Chapter Mine #2
“Do you want to go back to the suite?” I ask.
“No.” She stares into the sun. “Tell me something surprising.”
I said all I could about me. So, I reach for something else. “The Collianth Cycles are getting shorter, and Lyrian scientists predict that our universe will implode on itself in five million years.”
“I said surprising, not existential,” Aralia drawls.
“I killed a boy when I was ten.”
The words weren’t supposed to come out. It was a little test. It was what I thought of when she asked the question the first time. But I knew I’d never say it. I only wanted to place it on the tip of my tongue and see how quickly I could swallow it.
But I didn’t.
I spit it.
“Shit,” Aralia mutters.
“Yeah,” I say, “shit.”
?
“You’re choosing him over me?” the boy asks while I enter my room.
I stand in front of the mirror, unclasping the rose from around my neck. The necklace Ma gave me when I first left for Visnatus—a charm of protection.
“Answer me,” the boy begs.
“I am not choosing anyone.”
“Don’t you understand the sanity I’ve offered to you? Who do you think you would be without my companionship?”
“Maybe not a loser who talks to herself.” It’s the kind of thing I’d only ever say to him. My inside voice.
He nearly chuckles. “You would have lost your mind by now, Little Thorn.”
I close my eyes, turning to him quickly. Today, everything is oddly sharp in my mental landscape. The boy looks more material than shadow, and the world looks more acrylic than watercolor.
“You only call me that when you’re angry!” I shout. “Why are you angry that I want to help someone?”
“Because you want more than to help him!” the boy yells, his eyes widening as he steps forward. “You want him.”
“Why does that matter?”
“Because I want you!” The boy collapses on my bed. It bounces with his weight—as if this is real.
As if this is all real.
I cover my mouth with my gloved hands.
How did it come to this? I must be misreading something. My mind hasn’t fallen for me. That isn’t possible.
“I knew it would come to this.” His voice drops to a murmur. “You haven’t even named me.”
“Tell me your name if you want a name,” I sigh, gently sitting next to him.
The boy does not answer, and I place a hand on his knee.
“I love you—but not in the way you want me to. In the way a broken leg loves a crutch. You can’t be angry with me for talking to people. You must want more for me than that.”
The boy shakes his head, dark hair falling from its place. “I’m not angry,” he says. “I’m scared.”
“What are you scared of?”
He looks up with tears in his beautiful eyes, shaking his head as he mutters, “That we will go through it again.”
I sigh as I stare at him.
I’m scared of this, too.
“I’m older now,” I say, despite not entirely believing in my words. “I can protect them this time.”
“But how can you know?” he asks.
Images of my mother grab me by the neck, and they don’t let me go. She tells me to run, and I plant my feet, then I’m thrown by the pernipe when I should have fought. I wake up to Ma, dead.
Images of Xander grab my hair and pull me down. I touch him when I shouldn’t—before knowing so much. He falls into the water, off a cliff, onto rocks. I feel the wound in my head.
I nearly black out.
When the memories shake me loose, I look away, toward the window, and I lift my hand from the boy’s knee. He grabs it back greedily, kissing my knuckles.
“Don’t go to him,” he murmurs. “I would be him for you, if you only asked.” A tear slips from him, landing on my hand.
“I love you.”
“No,” the boy says. “Don’t say it—don’t say it without meaning it.” I shake my head, and he grasps my chin, pulling me back to him. “I am clay in your hands. I am yours to mold. Tell me what you want me to be, and I will be that for you.”
This time, I reach out and pick up his hand. “I want you to believe in me. I want you to know that I can protect someone this time—that no one else will die because of me.”
The boy sighs as he says, “But that isn’t true. It is law that everybody will die.”
I hold up the rose pendant. “That’s why I’ll give him this.”
?
I’m at the door to Azaire’s suite, my hand hovering over the knocker, the rose amulet clutched in the other. I just have to give it to him and leave. That’s all.
I’ll shield him the only way I can—with Ma’s pendant, her protection meant for me now resting with him. Because, if I’m truthful, I agree with the boy.
