27. Lines We Don’t Cross
LUCIAN
The screams are piercing.
One is on the floor, burning, burnt, dead.
Breck.
The one who still breathes is the one who screams. I snuff out the fire before I run to Jermoine, who writhes on the floor whilst he cries. I try to talk to him, to still him, but it is to no avail.
His arms are covered in silver, and a sword with only half its blade lies a few feet from him.
Clearly Desdemona can take care of herself.
And taking care of herself has become killing my friends.
One of these days, when she’s not so annoyingly important, I will kill her.
I pick up Jermoine and run to the infirmary. The second Elva takes him, I leave.
I’ve barely been in my room a minute when Azaire comes in. “Whose blood?”
“Freyr’s.” I pick dried blood from underneath my nails. I’ve brought the stench with me back to my room. A pungent smell, and one I’ve grown used to during my childhood in the dungeon.
Azaire and I could never be tense. Though, at this moment, it feels like perhaps we could. He’s looking at me like I’m a stranger. “What did you do?”
“He’s in the dungeon.”
“Luc.” His face drops and his voice is soft. “What are you doing?” I stare at him, and he sits at my desk. “I know you want answers, but,” he looks me up and down, “you’re covered in blood. You ruined a girl’s life, and whether or not she deserves it remains to be seen, but now you’ve kidnapped someone?”
“I’m doing what needs to be done.”
“For answers?” Azaire frowns, sucking on the inside of his cheek. “For revenge? You know you’ll always be my brother, but you take things too far.”
“For the weapon! For us, for our plans!” I exclaim.
“Luc,” Azaire says slowly. He whispers, “You wouldn’t be covered in that much blood if you only wanted to destroy it.”
I’m quiet a moment, looking into his eyes until I can no longer bear being seen. “I need to?—”
“Will it make you happy?” He cuts me off. “Seriously,” he pauses, “will getting answers and revenge make you happy?”
Azaire, always the best part of me. But, “It’s not about happiness.”
“Then refocus. You, more than anyone, deserve a good life, but you’re going to forge your own grave if you keep this up.” His eyes move to my cheek. “What you did to him—whatever it was that produced that much blood—that doesn’t leave you.”
I swallow a mouthful of heavy saliva. “This is bigger than me and happiness.”
“It doesn’t have to be.” Then he says those words. The words I’ve always feared. “In our choices lie our fate. And I know you’ve had a lot of those taken from you. So it’s the ones you do get to decide for yourself that matter most.” His eyes are full of sympathy. Sympathy that I don’t deserve after cutting a man open again and again. “Don’t let them take more of you.”
“Desdemona could be a monster,” I say, avoiding the rest. “She’s why Lilac won’t wake up.” I curse under my breath. “She could be involved with the Arcanes!”
She all but reached the void. That’s no coincidence. I was a fool to think it could be.
I was a fool for her.
Never have I been so blindsided by a pretty face. Because she was more than a pretty face.
She was a lie.
The worst kind—the kind you want to believe.
“She might be, yeah. If you find out she’s not, how are you going to feel about what you did to her?” A line of worry creases between his eyebrows. He looks away, farther than the room, whether to the past or future, I don’t know. “When that was me, I thought I was worthless. I lost my parents, was thrown into this new world where everyone hated me, and I took it personally.”
He was my suitemate at six and didn’t say a word to me until I let him win a duel in Combat Training. He told me he knew what I did. I asked if he wanted a rematch. He reached for his beanie and zipped his lips.
“Does that sound familiar?” Azaire asks. “Desdemona lost her mom, she was thrown into this world, and everyone hates her now, because of your choice. The Arcanes could be around her family for a bigger reason, or it could just be about the weapon. Everything else could easily be a misunderstanding.”
“I’m not ready to bet on that,” I say.
“A month ago, you fought against Lusia to protect her.” I don’t need reminding. “Do you think that’s why you’re so quick to want revenge?”
“When did you become my therapist?” I ask. I don’t smile, though I’m sure he sees it in my eyes. I want to bring some humor back to the conversation.
“Funny. Desdemona called me your babysitter earlier.”
I’m jerked into the moment. “You talked to her?”
“I told her I was sorry.”
Sorry. We don’t use that word. It’s considered informal, too personal. “If by some miracle we find this isn’t her fault, then I’ll issue her my apologies as well.”
Azaire nods a little, his face awfully morose. I see his point. I know he understands what Desdemona is going through. It does not bring me remorse, even if it should.
