35. The Only Thing I Know Is That I Know Nothing
LUCIAN
Eunoia can feel the deaths of their loved ones. There’s no telling how they will react. As a rule of thumb, stay away.
– A GUIDE TO SURVIVING IN VIRIDIS
One word echoes through the hall. “No.”
“No, no, no.”
Wendy sits next to me. She touches his snakes like they’re alive, his face like he’s breathing, his mouth like it’s smiling.
But he’s not. He never will again.
“How long?” she whispers.
“It’s too late.” If the stinger deposited the venom—which it surely has—there’s no way it hasn’t spread.
I hold Azaire’s dead body and soul in my lap.
He’s gone.
“I won’t accept that.” Wendy picks up half his body. I do the same.
I killed him.
We walk to the mastick in silence. The putrid scent of burning flesh has me thinking this could be but a dream. I’d like it to be. It doesn’t feel real. Each step I take feels as dead as Azaire.
Weighted with guilt.
We lay Azaire’s body on a bed of grass and mushrooms. I look at him, yet past him, into nothing.
I did this.
Wendy kisses his forehead. “Azaire Wendigo,” she whispers. “I do love you.” Then she sobs. “May we meet again.”
She walks to me and lays a hand on my shoulder. I can never tell her that I’m responsible for this.
I kneel over Azaire’s body and lay his beanie on his chest. I open my mouth and nothing comes out. Suddenly, I falter on my knees. I’m falling on myself and hugging Azaire’s dead body.
I’m crying.
“I’m so sorry, brother.”
If only I listened.
“I’m so, irrevocably, sorry,” I sob.
I can’t get up, even as Azaire’s body rapidly loses its heat. His blood isn’t pumping, his heart not beating. I’m never going to speak to him again.
He’s dead.
That can’t be. He was just here. A moment ago, we spoke. “Azaire?” I can’t stop myself. “Azaire, talk to me.”
He can’t be dead. He can’t be gone. This is not real.
Wendy hugs me. I feel her sobs as she must feel mine. “Come on,” she whispers in my ear and pulls me up. The blood of Azaire coats us both.
But it coats me in an entirely different way.
I killed him.
She holds me while we walk a few feet from Azaire. Letting me go, she holds her arms out as if the air around them is weighted.
The world begins to tremble.
Perhaps it is a dream.
The grass grows around Azaire’s body slowly, covering him entirely. From the grass, the trunk of a tree sprouts, growing into the sky and sprouting gray flowers.
That’s it, then?
A person doesn’t leave like this, doesn’t cease like this. He’s still out there, somewhere, he has to be.
But that’s not how it works.
I wrap my arms around Wendy’s shoulders. She gasps, then she turns to me, hugs me back, and we cry.
That’s how we spend the entire night. Crying in the silence and watching the sprouts of Azaire’s tree blow in the wind.
* * *
The vacancy is the only thing I feel, even as the kappa’s snake of a tongue bites further into the flesh of my arm. Its blank, dark face is looking at me, despite me not being able to make out its eyes.
I’ve killed two of its friends, comrades, other pieces of its soul for all I care.
I’m not a monster, they tried to kill me first. I don’t seek bloodshed. It seeks me. Even if I ventured into the mastick, shouting for the creatures to come and cutting my own self to lure them with the scent of my blood.
It’s not like I have any control anyway. My choices become my fate? My ass. If I even had control over my choices, even if I could say no to Lusia and Labyrinth, do I have the choice of my will?
Where’s my freedom? My visions force my hand as much as fear of Lusia and Labyrinth do.
The kappa’s venom is getting to my head. There are either three more of them, or I’m losing my grip on reality. I don’t care which it is.
Though I was waiting for the kappa to make another death-threatening move before I made mine, it’s still looking at me. They’re looking at me. At least, I think they are. They don’t seem to have eyes.
I swing my merai blade through the snake whose teeth are prickling into my skin. It recoils with a shriek, and when the kappa runs, I shout so loud that the birds stop singing. “What about vengeance?” It stops as if it understands me. “I killed your friends.”
