38. Three’s A Ball, and One’s A Killer
DESDEMONA
Aball! Do none of these people have common sense? Less than a week ago Leiholan lost a leg and I’ve even heard rumors of a boy dying, and yet we’re supposed to dance for the Collianth.
Aralia’s by the window, smoking her third joint today, and I’m ready to call a truce just to get a hit. The dress she got me really is phenomenal, but not phenomenal enough to earn forgiveness, and neither is a joint, so I stick to my side of the room.
The dress is even better when I put it on. Olive green and floor length. The top half is covered in dark green and gold embroidered flowers with little black beads. Small, vine-like patches stretch down and billow with the material at the waist.
I wear four sheaths, two on each thigh, since I won’t have any readily available at my ribs.
“You look great,” Aralia says from the other side of the room. The red of her dress is the same color as the wine I drank with Lucian, who is yet another person I want to mentally and emotionally avoid.
I allow myself one good look at her before turning away. “Thanks.” Remembering what Aralia said about my scars, I put more of the glamour on my exposed back. Then I begrudgingly turn back to her. “Can I?” I point to the joint.
“Oh, yeah.” She smiles a little, and I refrain from telling her to grow a spine.
I’m blowing smoke out the window when she says, “I heard that the boy the fatta killed was Azaire.”
I freeze, and that act causes me to choke on the smoke and cough. The boy who made the kingdom less lonely. Lucian’s best friend. I shouldn’t care. But I do.
Without reason, she goes on, “That’s what my mom said. Apparently there was this whole drama with Lucian and a meeting?—”
“I want to hear about Lucian even less than I want to talk to you.” I shiver at the instant remorse I feel. What is wrong with me? Both of these people would’ve left me out to die.
Screw them.
“Then no more for you,” she says almost humorously, plucking the joint from my hand. I kind of miss that edge to her voice and have to force my mouth back down.
Am I being too harsh to her?
“Thank you for the dress,” I say shyly. “Truly.”
Her eyes light up. “Is that a smile?” There’s a faint playful, sarcastic tone to her voice, and I can’t not smile more. But screw her, no. I force it down. She sucks at her joint and taps it into the ashtray. “I forgot we’re doing the sulky thing.” She passes the joint to me and frowns. “I can sulk too.”
I watch her with what I hope is a dangerous glint in my eye while I smoke her joint.
“I love you, Des,” she says morosely. Like a child whining that they want their toy back. “You mean a lot to me, and I’m not stopping until you forgive me.” She plucks the joint from my hand, again. “And I might just stop sharing my drugs with you until you forgive me.”
“I could just lie,” I remark.
“That’d force you right back into my proximity until it became true.” She smirks. “I made you smile twice already. That has to count for something.”
“You know what I don’t get?” I say, and she raises her eyebrows while her mouth is occupied with the joint, her face saying: what? “Why you still kiss my ass after I tell you that I hate you.”
“Because I don’t believe you,” she says, smoke piling up around her while she fails to make it to the window. Before I say anything, she goes, “Be my date.”
“Huh?”
“You hate me, and showing up to the ball with the likes of you would do negative numbers for my reputation.”
This time, I pull the joint away from her, but I don’t answer. “Are you sure it’s Azaire who’s dead?”
Every bit of animation falls from her stature. “Yeah.”
I inhale the smoke deeper than ever before.
* * *
Reluctantly or not, I can’t tell, I enter the ballroom with Aralia on my arm. Some eyes are on us, and Aralia gives me a sly smirk that says, I told you so. Oh, whatever. This is nothing compared to what she did to me.
Besides, in this dress I almost defy reputation. It can’t be that bad for her.
Green vines are draped over the twenty-some shining glass-and-silver chandeliers that reflect light through the room. The tables the government officials sat around during the Gerner are nowhere to be found. Good, I’m glad they won’t be here again. That turned rather sour for me.
The night starts rather slow before Aralia starts collecting her alcohol, and this time I show no reservations about drinking it until the room spins almost as much as my night with Lucian.
My eyes rake the crowds, and I can’t help it. I want to talk to him.
What is wrong with me? Aralia all but told me she would’ve let the Folk kill me, and Lucian is the reason they wanted to. These two traitors are still important to me, and I kind of hate myself for letting them be.
Knowledge is a weapon, and if I let them get any closer, they’ll become another weakness I can’t afford. I block any and all empathy from my brain.
More people start looking at us—at Aralia. Looks of contempt or disdain, and I wonder if she is really going to pay a price for this. She links her arm around mine, the way we used to walk to class together.
Afraid she is going to say something stupid, I whisper, “I don’t want any more attention on us.”
“Noted,” she says.
Then, after a few beats, I ask, “I’m not going to have to dance again, am I?”
“You might. The dancers are picked at random to offer a balanced selection to Sulva and Ayan.”
Right, because not only is this our new year, but it’s also the supposed date that the Solar God and Lunar Goddess collided and created our universe. I’m about to say something, but what it was, I can’t recall. “Arcane!” someone shouts, but I can’t see them. Not when I’m looking into the face of one of my old homes.