“Good is relative. You decide where the line between it and evil stands, but there is a line. We get to choose, because as humans we have a propensity for either. But I know you, Luc, and you’re undoubtedly good. Just find your line again.”
I nod and Azaire exhales, his shoulders dropping with the release of the tension. He says, “You know Wendy and I can handle the weapon.”
“No,” I say. “I’ll do it.” Then I pause. “Forgive me. How are you and Wendy?”
Azaire smiles. The kind of smile that he has not had on my account in far too long. What if he is right?
“Really good.” His cheeks turn crimson, and he pulls a leather cord from under his shirt. A little preserved rose is on the end of it. “She gave me this after…” he pauses while he stills. “It’s a totem of protection. You know, with everything going on. Then she kissed me, and from there it’s been,” he laughs, to himself, “really good.” Staring at the rose, he says, “I think I love her.”
The happy words are a hit to my heart. How have I missed this? My best friend, my brother, in love.
“That’s great.” I smile, for him. “You deserve it. More than anyone.”
Azaire shrugs, still smiling. “I think the same of you.” But my smile falls, and eventually so does his. “Can I ask you a question?”
I don’t answer. Not because he can’t, but because I know that he will and it will be one I don’t like—he wouldn’t ask otherwise.
“Are you still planning on destroying the weapon?” I inhale before I answer, but it is answer enough for Azaire. He nods.
“Zaire,” my voice is rough. “It consumes me. I always knew it would come down to this—I’d get my fighting chance and I’d have to do something you wouldn’t like. Perhaps it’s selfish, I know it is, but I want you to do this with me.”
Azaire shakes his head and tugs his beanie. “What are you going to do with the weapon?”
“I’m going to power it and use it against the Arcanes.”
He’s quiet a moment. Then, “That’s the exact opposite of what Wendy wants—of what I want!”
I look him in the eye when I say, “I’m so close now, Zaire. You’ve always been my voice of reason. For better or for worse, I fear that I’ll lose that without you.”
“Okay. But what happens when you get it, Luc?” I open my mouth, but he continues, “What if this elusive revenge costs you something you’re not willing to lose?” Again, I open my mouth. “What if it’s just one thing after another until you’ve wasted your entire life? When will it end?”
For as many times as I tried to speak before, I am stumped.
“I’ll swim the sea when we get to it.”
“If you can tell me right now,” he says, “I’ll do it. I’ll be your voice of reason, I’ll choose you. Your revenge and your vendettas, I’ll make them mine.” His dark eyebrows fall. “When will it end?”
I’m quiet. I’m thinking. I finally say, “I don’t know what comes after.” I’ve been thinking of this beloved revenge for seven years. It’s grown in my mind to become all-encompassing. It’s the thing I would fall asleep to on the worst of nights in the kingdom and the suite alike.
It was my saving grace amidst the abuse.
I don’t know what comes after.
I don’t know that there’s peace or contentment or happiness for me.
“What do you want?” Azaire asks me. “When you close your eyes, what do you see?”
“The Arcane,” I answer. I feel it. Hot and fluid. “Dead.”
* * *
Despite what Azaire said, I go to Freyr the next morning with one goal: getting an answer, and one plan if he doesn’t oblige.
Torture.
Most of his fingers are broken and one eye is entirely swollen shut, while the other is close to. He sits in the corner of the cage, convulsing, no doubt from the remnants of my shadows. I lift a hand and pull the rest out of him, something I was too exhausted to do last night.
“Are you ready to talk?” I ask. He gives me the kind of look that tells me he’s closer to killing me than talking. I think about what Azaire said—of what I knew—this doesn’t leave you.
With that in mind, I pull out my sword. “I will cut you open, stitch you up, and do it all over again.”
His voice is barely a whisper when he says, “I meant what I said.”
“What was that?”
“Been through worse.”
“I’m going to Lorucille today. I need the name of the project.” He looks up at me without lifting his head. I’m not sure he even can. “What am I looking for?” I ask, to put it into simpler terms for him. When he doesn’t answer, I ask, “Are you protecting someone? Is that what this is about?” I step closer.
“I’m dead either way.” His voice is hoarse, and his body is slouching down over itself more with every passing second. “And I don’t talk to people like you.”
“People like me?” I question.
“Entitled fucks.” He spits on the dirty floor.
“I’d rather not get blood on my shoes, since as you said, I’m an entitled fuck. Though, in the end, I’ll get new shoes and you’ll be dead. I suppose the point of this pontificate is to ask, do you want to spend your last days in agony? Or do you want to answer my very simple questions?”
