Chapter 25 You Missed My Heart #2
I nod, ducking my head low. “I see.” As I turn toward the door, I say, “It’s good to see you’re okay.”
She releases a small, disgruntled, and unsatisfied “hmph” on my way out.
I thought checking on her—seeing her alive—would make me feel better. Less guilty for what I did to her and how I left things with Azaire. But when I make it to my suite, all that’s left for me to do is fall apart.
I cry. Gods, I scream. It does nothing to alleviate the weight in my chest. I crash to the floor, tears streaming until they soak my chest. I claw at my eyes, needing the crying to stop.
I nearly rip my hair out.
I’ve already ripped my heart out.
The boy continues to pry at my brain, and I can’t take it. Rivaling emotions claw at me.
One wants to run for Azaire.
One needs to run far away.
But I think I know how best to ease the pain—the confusion and contradictions. The boy’s proposition always made sense to me, even when I tried to pretend it didn’t. Because if I can’t be with the living without endangering them, there is only one other option.
And the boy always knew it.
Do what you must with him before you come to me.
That’s what the boy said, and he was right—he always has been.
Even as I know his accuracy, I wish to deny it.
I wish I never created him. But perhaps if he was his own being, if he was no longer in my mind, I could have company without it being doused in my own shortcomings.
Without every one of my mistakes and contradictions adding oil to an already blazing fire.
Perhaps I’ve always wanted to bring him to life—and perhaps that’s part of the problem. Maybe that’s why he ever asked me to begin with.
I rise, grabbing my bag and walking to the door.
“Are you really going through with this?” the boy asks.
“I’m tired of being alone.”
The door shuts behind me, the sound final.
?
The moon is high in the sky tonight, bright in a way that makes lanterns unnecessary. I walk through the woods, but not beyond the protective barrier. Not that it’s doing any good, anyhow.
A kapha already got through today.
The academy is on lockdown. No one is supposed to be out of their suites. I was careful walking through the halls and garden. Nobody was there to stop me.
There are, with absolute certainty, monsters in the woods tonight. I doubt I’ll be lucky enough to avoid them. But I think I’m strong enough to face whatever comes my way. I’m certainly reckless enough to not care about the outcome.
I stop just shy of the barrier, throwing my bag on the grass.
In a circle, I settle a dozen candles and light them, surrounding myself with flickering flames. I’m not sure they will be of any use. What I’m planning to do is stronger than any little flame.
I’m planning to bring a figment of my imagination to life.
“I am more than that,” the boy reminds me.
In the real world, I nod. In my mind, I say, “I believe you.”
Lowering myself to the ground, I sit in the center of the flames, their warmth radiating all around me.
As I close my eyes, I don’t leave the dimly lit woods.
The only difference here is that the boy stands before me, his face glowing with the candles’ orange light, the trees swaying in the wind behind him.
“Just like we practiced before.” He extends his hands toward me. “Just like the trees.”
The moment my skin meets his, my head tips back, hanging at an angle. My blood begins to bubble, surging through me. It flows through my arms, into his hands, each of my nerves going numb as it simmers past. The boy lets out a low groan, my power and life spilling into him. I feel his satisfaction.
I force my head forward, desperate to meet his gaze. But his head has fallen back, his dark lips parted.
“Wendy?” a voice calls—something beyond my mind, in the real world. “What are you doing out here?”
In my hands, the boy’s grasp begins to change. Never before had I realized how immaterial he felt before, not until there are two nearly fleshen hands in mine. Holding me. His gaze continues to search the sky, his body shifting in and out between shadow and human.
“Wendy!”
“Ignore it,” the boy demands.
My body sways, and I recognize the voice. Somewhere in reality, Calista is shaking my body back and forth.
“Wendy!” the boy shouts desperately, but I’m already opening my eyes.
Calista is sitting before me. My breath is ragged as I struggle to inhale.
“What in the gods?” Calista breathes, her eyes widening. “What are you doing to yourself?”
I glance down. She’s holding my hands in hers. For a moment, I’m nearly grateful she stopped me. For a moment, I’m angry the boy is not flesh and in front of me.
“Nothing.” I rip my hands from her grasp. “I’m not doing anything.”
“You looked like you were dying.”
At the word dying, I notice the sword sheathed to Calista’s back. Her hair is more than loosely braided—it’s fastened to her head. Not a wisp is out of place.
She’s out here for a reason, and I think I know what it is.
Lilac.
