants, I need. What he needs, I want.
He is my partner, by proxy of a forced hand. Shackles of the past tie us together.
But when I reach his suite, I only find Azaire.
I guess it’s his suite, too.
It doesn’t seem right to look him in the eye—not after I’ve let myself trust him. If I look at him now, I might tell him the truth. I might put him in danger.
I look right past him, asking, “Where’s Lucian?” My voice is close to shattering. My mind is close to shaking its way out of my body.
I only wish to keep Azaire out of this, if I can manage it.
“What is it?” He reaches for my gloved hand. Stilling me. Forcing me to look into his eyes while tears stream down mine.
“Would you rather tell him than me?” the boy asks.
In my mind, I roll my eyes. “You know I’d tell you anything.”
I can feel the boy smile. “Yes. And I’d listen to anything, so long as it’s your voice I’m hearing.”
His words writhe with romance, but I shake him away. I have a real person in front of me. A real person who meets my gaze.
“Something no one’s brave enough to admit,” I whisper the words I’ve carried for so long. “It’s my fault she died.”
My family won’t admit it, but they all think it. I feel them think it, every time.
Strong child, chosen one, most powerful failure.
Maybe they immortalized my room so they could remember who I used to be, instead of what I became the day Ma died.
Azaire doesn’t respond—not verbally. But his thumb, resting gently on my hand, traces a soft stroke over mine.
All while his eyes become a storm of emotion.
Too much, too powerful, and I make the mistake of not looking away.
My grief sets a forest aflame. Like watching my childhood home burn down and realizing I lit the match.
It’s his.
The anger I feel at his emotion is irrational.
What happened to peace? I want to scream. Where did that go?
“What is it?” I manage to ask him.
For once, Azaire is the one to look away from me. “I didn’t mean for you to feel that,” he mutters, dropping my hand.
I laugh, but it is no more than a breathy scoff. “I feel it all.”
“I know.”
“I wish you didn’t.”
“I’m glad I do.” His stormy eyes meet mine again. He tries to smile, then he shrugs. He works to balance his emotions, sliding along the scale until they settle. “I like knowing you.”
My form deflates as I release a deep breath. I lose track of time in his eyes, in his emotions that are overflowing like the rivers when it rains.
I feel guilty for ever wanting to bring the boy to life when a real one stands before me.
“Tell me what I felt.”
What is your grief, Azaire?
Why do I know it so well?
Azaire shrugs, shoving his hands inside his pockets, cheeks reddening. “How about I tell you when you tell me?”
I pull my lip between my teeth, nodding. It’s fair. I’m cryptic. If he’s going to share with me, he deserves the same in return. But I’m not ready.
“Fair,” I say.
We both know I won’t tell him, not right now, and Azaire takes the opportunity to say, “Lucian isn’t here. He’s training.”
I glance toward Azaire’s room, although I don’t need to. I can already feel it, someone’s presence, and it’s not Kai.
“Yuki is here,” I state—Lucian’s training partner. Is Azaire lying to me?
No. I’d know it. And he wouldn’t smile like that. It quickly lights up his whole face. He’s intrigued that I could tell Yuki was here, though not surprised.
“Lucian’s training with Desdemona,” he clarifies.
“Oh.”
I sit on the couch, taking a deep breath. Azaire lowers himself beside me, his knee brushing mine.
It’s devastating to shudder at the smallest of touches. But I am devastated. I glance at Azaire, who seems to know exactly what’s churning inside me. Who feels it too.
And I wonder if I’ll ever be able to have it—love, connection, companionship. If I’ll forever be trapped behind the bars of my own making. Or, more adequately, my power’s making.
I wonder if bringing the boy to life, even with the pain it would cause, is the best thing for me. Even if my body is overtaken by thorns, even if it rips me apart. But that kind of thinking is an even deeper devastation than staring at Azaire—a boy I know I could love—and choosing to run instead.
I stand. I think about telling Azaire that I care for him. That I’m running for him. That I’m a mess that he need not tangle himself in. That I don’t want him caught in the danger I’m running toward.
Instead, I leave. Like a thousand times before.
?
The next day when I beckon Lucian, he tries to get Azaire, and I freeze. No. This weapon is more dangerous than a few Fire Folk welders. It got my mother killed. It’s related to the most ambiguous evil our universe knows—the Arcanes.