He makes a sound that I suppose could pass as a laugh, though it sounds more akin to a cough. “I didn’t mean you’d be the one to kill me.” He barely gets the words out.
I’d ask him to elaborate, though seeing as I know he won’t, I decide to go with the simpler option of following through on my promises of agony and slice him open.
I use the red knife, and I’m not surprised when it doesn’t burn him.
* * *
I force myself to class, to uphold appearances, naturally. It’s in Psychology where we rehearse the same age-old questions and tactics of control. Today Hogan is talking about the subconscious and how we can influence it without the powers of Lucents like me.
“The easiest way to manipulate someone subconsciously is to do so without notice. That’s why the books boast about short sentences and pretty pictures. They’ll read the same thing tens, hundreds of times a day, and the message will begin to embed,” I say, answering Hogan’s repetitive question.
“Actually,” Desdemona says, “contrary to the popular opinion in these books,” I turn to face her seat, where she holds the book like it’s poisonous, “we’re not corenths, and we’re not much dumber than the lot of you either.”
“Oh, come on,” Fleur says.
“No, no.” Hogan lifts a finger. “What better way to learn than from them?”
“Whatever.” Fleur turns away.
Desdemona shifts in her seat. “Yeah,” I say, “come on. I’d love to hear the kind of insight you have.”
She sneers at me. “Well for one, ‘the key to peace is compliance,’ that’s one of your favorite statements, for all those who don’t know,” she looks around the classroom, “is total bullshit. No one reads that and thinks that slaving their lives away is doing them any good. It’s meant to make us feel self-important, but it doesn’t.”
No, compliancy is not peace. It’s torture. “Yet it works,” I find myself saying, despite my own reservations about the septic. “We’ve never had issues getting what we need from you.”
“First of all, Prince, don’t talk to me about what you need until you’re forced to work and starve. Second of all, my only point is that we’re not dim-witted.”
“You’re no?—”
Her tongue travels fast as she says, “Your fancy book says to make us tired and feed us ideas, which obviously means that you rightly know we wouldn’t believe your propaganda if we could have a moment to think.”
I begin again, but she cuts me off.
“You want the people to work more? Give them more. Starvation, dehydration, and a lack of sleep are only going to give you less production. But you’re all so focused on the mental aspects of everything. Physicality is just as important.”
“Wit wins wars,” I say, though it feels more like regurgitating.
“Partially, yeah. You need someone to plan where to aim, but what would you do if your soldiers couldn’t swing?”
Someone whistles behind me, and Fleur’s head whips around.
“She has a point,” the boy says. Andy.
“I do have a point, because I’m not dumb, and you all know where I’m from.” Her eyes shoot daggers at me. “Including you, Aibek. So should I mention that night? With the wine, and the dress, and… what was it? Oh, right!” She smiles and I know it’s mock enjoyment. “You trying to kiss me.” She enunciates each word slowly as she says, “A prince wanting dirty, septic, scum. Now what do your books make of that?”
There are a few murmurs around the room but I would sooner be damned before I allowed her to maintain the higher ground. I’d like to tip over this newfound pedestal she’s sitting on.
“Tell me, does your fire require mental or physical strength?”
“What?” she says.
“He’s asking if it took mental or physical power when you killed Breck,” Eleanora says angrily, and I see that both her and Fleur are throwing their own daggers at Desdemona, via their eyes.
Desdemona’s face goes blank, then it goes angry. “Neither,” she barks, looking around the class with a sneer. “Seeing as it was so damned easy.”
“Okay!” Hogan says, with a clap and a falsely cheery tone. His eyes are pinned on Desdemona. “It seems we’ve gotten far off track.”
“You don’t belong here!” Eleanora shouts. “You’re crass. Uneducated. Violent. Murderous. Scum. You will stain all of Visnatus! Walking around here with some perverted sense of hubris.”
Desdemona watches Eleanora with a blank face, and when everything has finished, she turns to look at Hogan. He stands with his arms crossed and a slight look of disapproval on his face.
“Really?” Desdemona says, sounding resigned. Hogan doesn’t acknowledge her and she says nothing more.
After class, Hogan calls Desdemona to his desk. I wait by the door.
“I think you know why I asked you to stay?” Hogan says.
“I can’t speak to the prince that way?” Desdemona answers, and it is clear from her tone that she does not care for the topic.
“We welcome debate, but?—”
“But what? I can’t make a solid point because, well, I’m septic,” she says, all too sarcastically. “Right? Well, get this. I’m a little tired of kissing everyone’s asses around here. I know where I stand. You made it abundantly clear. So if you want to send me back, take it up with the headmistress. But I’m done.”