I only wish he didn’t agree with me.
So I knock.
No answer. As I turn away, a sigh of relief escapes me, and I realize I was hoping this would be the case. I wanted only to prove I was brave, but to ultimately go back to safety.
I didn’t intend to break any boundaries.
But Azaire is inside—I can feel him. He’s the only one here.
He must be avoiding me. Though, I don’t feel any of the telltale signs that tend to accompany avoidance.
I stand, pulling at my gloves. It’s only a necklace. It’s only a means of protection. It’s only a moment, a second of my life.
My hand moves of its own accord, pressing into the door and pushing it open.
“Hello?” I call into the suite, stepping cautiously down the three marble stairs.
The layout mirrors ours exactly—only reversed. The small kitchen sits at the opposite end, and the couch and tables face the wrong direction, as if everything’s been spun around.
“Azaire?” I call again.
There’s a calming buzz, the sound of running water. He must be in the shower.
I sit on the unfamiliar couch, nerves prickling beneath my skin. Close my eyes and focus on the feel of him. Warm. Familiar. It’s comforting. For a moment.
Then the bathroom door clicks open.
I jolt to my feet, the amulet clutched tightly in my hand. I brace myself to speak—to give it to him and leave. But then he steps out. In nothing but a towel.
No beanie.
No hair.
“Shit!” Azaire mutters, and that easy feeling is sucked out of me. He pulls the towel from his waist and covers his head. Then he runs into his room.
The door slams.
I am frozen solid. The blood does not move in my veins. I should leave but I cannot move, as if I’ve been turned to stone. Azaire doesn’t want me here. He’s confused and angry and in so much pain. In grief.
The match is falling from his hand again.
The house is burning down.
From behind the door of his room, he says, “Did you…” I can’t turn toward the closed door. “Did you see?”
Where everyone else has hair, he has snakes. A mane of them.
He is petrified, cripplingly so. It’s left me frozen, the intake of all his emotion. More than anyone else does.
This isn’t good.
The last time I felt another’s emotions so strongly, Ma was dead and Terran looked at me with more than his usual disdain.
I’d felt his true hatred for me.
The last time I felt another’s emotions so strongly, someone died.
Azaire steps in front of me, a beanie covering his head—his eyes impossibly full of emotion.
“Wendy?”
I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. He grabs my upper arms and shakes me a bit. “Are you all right?”
“Y-yes,” I finally manage, my voice stunted. “Yes, I’m all right.”
He lets me go. His hand runs down the length of his face, dragging his features with it.
I hate that Aeliana and Persiphis comes to mind.
A constellation, an old story, one that ends in blood like all the others.
I should have turned around when I had the chance.
Never indulged in a conversation with him.
I should have listened to the boy.
I want to take it all back.
I want to erase the story I’ve started.
“I regretfully apologize for showing up this way,” I mutter, walking to the door with my head down.
“Don’t,” Azaire says, and I halt. “Please don’t talk to me like that.”
“I’ll see you in Philosophy?”
“Wendy, please,” he whispers, and I almost cry for him.
The burning house scorches me; the match in his hand suffocates me. This feeling of his that I think I understand strangles me.
This feeling of his. This feeling of mine.
It’s all the same.
I finally turn to him. “What is it?” Look into his eyes. “What are you feeling?”
Azaire glances down, pulling the beanie over his forehead. “You shouldn’t have to…”
“What?”
“When I saw you I…” He runs his hand over his face once more. “I thought you were dead—and I knew I killed you.” There is something more that he is not saying. It sits beneath his words.
“You didn’t,” I try to say gleefully, but my voice is a traitor.
Azaire shakes his head. “I don’t know why.”
“I’m glad I’m not dead.” I step closer.
“You don’t know how much it means to me that you’re not.”
“Have you…” I trail off, trying to tame my words. “You’ve killed someone before?”
He looks at me, and I don’t need an answer to know his. There’s pain in his eyes, tension in his gaze.
His overwhelming guilt becomes me.
“As have I,” I say quickly, meaning for him to know that he isn’t alone. “Power and adolescence don’t exactly go together.”
