Chapter 18 A Halo Wrapped Around My Neck
A Halo Wrapped
Around My Neck
A
zaire and I lie in his bed, his fingers wrapping around my gloves. He wants to take them off—it isn’t the first time I’ve felt it.
If the boy were around, I know what he’d say.
Don’t you dare.
But after the last night I spent with him, he hasn’t come back. Not even as a ghost in my head, a conscience of my thoughts. He disappeared with one last goodbye: “It is too painful to see you with him. Please return when the inevitable happens.”
I’ve been ignoring that goodbye. He told me he was clay for me to mold, yet struggles to believe in me. There’s no way to reconcile that your brain thinks you can’t find love, so I don’t try to.
It’s been a week with Azaire, of feeling almost close enough to touch him. Seven nights of indulging in one another’s pasts and futures.
Or lack of them.
It’s easy to see that neither of us know what we’re going to do next. And tonight, in his arms, the Weapon comes up, as it tends to.
“We wait for Lucian,” I say, hoping Azaire will let it go, that I can take care of this on my own. “He’s the person best equipped to find answers.”
Azaire’s eyes and fingers remain on my gloves. “I can’t do nothing. Not when I know it’s happening.”
Whispered words slip past my lips. “I don’t know how I’d feel if Ma weren’t involved.” Something about the lack of eye contact and the dark room makes me feel safe enough to tell the truth.
His fingers trace over mine—over the leather. “Yeah.” He nods absentmindedly. “I get it.” His eyes shift to mine. “Why can I kiss you but not hold your hand?”
“Oh,” I sigh. Facing the dark ceiling, I hope that avoiding his silhouette might make it easier to just get on with it. It doesn’t. “Is Yuki coming back anytime soon?” I ask instead.
It feels like even my bones are frowning.
“Yeah, but not for a few hours.”
“Okay.”
Our hands are the conduits for our magic, everything we Eunoia channel goes in and out through them. Though any skin-to-skin contact with me is tricky. If I say the wrong thing, if there’s any small accident, the other person can’t deny me.
They are at my mercy. That’s what happens when you’re powerful, I’ve been told.
You lose control.
And I don’t want to tell Azaire the mental strain it takes to kiss him. How much work I put in to maintaining my shields—keeping my power in and protecting him. I don’t want to tell him why I wear the gloves.
Yet I feel that he deserves something from me. Some kind of an answer.
“When I was five, I felt someone’s emotions for the first time.
” I try not to sound like I’m struggling to say the words.
“My brother, Terran. I’d accidentally wrapped him in tendrils.
” With thorns, I don’t say. Some truths are too bitter.
“He was only a little more afraid of me than he was disgusted.”
Azaire’s fingers freeze on top of mine. But he doesn’t feel like he automatically understands me, and for that, I’m grateful. I don’t quite know what he thinks—but I feel like I can tell him more.
He reaches up, holding my cheek in his hand. There’s just enough moonlight coming in through the windows to see his eyes. It’s the kind of look that makes me wonder what he’s seeing, even though I can feel him.
“Gods, you’re making this hard,” I breathe, leaning my head further into his hand.
“What?” He smiles. Fangs and all.
“Keeping my distance.”
“Well,” he says, and I can feel the heat of his face in my own cheeks, “I never hoped it would be easy.”
It never was. Can I communicate with my eyes? If I can, that’s what they’re saying.
“Can I…” I trail off. “Can I tell you something?”
Azaire tucks a strand of my hair behind my ear, the tips of his fingers grazing my cheek. “Anything.”
“You know what I said? About power and adolescence not mixing well…”
Azaire nods.
“Before I came to this school, I had a friend—Xander. I made the mistake of touching him.” I pull my bottom lip between my teeth. “His was the first funeral I ever attended.”
Azaire opens his mouth, but I shake my head, moving closer. Our noses nearly touch, and my voice is barely audible.
“After my mom died, I lost hope. I believed I was cursed—that anyone who cared about me would end up hurt. I pulled away from the world, became a ghost among the living. And from that loneliness…” I pause, voice thinning.
Then, “Something inside me made him. The boy, I call him.” A soft, self-conscious laugh escapes, cracked by tears.
“I know it sounds strange. But ever since you and I got together… he’s been gone.
Like he was never real. I don’t know whether to thank you or blame you for that—but I needed you to know. Someone had to know.”
Azaire nods, as if it isn’t the most insane thing he’s ever heard. It must be.
Yet he seems to understand, somehow.