It turns over its faux shoulder, or whatever it has. I don’t know its anatomical makeup.
I hold out my arms, dropping the merai blade. “Come on, get me back.”
It scurries away. What is wrong with this universe? I pull the arphac blade from the sheath at my waist and send it flying into its back.
I fall when it does. The world spins so much that I might as well be upside down. My arm is damn near a blood bath, foaming at the two deepest holes from the kappa’s fangs. I tip my head back into the grass, staring into the carousel sky.
You got me again, universe.
* * *
Something kicks my shoulder. I twist away from the shoe.
“Are you an idiot?”
My eyes fly open, right into hers. Shoulder-length hair envelopes the world around me. Everything looks pretty here, the sun shining in between her locks turning the world a shade of orange.
She backs away entirely until I can see her no longer. Then she grabs my hand, pulls me to my feet, and wraps her arm around me. I’m half walking and half dragging.
“Do you have a death wish?” she says. “You can’t be out here right now.”
“Perhaps,” I say. This venom has gotten to my head; the world has a glassy sheen to it, as though my eyes are covered in tears. They could be. “What happened to staying away?”
“I thought you had better survival instincts than this.” Even with my blood spilling on her, she sounds more annoyed than concerned.
“If bleeding out grants me your attention, perhaps I’ll try it more.”
She stops and pulls her arm away from my torso. I almost fall to my face. “Are you kidding me?” My feet grow wobbly, and I reach for her. She steps back, and I fall to my knees. Looking down at me, she says, “You ruined my life. You have my full attention because I should be burying a knife in your back, not carrying you to the infirmary.”
To be stabbed in the back by such pretty hands would be a privilege.
Surely I am delusional.
“Why are you?” I ask, looking into her eyes. Something’s wrong—they look more red than brown.
“I heard about Azaire,” she whispers.
I look away, red eyes be damned. “Save your condolences.”
She kneels in front of me, picking up my chin gently and pulling my face to her. “I’m sorry. No condolences. Just the things you can’t say.”
“I don’t want any of it.”
“It’s your fault,” she says. “You do know that, don’t you?” I recoil from her touch that suddenly feels colder than it ever has before. “You pulled him out here, because of your desire for revenge. He had no skin in this game.”
“How do you know this?”
“Wendy told me,” she whispers menacingly.
“Wendy?”
“Oh, yeah. She blames you too. You didn’t stab him, but you put him in front of the blade.” She’s running her finger along a blade she didn’t have a moment ago, drawing blood.
I shiver, something I’ve never felt around Desdemona. If anything, I’m hot in her presence. Yet this is more akin to Soma’s weather.
She pushes me down into the grass. My back is met by dirt and worms, maggots and skulls. Desdemona hoists herself on top of me, and I feel the phantom of her blade just over my chest.
“Wake up or die,” are the last words I hear her whisper before my eyes force their way open.
A fingernail attached to a hand that’s so brutally burnt I’m not even sure it’s human any longer runs down my chest, cutting into me shallowly all the way to my stomach. My back burns like I’m being held over an open fire, roasting alive.
“We want you, creator,” it whispers.
The pressure is gone, and I’m looking at the starry night sky. I jerk my body up but fall back over, coughing my guts out until I’m puking out foam. The venom is working its way through my body. The two kappa I killed are still on the ground, but there’s nothing else in my vicinity.
I stumble to the infirmary, through the still desolate halls, but there have been no more sightings within the academy walls. Despite every single one of our wards and barriers being broken down, nothing has come past the mastick since Azaire.
Elva looks at me and pulls her lips in the way she always used to when she was annoyed with me. “Room thirteen.” She points to an open door down the hall, and two Eunoia come to help me make my way there.
It takes both of them to pinch the skin around the bite mark that takes up most of my forearm. Blood rushes out, accompanied by more white foam.
“Desdemona?” I call when I see a girl with orange hair. She stops, and I know it’s her. I need to talk to her, find the truth once and for all.
What link does she have to the corenths?
Or perhaps I just need to talk to her.
There’s a bottle of vesi beneath her arm, and it’s as good an excuse as any. “Can I have some?”