Subtly, he nods. “Yeah.”
I’m pulling at the fingers of my glove, trying to bring myself to say it. The reason I came here, the reason I fought so dearly with myself.
I want him to have it.
“Um…” My fingers close tighter around the amulet. “I wanted to give you something.” My voice sounds shaky, unsure.
“Are you sure?” the boy asks.
I ignore him.
“Okay.” Azaire smiles a little, fangs poking against his bottom lip. Dark eyebrows falling over his face, chiseled from marble.
I understand now why that is. As if his appearance has taken on his power.
I’ve heard fleetingly of what those snakes beneath his beanie do—they turn people to stone. There is no reason for me to be standing here, alive, right now.
And yet, I am.
As if the universe knew I had to give this boy the rose.
I release my grip, holding my palm open. The rose amulet made an indentation in my glove, I’d clutched it so tightly.
“It will protect you,” I say before I’ve even told him what it is. I’m terrible at communicating. Azaire has shown me that more than anyone.
Because he’s the only one I’ve tried to talk to.
“Um… Just wear it. Always.” I pick up his hand and place the rose in it. “Okay?”
“Okay.” His smile is small. I think he’s a little amused. Emotions are such a pointless commotion.
I stutter as I speak, “I-I’m gonna go.”
“Wait.” Azaire steps forward, frantic. His hand twitches at his side, as though he wants to reach for me but thinks better of it.
I’m waiting again, and he’s trying to steady himself.
“I have something to say.”
My—his—hands are shaking. Trembling.
I nod.
“I don’t know what this is between us,” he starts, his voice catching as he continues, “but it’d take more than a loss of sight to deny it.
” His lips pull into an uncertain smile.
“I see you—everything you don’t show. And I want you, Wendy Estridon.
I want your hesitancy. I want your caution.
I want your heart. I even want your fear.
I think I want you more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life. ”
I stand still, uncertain how to continue. How to move forward, now that this boy before me has articulated exactly how I feel.
Now that he’s taken the words from my tongue and wrapped them in a bow.
“But why now?” I ask. “Why all of a sudden?”
“It isn’t all of a sudden, Wendy,” Azaire breathes.
“You know that.” He swallows hard, the words fighting to escape, his vulnerability so pure it’s almost painful.
“I’m not asking for anything you’re not ready for.
But I want you to know this: I’ll wait. I’ll wait for you, no matter what.
But you should know, every part of me is already yours.
I’ve been yours, this entire time. Since before the night in the woods.
Since before the day you healed me in class.
It’s been since the day I met you eight years ago.
This”—he steps closer—“this was never sudden.”
Tears sting my eyes. “That’s the truth?” I ask. I know it is.
“The truth, truth.” He laughs, and his entire face goes red. Blood red. He looks down at the ground for a moment, then back up at me.
“I think I want you, too.” My gaze drops, unable to meet his. “It just doesn’t work like that for me.”
“Good,” the boy interrupts—condoning.
“What if I promise you, right now, that I will be the one who is hurt by you?” Azaire says it with such optimism. He says it, and he means it. “Whatever happens, I take the blunt end. Wherever this goes, I swallow the worst of it.”
My frown is heavy to hold as I say, “That’s actually what I’m afraid of.”
“Then how about I promise no one gets hurt?”
“We both know that’s not possible…”
Azaire takes a step closer, the air shifting with his anticipation. His hand brushes against mine, uncertain before he picks it up. And oh gods, do I feel it. His warmth, his certainty, his heartbeat echoing in my own.
I feel it all.
“Then how about we swim the lake when we get to it?”
He really means it, really cares. Really wants this. Wants me, for whatever reason. The feeling overtakes me while he stands a foot away from me, blushing like a rose, not blood.
“All I want is for us to get to it,” he mutters.
I step towards him, without meaning to.
I pull his lips to mine, without meaning to.
And I enjoy his kiss, without ever meaning to.
“Bad,” the boy says. “Lips on lips on happiness, that can all be taken away with one, small, fragile moment of pain.”