Then she storms right out, stopping in the hallway when she sees me. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were obsessed with me, Aibek.”
But she doesn’t walk away.
“I don’t think you should speak to a prince in that way,” I mock. “Perhaps titles are in order.”
I take a step away from her and smile to myself when she follows.
“Yeah? Well, my apologies. Which one should I use? Prince? Or pathetic?”
I shrug. “You could have called me yours.”
Desdemona sticks out her arm in front of my chest, stopping me, walking around me, her finger grazing over me. Even with the layer that is my shirt and coat between us, I imagine she loathes and loves this sensation as much as I do.
“I’d like to call you dead,” she whispers, in front of me now, looking up at me.
Temperamental little thing.
Is it depraved to enjoy when she talks to me like this?
It’s equal parts alluring and aggravating. Alluring because no one else would say what she dares to. Aggravating because it can’t be alluring.
“All right.” I grab her wrist, put her hand to my throat, and say, “Kiss or kill me then. Your choice.”
Her chest rises and falls and her eyebrows crease together, but she says nothing. I imagine this is the face of hatred, and if it is, I feel the same. Distrust her even more.
But keep your enemies close, right?
She yanks her hand back. Love and loathe, indeed.
“I’d like to smack that smirk off your face,” she finally says.
“Is that what your insults have been delegated to? How very puerile. And anyway,” I smile more, “you love my face.”
Her hand reaches for my forehead, where she tousles loose tendrils of hair. Then her eyes fall to mine. “Your nose is crooked and one of your eyebrows is higher than the other,” Desdemona says in the most monotone voice I could ever fathom. “One night, I thought that said something more about your character than it truly does. But you are exactly who I thought you’d be.”
“Who is that?”
“The spoiled, pompous prince, who gets everything he wants and doesn’t care about the lives he ruins in the process.”
This time, I touch her hair. Wrapping an orange strand around my finger. Her breath still catches, much to my amusement. “You have thirty-three freckles on your cheeks and specks of gold in your eyes. But I never thought your appearance had anything to do with your character.” I drop my hand, meet her eyes. “You’re the modest, humbled girl from the septic.” I shrug. “Who happens to murder people as a pastime.”
Desdemona recoils as though I’ve struck her. Her eyebrows crease together, and she looks at me with absolute disdain. “Breck is dead,” she says, somewhere between a statement and a question. “You told Eleanora.”
“I told no one.”
She chuckles dryly. “Right.”
“Half of the hall is burnt to a crisp and smells like ashen flesh,” I point out.
She looks away from me, exhaling shakily. When she turns her head back, her eyes are vacant shells. If I were to open the doors, I don’t know I’d find anything beyond their threshold.
Not for me, at least.
“This blood on my hands is only half mine. Remember that.”
Perhaps she does have the higher ground because when she leaves, I’m wishing she took her words that I fear are all too true.
* * *
With all other options either exasperated or nonexistent, I go to Calista, who is nothing short of dispirited to see me. She pulls me into her room and says, “Is Lilac harmed?” Her wavering eyebrows and widening eyes say it all.
Yes, she is, if for no reason other than being locked in a room at the hands of Lusia. “She’s breathing.”
Her head tilts down and her eyes narrow at me. “Then why are you here?”
I look at her door. “Is it soundproof?”
“Of course it is,” she downright snaps.
“Where did you find the map that had the weapons facility marked?”
Calista crosses her arms over her chest. She opens her mouth, seemingly to say something, then chooses to scoff and close it instead.
I don’t bother elaborating, I’ve said all I have to say. I’m assuming she realizes this.
“You’re still chasing tails?”
“It would be best for you if Soman law punished Lorucille before you could be held responsible. Wouldn’t you agree?”
She shifts her weight back and forth. “Lilac would never do that to me.”
“Haven’t you learned there’s nothing more dangerous than a scorned lover?” I keep my voice flat, devoid of emotion so she won’t know she’s right. Lilac would never harm her. Besides, seven years—the time between us and our thrones—is a long time. Who really is to say what could happen? “I’m going to destroy the weapon, not your family.”
“Remember when you said this could get us out of our marriages?” She scowls. “Look at you now. I’d almost think you’re some kind of sicko who’s excited.”
“It’s never exciting to have your choices taken from you.” If only this ended and began with a forced marriage. “Work with me, Calista. The only thing this weapon could do is revive our strife.”