She grabs the bottle in her hand, tugs the cap off, and takes a long, slow chug with her eyes on me. Then she flicks the cap at my face. “No.”
The quest for answers has taken me so deep into the unknown that I don’t even know front from back anymore.
“Please?” I call.
Desdemona steps back into view. She frowns at me and points the bottle toward my arm. “What happened to you?” she mutters, her face blank.
“Kappa bite.”
“They’re really making their rounds,” she sighs.
There’s a stretch of silence between us. Her looking at the bite on my arm and me looking at her. I frown as well. “What are you doing in the infirmary?”
“Kappa bite,” she answers.
“You look fine.” My eyes scan her body for a wound.
“Yeah.” She raises her eyebrows and looks down the hall in front of her. The blank slate of her eyes replaces itself with a multitude of emotions. “You too.”
Then she’s gone.
You know,the fatta said when I asked who controlled them.
Could it be Desdemona? I have a hard time imagining it, but I can’t discredit the theory.
Don’t give someone the benefit of the doubt and yourself the doubt.
I wait it out while they pull the venom from my blood. When I’m healed and taped up, I venture my way to Cynthia. The ghost of myself accompanies me when I sink into the davenport.
“My condolences.” She pours me a glass of vesi, and as she hands it to me says, “The prices we pay.”
“Is that what revenge becomes?” I question. “Death upon death?”
“That is the very definition, my dear,” she whispers.
* * *
I find Wendy at Azaire’s tree. I’m not sure why I am here. All I know is that I went to his room and he wasn’t there.
All I know is that I know nothing.
I sit here, staring at the trunk of a tree, both wishing it is and isn’t him.
“Why do you feel like guilt?” Wendy whispers.
“Because I feel guilty.” I pushed him to fight.
Wendy turns to me. “It’s because of Desdemona?”
“Desdemona?”
“Oh.” Her eyebrows rise and she turns away quickly. “It isn’t.”
“Why do you bring her up?”
“I,” she shrugs, “thought that you thought she was involved in all this. After your theatrics.”
“Do you?” I ask. “Think she is involved?”
Wendy runs her hands through the grass. “Yes,” she whispers. “She’s a smart liar.”
“How so?”
“Never once have I been able to catch her.”
“Perhaps she was telling the truth.”
“No.” Wendy shakes her head. “She just knows how to get around the questions.”
“As you know how to get around a subject,” I observe. “What are you not saying?”
She looks up to the sky and begrudgingly says, “There was a prophecy. It felt like… the end. I tried to kill her before it could commence. I didn’t try well enough.”
Every muscle in my body goes rigid. My heart beats too fast while my body freezes.
“Go on.”
“Then there was the kappa. I could feel it trying to communicate with her.” Wendy looks at me, in all seriousness. “If we can stop the prophecy at its source, we have a moral obligation to. And if she’s involved with—” she chokes. “Then we have to avenge him.”
I shake my head. I don’t believe that Desdemona had something to do with Azaire. I can’t believe it.
I can. And yet, no one will be laying a finger on Desdemona Marquees. Or whoever she is.
“That’s not a good enough reason.” There is no good enough reason.
Which is no good for me. What am I to do if she is involved?
“The end of everything. That’s what we’re facing, that’s what the prophecy was!”
“Tell me. What was it?”
Wendy shudders and shakes her head. “Time fractures with the stone. The one who leaves returns alone. When the cracks in the universe divide, love will be your demise.”
“That’s too vague?—”
“You didn’t feel it!” she shouts. Tears fill her eyes and muffle her words. “You haven’t been out here for three days thinking about what you could’ve done differently! Like if I’d just been able to kill her—maybe the corenths wouldn’t have attacked. The kappa came for her, I swear it, Lucian. I swear it.”
I have spent most of these three days thinking about what I could’ve done differently. Would’ve done differently.
Just because you have a vision doesn’t mean you have to act on it.
“This isn’t what Azaire would want,” I say, tears dangerously close to taking my voice. I choke the words out anyhow. “He wouldn’t want his death to lead to more death. Peace, Wendy. You know he always wanted peace.”