I think of Azaire’s will, his flightless wings to Lucian’s steel.
He can’t be involved.
It’s why I ran.
“No,” I say. I wish I was shocked by the pleading tone that comes out of me. “It’s not safe.”
You’re so expressive, Little Thorn.
“Is this a romantic thing or an argument?” Lucian teases. The worst part is that he’s pleased with himself. Thinks of himself as funny, and not smug. “I suppose they’d both stem from romance—”
“Neither.” I reach into my bag, pulling out the piece of parchment that Calista tried to tear. I hold it up, waiting for Lucian’s curiosity to grow and his arrogance to subside. “But you’ll want to see this.”
His eyebrows rise, a small smile curving his lips as he contemplates what the paper could be.
When he walks in the direction of the Royals’ floor, I follow, and when we sit at the dusty table, I slide the paper across the surface. Lucian looks at what Calista tried to tear.
He looks at the weapon—and he is so uninterested.
It angers me.
He wanted me to do this. He pulled me into this.
But Ma is what made me stay. It is not entirely fair of me to put the blame onto Lucian.
I snatch the paper away from him, making the motion to tear it—showing him what Calista showed me. But he feels nothing at the thought of me destroying the one thing we know about this Weapon.
I want to shake him and scream.
I take a deep breath. “You were right.” I set the paper back on the table. “They glamoured the blueprint because they couldn’t destroy it. My mother must have tampered with it, and the Royals retaliated.”
I choke back my tears as best I can manage. Lucian looks at me—really looks at me this time. He’s finally interested in what I have to say.
“Retaliated?” he asks. “How?”
Pointing at the bottom of the page, I say, “The destroy-by date? Two days before a monster killed my mother—monsters that hadn’t attacked for centuries.”
Lucian looks up, his gaze locking with mine, and it’s like being hit by the pernipe that killed Ma.
He knows what it is to lose a parent, I realize.
He carries the ache in the shape of his heart, the creaking of his bones.
The hollow space it leaves between the two.
He knows the world can rip everything from you without mercy.
That’s how I’ve misjudged him.
He knows how it feels to have people more powerful than him take everything he has.
He knows what it is to lose it all.
But I don’t understand how.
Have we been walking side by side this entire time?
Slowly, Lucian asks, “That’s why you don’t want Azaire involved?”
He’s walking down the same path as me. His emotions close to my own.
For the first time, we’re perfectly aligned. He wants to protect Azaire. So do I.
But Lucian’s selfish—I can feel that. If Azaire could help him get further, I have no doubts he would use him as a stepping stone.
Desdemona doesn’t know what she’s getting into with him. I’m more than convinced he would stop at nothing to get what he truly wants. And sadly, for the people he lures toward him, it’s never them.
Though, with Desdemona, there was something else from him. Something I could have detected even without the power of empathy. His want for her is different—between a stepping stone and something more.
Only time will tell.
“I care about him, Lucian. More than I should,” I say, forcing the feeling into him as the words leave my lips.
My fingers buzz with power beneath my gloves, twitching like live wire. Lucian doesn’t realize what I’m doing, but he knows the weight of what I’m saying. He doesn’t realize that the weight in his chest is mine, but he feels it all the same.
“If something happens to him…”
“I meant what I said, Azaire can handle himself. As for caring about him, go for it. He’s not only the strongest person I know, he’s the most moral.” Lucian’s words only reveal one thing.
He doesn’t get it.
He doesn’t understand that morals aren’t good in this world. Morals got Ma killed. Morals are a double-edged sword.
As tortured as this prince seems, he’s still sitting on a pedestal above the rest of us. He’s still in line for a throne.
When you’re so high above, it’s hard to understand below—no matter what woes that power has bestowed upon you.
Lucian grabs the paper again, but he still doesn’t care enough.
I wait, hoping he’ll come to his senses.
The Weapon could destroy much more than we imagine.
As a Eunoia, I’m not allowed in War Strategy, and as such, I have no idea what a Weapon could do.
But Lucian does, and still I have to beg him to care about lives other than his own.
“I was there when my mom died.”
His sudden understanding makes me soften and sick at the same time. He thinks I’m confiding in him.
I sort of am.
“I’m the strongest in my family. Magically,” I clarify. “I should’ve saved her, but I didn’t. No one ever said it, but I felt their blame. I still do.”