“I’m fine,” I say. “It was a mistake.”
I rise to my feet, looking past Calista, but she follows me up. The boy pounds at the back of my mind, calling me. While his voice is louder than usual, I can’t make it out properly. Maybe he isn’t truly speaking.
“Wendy?” Calista snaps.
I look back at her. She glances down.
My gaze follows.
The grass beneath me is entirely gray. Withered away to emptiness—devoid of color. Of life.
It’s worse than dead, but I don’t know what’s worse than that.
I think back to the trees—the ones I brought to life at the boy’s command—and how they always left me feeling half-dead. They must have taken life, too. It must have taken a bit of my life. Ma once used the same magic to fight the pernipe—she died using this magic.
Who could have taught her such a thing?
I look up at Calista, who feels more worried than I’m used to. Our dynamic was always the opposite—me concerned for her.
“Are you all right?” she asks.
“Fine.”
She doesn’t take my blunt tone well. It hurts her.
“Whatever.” Calista walks away.
I stand, taking deep breaths, staring at the grass beneath me. It’s nearly black.
What would have happened to the academy if I succeeded in bringing the boy to life? Could I have sucked the power out of the barrier, out of the grounds of this world itself?
“What did you ask of me?” I mutter in my mind.
“You misunderstand.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, furious. The woods blur, the world inside twisting out of shape. The ground and the boy meld together. There’s nothing more than a vague shadow where he stands.
“Stop this.” I stare at my feet—nothing more than a scribble. “Let me see.”
Slowly, my vision focuses, the boy turning from shadow to flesh, the trees coming into view. His eyes stare at me, but they’ve changed. No longer a reflection of Xander or a manifestation of my guilt.
I remember the day I created the boy. More than just his eyes have changed since that day. He’s grown with me. He was fifteen with me, sixteen, seventeen, and so on.
Now, the boy barely resembles how he began. His freckles have disappeared, his brown hair has grown shaggy and black, and the bags under his eyes match mine.
But he doesn’t match me.
He reads my mind, but he is not always of my mind.
I don’t know who he is.
We used to have fun together. When I would dance in the woods—the very dancing Azaire told me he watched from a distance—I was dancing with him. I’d swim with him in the lake. Take him to the house beyond the border on Ma’s birthdays. He was my only friend.
A rift grew between us when I befriended Calista. Never would I have thought him to be jealous—he was me. But this, what he’s become, it has to be jealousy.
“Xander,” I say. “Your name is Xander.”
The boy’s face visibly breaks. He knows who Xander is, he knows what I’ve done. He knows because he’s me.
Because he did it, too.
“Wendy, I—”
I cut him off. “I created you because I needed you—needed someone. I don’t need someone anymore. You’re dismissed.”
The boy steps closer, his features drawn into a frown. He’s about to beg as he picks up my hand, and I’m about to stand my ground. Tell him no. Tell him to go away. But instead, he smiles.
“You think you can be rid of me”—the boy raises his free hand, snapping his fingers—“like that?”
His tone isn’t something I’m used to. It’s prideful, it’s sinister—two things I’ve never been.
“Of course I can.” I step away, trying to rip my hand free.
But his grip is too strong. Like a tree, his branches have wrapped around my mind.
The boy shakes his head. “I am the darkest parts of your mind, the shadow of your soul, the wreckage of your heart.” Then he pulls me closer. “I am not something who comes and goes as you please. I am ever present, whether you grant me a face or not.”
“No,” I whisper. That isn’t right. “You’re my friend. You’re a companion because I needed one.”
What he said—it makes no sense. This whole time, he’s been jealous of Azaire. He told me he loves me.
He can’t simply be my darkness.
“I can be your darkness, and I am,” the boy says, answering my thoughts. “Because I, my love, am you. And you so desperately want to be loved, yet you run from it. I was trying to give you what you desire. I was trying to give you both your contradictions.”
“You wanted me to bring you to life.” I force my hands free with all my strength, stumbling into a tree behind me.
The boy takes a step with every word. “You wanted to bring me to life. What I want is only what you long for. But you already put those pieces together.”
I shake my head, my mind throbbing. “I don’t—”
“You do,” the boy says. But the longer I look at him, the more he looks like Xander.
My first crush.
My first kill.
“You have suppressed the parts of yourself you dislike so deeply, they had to come out in one way or another,” he says.
“No—”
“Go save your friends before they get themselves killed.” He raises a hand, shooing me away, and my eyes open—not of my volition.