Not that my motivations are all that decent. I simply don’t want the weapon used in our universe—I want it used against the Arcanes.
“It never died,” she says gravely.
“I know the marriage is hardest for you. Giving you a king of your own world.” A world that holds the king at a higher value than the queen, the men more valuable than the women. The opposite of Soma. “But I was raised a Lucent. I won’t take your autonomy the way our parents have taken ours.”
For a second, I swear her eyes turn glassy. “There’s a tunnel system you can access, three stories below the kingdom’s south wing. On the opposite end of the castle and down another floor, there’s a vault. It’s where we keep everything of priority. Our power source and technology. Secrets.” She shrugs.
Our power source.They’re already using the captivator the Light Folk created. No wonder they’re adamant about it being better than the moons.
“Thank you.” I give her a small bow of my head.
She takes down the pins that are keeping her dirty blonde hair intricately woven around her head. It’s been years since I’ve seen her hair down. “But there are wards, as I’m sure you would expect. Only Contarini blood can enter.” She pulls a jacket over her school uniform, then pulls her hair to cover half her face. “We go now, or not at all.”
“Now it is.”
I follow her through a portal she opens, though it doesn’t lead to the foramen the way mine always do. “Keep your head down,” she whispers. “We only have two halls to get through to reach the entrance. Don’t ruin your plotting by being seen.”
Doing as she says, I duck my head. An oversaturated number of soldiers and warriors pass by as we walk down the second hall. Perhaps the strife has more than revived by now.
Perhaps it’s thriving.
Calista stops at a dead end, and for a moment I believe she’s brought me here for harm until she presses into a seemingly random spot on the stone walls and a small entryway opens up. We enter the dark stairwell, the steps made of no more than ordinary—and dirty—cement. The entryway closes behind us inconspicuously and the only light we have left for the next three sets of stairs comes from a contraption I’ve never seen before. Like fire in a bottle, but it doesn’t burn hot, nor does it destroy whatever glass is holding it in.
We’re trudging through the dirty hallway for miles, both our footsteps silent, as is our breathing, until we come along a large, circular door against the wall of dirt. The same steel as the door of the weapons facility.
Calista turns a knob and it lifts up, then she grabs my hand and pulls me through. The room is brighter than the hallway—not by much—and bigger than I would’ve expected from the outside. It’s three times the size of our suites, with a chipping wooden table that seats twelve in the middle of the room and old purple cushions on all the tall chairs. The walls are filled with shelves that hold books and maps of every world: including Soma.
Secrets, alright.
I pick up the first book that catches my attention while Calista wanders farther into the room. It’s only a history book, and the most intriguing part of it at first is that it’s dated seventy-eight AA. Seventy-eight years after the Arcanian War and subsequently the burning of the Irisan Archives.
Opening the book, I find that it was written by Soman Scholars. Highly educated Lucents who were still trying to piece together the history that was lost, even though I’ve been under the understanding that they gave up by fifty-six AA.
Flipping through the book, there is a name I see repeated. Mial. There is no last name, or any correlation to what the name means. The scholars only know that the name was riddled across the universe. By page two hundred, I find that Mial is the reason for the belief that going to the void takes your existence with you, leaving you forgotten.
It was the only explanation the scholars could devise.
“Lucian!” Calista whispers. Setting the book down, I walk to the back of the room. “This is where I found the map. And remember, this is your problem.” She glances at me sideways. “Not mine.”
“This is soon to be everyone’s problem.” I’ve never seen this iteration of the map of Lorucille. Locations of power are littered everywhere, in every continent and mountain peak. More soldier training camps than they’ve ever reported. More welding and mining villages too.
They must’ve been planning for a war for decades.
“How many meetings do you sit in on?” I ask Calista.
“I’m a princess. No more than a glorified trophy here.” I see the spite in her eyes.
“None?” I surmise.
“None,” she says bitterly.
She has no idea what this map means. I always knew they viewed the woman differently here, though I didn’t know it was that different. Lilac sits in for every Soman meeting. I can’t decide whether to burst her bubble now or later. Perhaps later, since we still have to get out surreptitiously.
“When you found out about the weapon the first time, what did you find?” I ask.
“I only saw it on the map.”
“No plan?”
“All you asked for was a location.” I can tell she’s still bitter about the circumstances by her tone.
“Look for anything pertaining to the weapon.” Within a moment, I’m scurrying through the maps and papers and books on this side of the room. Calista clears her throat, and I look up to see her arms crossed over her chest. Relenting, I say, “Please.”