“I can’t do it,” she cries. “There is no peace without him. I feel everything! Always!” She croaks and turns to the tree. “But I can’t feel him. He’s not here, his soul is gone. He’s gone. And it’s like—it’s like I can’t even grieve when she’s still around.” Her eyes go cold in an instant. “I have to avenge him.”
It’s me,I should be saying. I am the one who has to die to avenge him. I am the one who forced Azaire to fight. I am the one who killed him.
“She’d take you in seconds,” I say. “You don’t know the extent of her power.” Something wraps around my arms, tight, and pulls me up, stretching me apart. Branches. “Wendy,” I say through gritted teeth.
But her eyes glow a brighter green than they had a second ago. And she looks at me, her rage barely restrained.
“Do you feel something for her?” she asks, her head twisting to the side and the branches pulling me further apart.
“I think she’s hiding something.”
“No,” Wendy breathes. “Beyond that. What do you feel for her?”
The truth spills out of me like a broken faucet with no chance of stopping the dribble. “I want her to be hiding something because I don’t want to face the fact that I’ve never been more attracted to a person in my life.”
I, myself, was not entirely sure what the truth was. I think I could’ve gone this lifetime without knowing that. I think that Wendy could have too, because her eyes bulge and a scoff escapes her closed mouth.
Damn Eunoia.
“I’ve lost everything!” she screams. “Twice!” The branches continue to pull away from each other, stretching me like I am made of rubber and not flesh and bone. “And you’re worried about your attraction to a killer!”
There are no shadows in the mastick for me to use right now.
“Are you trying to kill me?” I ask, but the words come out rough. I’m being stretched to death.
“Are you going to try to stop me?” she seethes.
“Yes,” I barely am able to say the word.
“I don’t know!” Wendy falls to her knees, clutching onto her stomach as if she could stop the sobs that begin to tear through her. Then her body begins to tremble, and the world does too.
Below me, the ground splits. It’s nothing but a pit of darkness, a crack in the world. I am being held by nothing more than the branches around my forearm.
The more I am pulled apart, the less I can see. My vision blurs, my throat screams, and then it stops.
I fall. My hand jerks up and I manage to catch myself on a branch before I am lost to the rift.
That’s when I see it. A moonaro. Wendy’s attention has been turned to it instead of the rift in the world. I climb up the tree, high enough so that when I jump, I land on the ground. I have no weapons, but soon I will have shadows. I can help Wendy hold it off long enough to survive.
Yet it looks at me the way it looked at Desdemona in my vision.
Then it runs from us both.
Her voice breaks, “You’re part of it?”
“Why?” I say breathlessly. “What did you feel?”
“It wanted to save you.”
You do me a favor, Lucian Aibek. Fighting you was against my duties.
Wendy is looking at me with disgust. Then she looks at the rift. Not with shock or surprise, but malice. I step away from it and put up my hands.
I need a weapon.
Another damned branch flies right for my chest with enough force to punch my heart out. I drop to the floor and roll out of the way of another growing tree before I jump to my feet.
A sliver of a shadow shows itself, and in seconds I lift it and wrap it around Wendy’s throat as tight as I can. The next one around a branch that comes for my head, and another around her hands.
“I’m not a part of anything,” I barely manage to say as I catch my breath. “I don’t want to hurt you. But touch Desdemona, and I will kill you.”
* * *
Yuki’s waiting in my room when I get back. A pile of clothes taller than him sits on my bed. His shoulders and mouth sags and his head hangs lower. “Your parents sent these,” he says. “For the Collianth.”
I rub my temples. “Get out.”
There’s a crater in the middle of the mastick that Wendy can’t close. A moonaro that wanted to save me. A prophecy that Wendy swears will be the end of everything. A girl who for four months has been on my mind every day—from fantasizing about kissing her to killing her.
And a brother who, no matter what I do now, will always be dead.
“What? Luc?—”
“Get. Out.” My shadows flare, and he gets up.
Once he’s relieved me of his presence, I sit next to the insanity of what must be twenty different suits.
For the Collianth.