“Loss is never easy,” he says softly. “Give me your pain, Wendy Estridon. I can handle it.” He picks up my hand, his grip steady. Far steadier than I am. “I can carry it.”
I shake my head, staring at his hand in mine. “You don’t think I’m crazy?”
“Not at all. I’ve hurt people the same way… with my snakes. It’s no surprise your mind would try to protect you. If I’m honest, I think I would’ve done better with a friend like that, too.”
The weight of his words shifts my gaze to the side, unsettling something deep inside me. I can’t say I agree with Azaire—not fully. I’m not sure if the boy is just a coping mechanism. For the first time, I wonder if I believe he’s something more.
If I truly believe he’s real, even without a body of flesh and bone.
?
I stop at the kitchen, sitting on the stool as I wait for Eudora, the academy chef, to appear. When she emerges, I meet her gaze. She’s always stood out—Eunoia are rare at the academy, and hers is one of the few familiar faces.
Her dark hair is always in a tight bun, never the traditional braid like the others. Her skin is a warm, rich brown; her eyes a vivid green that borders on turquoise—much lighter than anyone in my family.
“Hi Eudora,” I greet her.
“What do ya need, Wendy?”
I blink, brow furrowing. We’ve never spoken before; hearing my name in her voice stops me cold.
“How do you know my name?”
“I took notice of you,” Eudora says, her voice flamboyant. “And I remember your mother. One of the first kind faces I knew when I first got this job.”
A stone scrapes down my throat and crashes into my chest, making it hard to breathe.
Ma. As a teenager. It doesn’t seem possible. It feels like she should have been a graceful adult her entire life.
But then again, her journals say otherwise.
I guess I can’t tie her past self to the woman I knew. I guess that’s what I’m struggling to understand.
“Can you…” I clear my throat. “Can you tell me about her?”
“Quiet,” Eudora answers instantly, the single word lingering.
Until she says with a shrug, “Like you. But beneath it she had big dreams, ambition. You’re her spitting image these days—that’s how I remembered your name.
I looked at you and thought Willow. And every time, I corrected myself, Wendy.
” She says our names like we’re glorious—something to be revered.
Not a fallen mother and a failing daughter.
Shaking my head, I try to take the compliment, wishing I saw Ma when I looked in the mirror. But beyond that, I’m focused on her dreams. Her ambition.
Did others see what she hid in paper?
“Wh-what—” I clear my throat. “What kind of dreams did she have?”
Is there more than what she left in her journals?
Eudora’s voice is gentle. “I remember she fought to get into Combat Training. She was the only Eunoia in the history of the academy to do so. The old headmaster thought she had spirit.”
“What else?” I ask quickly, urgently. Pleading for someone to tell me what I should already know—the details I’ve forgotten, the moments I never knew I missed. Buried deeper than any journal, scattered like dust in the wind.
Praying that some of it clings beneath Eudora’s nails.
“I don’t know much, honey,” she sighs. “Last I heard, she got in a lot of trouble with the kingdoms, was forced out of the academy and punished. But that isn’t happy talk. What else can I do for ya?”
I open my mouth. No words come out.
Ma’s relationship with Folkara—with King Easton and Queen Melody, every document signed by them—it was a punishment.
Is that why Pa is scared for me to push further? Does he fear the sins of the mother will fall to the daughter?
“I—” My words catch in my throat. I shake my head, loosening my tongue and warming my vocal chords. “I wanted to know if you could get me something from Nepthara?”
“What do ya need, hon?”
“Cured cattle, dried rosemary, and powdered pumpkin seed.”
Eudora leans to the side, placing a hand on her hip as she assesses me. “It’ll take some time.”
For once, I feel like it’s in my favor.
With a smile, I say, “Take all the time you need.”
?
Without any warning, Lucian’s completely disappeared. It’s been weeks, and I’m scared he’s forgetting about the Weapon altogether.
Azaire has brought up the boy a few times, in moments of deep conversation, and despite the boy’s disappearance, I can almost feel him recoil inside of me. As if the boy believes it to be a betrayal that I’ve told another of his existence.
The view from Azaire’s window has become familiar. The willow tree always blows in the wind. Its branches are nearly empty of leaves, nature shedding its skin for another revival after the winter season.
Like the bare tree, we’ve lost all leads on the Weapon.
Azaire’s next move is to break into the kingdom of Folkara.
Would it be so wrong to strip away his emotion? To force him to let go of the Weapon?
It would be, I know it. It would take something from him I love—his selflessness. More than that, his unwavering belief in something better.