Lucian still doesn’t get it.
I continue, “I’m telling you this because… if I get close to Azaire and something happens to him… I already know how that feels.” I look up, meeting his eyes to make sure he understands. “And I fear morality will become a weakness.”
I almost despise the honesty in my words.
“I know. But he has us. We’ll protect him.”
I placate Lucian, saying, “You’re a fair friend.”
“He’s more than a friend. He’s my family.”
“Well then you’re fair family to have.”
“He’s better than I ever was,” Lucian says. At least he knows that. “He’ll take you, too, Wendy.”
I know Azaire will. The problem is that wanting me is a cause for concern.
I do nothing but hurt the ones I love.
“You can’t hurt me,” the boy says, his voice low and buzzing in my brain. “I like the pain when you’re the one who inflicts it.”
I sit silently with his words. I don’t think I love him.
“But you will,” he replies in my mind.
I don’t answer. Instead, I stare at Lucian, waiting for his response. He cares about many things, he’s full of ambition, but not for this Weapon. Not yet.
Perhaps I should have taken a different approach.
“There’s something more,” I whisper. “Isa, the woman who was taken, I remember her.”
Lucian sits up straighter. His heart beats a little harder. His blood tingles in my veins.
Finally, he’s interested, asking, “You knew her?”
I pull my bottom lip between my teeth before I say, “Not well, but we used to visit her…”
This is harder to share than I believed it would be. I remember Isa vividly—more vividly than I imagined. I suppose seeing her photograph pinned the image of her to my mind. The sunspots on her skin. Her hair that seemed to have a million different shades of brown.
And the little girl I used to play with. For the life of me, I can’t remember her name. Just her smile.
“I was trying to figure out why Ma would be involved in something like this,” I say, entirely forthcoming. So much so that it’s hard to look Lucian in the eye. It’s easier to look away. “She kept journals. Over and over, she wrote the names ‘Isa, Freyr, and Weapon.’”
Lucian stares at me, clearly understanding the implications I’m suggesting. “You think they built the Weapon?”
I’ve got him like a fish on a hook, now. The only problem is that I’m becoming the sea, and not the rod.
It shouldn’t bother me how little he seems to care about anything other than the Weapon—that’s what I wanted. But he is the first person I’ve told any of this to, and he couldn’t care less.
“Originally, yes,” I say. My next words are what I hope to be the truth—what I have to believe. “They thought they were doing something good. In her journals, Ma said the Arcanes returned and killed two little girls—Marbella and Annabetha. She wanted to make a weapon to stop them.”
I pull my bag closer to me, thinking about Ma’s journals inside. They’re proof that she wasn’t a regular, good Eunoia.
They’re proof that maybe she didn’t want to make the Weapon for something good.
As Lucian thinks over what I’ve said, I listen to the silent spikes of his emotion. The rising adrenaline and the up and down capriciousness of humanity. He’s trying to decide what to feel, and I want to help him along. But I fear I already did too much to his emotional state in a short period.
He picks up the blueprint once more. That feeling of selfishness—the part of him that would step over anything and anyone to get to the end—intensifies.
But this time, it’s regarding the Weapon.
Excitement warms me.
“It’s missing something,” he mutters. “There isn’t a power source.”
I narrow my eyes. “What do you mean?”
His gaze stays glued to the blueprint. “Weapons like these don’t function on their own. They need magic to fuel them.”
He looks up, waiting for my response. But I don’t have one. A chill runs through me.
“Our magic?” I ask, frowning.
“Yes,” he replies, looking back at the blueprint. “It would need a generator to amplify the power. That much magic would likely kill someone.”
Quick to respond, I shake my head. “My mom wouldn’t do something like that.”
But I don’t know if that’s true anymore—not after what I read in her journals.
The room falls silent, eerily so as I ponder what Ma would and wouldn’t do. Would she kill a person to power a Weapon against the Arcanes? To become the warrior she longed for the world to see her as?
I fear the answer isn’t what I thought it would be.
I fear I will only learn who Ma was after death.
Finally, Lucian speaks, voice low. “You’re probably right.”
His lie dangles in the air, the haze of uncertainty clouding everything. But one thing becomes clear amidst the fog: he doesn’t know what my mother would do, either.
Which means I know her as well as a stranger.