She rolls her eyes at me. “So much for not taking my autonomy,” she mutters, going about a shelf of books on the other end of the room.
Most of the books aren’t titled anything, seeming to be nothing more than handwritten journals and accounts of earlier wars. Still, I skim through them all. Book after countless book until my eyelids droop and my shoulders grow sore.
I can’t leave here with nothing.
The Hidden Powersis one of the few titled books I come across. As such, I do more than skim, to find that Lucent powerists on Soma had been working on multiplying the Soul Stones. This goes against every single belief held by Zola.
There is a reason for the six stones of each of the six main planets. They were tampering with Zola’s balance.
The Soul Ruby is repeated—it’s the Soul Stone that they worked to maximize. They would break pieces off the original and grow them bigger. Slowly eroding the original until they had nothing but less powerful, smaller pieces.
More harrowing, the Soul Ruby was the main component of the creation of the void.
What if that is what Isa meant? They wanted to use the Soul Ruby to destroy the universe it created, and they never could because it’s been abraded.
I hear a footstep, then another, and my head snaps to the entrance of the room. A woman appears, her eyes growing wide when she sees us. The seal of Lorucille is on her shirt, but there is no distinct marker of her ranking.
I have her ankles wrapped in shadows before she can take a step.
Turning to Calista, I see she’s already alert to the problem too.
“Bad timing,” she says, surprisingly calm, walking to the entrance and kneeling in front of the fallen woman. I follow.
“Princess Calista,” the woman stutters, “what–what are you doing here?”
“What are you doing here?” she asks while looking down at the woman. She sounds much more uncanny than I’ve ever heard her before. The woman opens her mouth, and Calista says, “Honest answers only.”
The woman only stutters.
Calista shakes her head, her voice taking on an almost seductive quality. “I’ll have to take your memories, but if you answer correctly, I won’t have to take your life.”
The words fall from her mouth in such a rush they’re hard to make out. “I was only sent to pick up a tome.”
“Hm,” Calista muses. “Which tome?”
The woman looks at me and shakes her head. It’s almost answer enough: something pertaining to Soma.
Calista puts her middle and pointer fingers on both of the girl’s temples. Her eyes wash over pale yellow while she stares blankly at Calista. Minutes later, with her eyes still on the woman, Calista says to me, “Pull back your shadows.”
I do, and a moment later she brings the woman to her feet and pushes her back in the direction she came.
The first thing I say is, “You kill your staff?”
“Gods no,” Calista says, disgusted. “I only learned how to get my way around here. She won’t remember anything other than she couldn’t find the tome.” She gives me a wide grin. “And I found something you won’t like.”
My voice is stiff. “What?”
“Come along.” She walks to the table in the middle of the room and leans over one of the chairs. “Does this look familiar to you?” Between her pointer finger and thumb, there is a moonstone earring, embedded in silver.
I hear a click when I clench my jaw and Calista laughs, then shoots me a mock frown. “Your perfect family isn’t so perfect after all.”
The earring reeks of Lusia’s energetic signature. Soma could know everything I’ve discovered and more. Do Lusia and Labyrinth know of the power supplies they have here? The extra mining and welding villages? The weapon?
Has every fight in the meetings been staged?
“You’ve always known we were never perfect.”
I reach for the earring, and she flicks her hand back. “Perhaps I want the worlds to know too.”
“You’d do that to Lilac?”
Calista answers in way of a frown.
My idea of stopping—ending—the Arcanes has gotten so muddled beneath the layers I keep pulling back. I always seem to end up feeling hopeless.
Lilac won’t wake up, Desdemona has something to do with it, I have a man in a dungeon who won’t talk, and like Azaire said, what I do to him will never leave me. There’s a weapon being made, and my desire to use it against the Arcanes doesn’t seem to be what Elysia’s two strongest worlds want.
I have a laundry list of questions that need answers, and I’ve only managed to obtain a headache.
I only wanted the power source.
I start taking book after book out from the shelves.
“Lucian,” Calista whispers. “We should get out before someone else comes.” She sounds stressed.
Her already pale complexion has blanched. Her eyes are bloodshot. Altering the woman’s memories has burnt her out.
“I can’t leave with nothing,” I say quickly, flipping through page after page.
“We might not get to leave at all if we don’t—” she stops, I turn. Her face has blanched and she clutches onto her shoulders while leaning down, as though she is going to puke.
I walk to her quickly, put an arm around her torso, and as hard as it is to give up, I say, “Let’s go.”