“Well, Mom and I have to leave a lot,” I say to Bernice while we walk to school. “So I don’t think we should be friends.”
I’m so short. Like I’m standing on my knees.
“What do you mean you have to leave a lot?” Bernice asks me.
“I never get to stay,” I tell him. So I’ve never had friends, I don’t say. Why am I telling him anything? He was nothing but mean to me. “It’s not happy.”
“Oh,” he says softly. “I’m sorry.” Then, “Why do you leave?”
“Oh,” I say. “Because we have to.”
“Why do you have to?”
I kick a pebble and say, “I don’t know.”
Bernice holds onto my hand. “This time you don’t have to.”
“Why?” I ask, giggling. Why am I giggling?
“Because we’re friends now!”
Friends? We were never friends.
“Okay.”
“You should meet Nova,” he tells me. “She’s funny like you.”
“Okay.”
I meet Nova at school. She is pretty. Her hair is long and blonde and her eyes are big and round.
Nova, from the dreams.
“I’m Desdemona,” I tell her.
“I like your name,” she says. “It’s so pretty.”
That’s the first time someone’s called any part of me pretty. “Thank you.”
The three of us start hanging out every day before and after school because we all live close. I tell them about my mom and me and all the places we’ve lived. That there were three villages before this one, but I only remember two.
No, there are seven.
They think it’s cool I’ve seen so much of the world.
One day after school, the three of us venture out into the woods. “Show us your fire, Des!” Nova shouts.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Bernice says.
“Don’t do that,” Nova says, smacking Bernice’s arm. “I’ve never seen a Fire Folk before. I think it would be cool.”
But Bernice goes red in the face, shoving Nova with his arm. “There’s a reason you haven’t seen them,” he mutters.
“Come on, Des, please.” I look between them and back up into a tree. “It would be so cool. Wouldn’t it, Bernice?”
“I guess,” he shrugs.
I think I know how this ends.
I lift my hand and feel, like Mom says to do. I feel the flicker of heat that starts in my stomach and moves through me like wind through my hair. It’s when it enters my chest that I know it’s working.
Fire appears in my palm, and it spreads across my fingers. I wiggle them, and when Nova looks at my hand with awe, I smile.
She likes it. Mom doesn’t.
“That’s so cool!” Nova says.
“Thanks.”
When I go home, Mom is looking at me like I’ve done something wrong. I don’t know how I know this look, but I do.
“You used your power today?”
She knows I have power?
“Yeah.” I scratch my arm.
“You know you can’t use it without me close!”
“I’m sorry.”
I sound so tiny. I want to say more, but it won’t come out.
She rubs her eyes with her knuckles. “Gods, Desdemona, do you never listen! No. Magic. Do you understand me?”
I gulp. “Yes.”
I must be six. I used the Flame when I was six?
“Never again, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Supper’s on the table.”
I look at the food, knowing that it’s only the amount needed to stop the grumbling in my tummy, but not the amount that will fill me.
I eat and try to savor the small amount of water in my clenched mouth. I lay on the bed, and when Mom lays next to me in her spot, she holds my hand, rubs the top of it. “It’s important to watch people.” Her hand moves from mine to my chin. “You’re old enough now to know that there will come a time when everybody needs to fight, and your most powerful weapon is knowing your enemy. Do you understand?”
I nod.
I understand it, but I don’t. Like I’m in two different brains.
“Good.” She rubs my jaw once and turns away.
When Nova says she wants to see my fire again I tell her no. Three days later, she asks again, and I tell her no.
I think of what Mom said. I don’t know what she meant. I don’t know what an enemy is.
No, I know what an enemy is.
When Bernice and I are alone, I tell him, “My mom doesn’t want me to use my magic anymore.”
He’s quiet a moment. “I think she’s right.”
“Why?”
“The Flame isn’t safe. You could hurt people.”
“I don’t want to hurt people,” I say clearly. My voice is so infantile.
“Then don’t use your magic.”
But months pass, and when she asks again, my hand lights on fire and Nova looks at it like it’s a moon. Bernice stands back, with his arms crossed.
“Wow,” she says, stepping closer.
Her long blonde hair falls against my hand. It’s only a second before her entire head is ablaze. “Desdemona!” She cries. “Stop it!”
I step back. Or I don’t. I’m not sure I can move.
“Bernice!” she shrieks. “Bernice, get someone!”
Then she’s just screaming as the fire takes over her face, moving down her clothes, her entire body. “Someone, help!” is the last thing she shrieks that’s audible.
I look at Bernice, who’s frozen too. His eyes on Nova’s burning body.
“I told you it wasn’t a good idea!” he finally shouts.
“I—I,” I shudder a breath. Bernice walks past me, to Nova.
She’s stopped screaming.
“You’re a monster!” he shouts.
“I—”
“This is what the Nepenthe would do!”
“I didn’t mean to?—”
“You’re no better than them. I wish you left when you said you would!”
“I’m sorry?—”
“You’re a killer! A monster! And I hate you! I’ll hate you forever!”
“Berny, I?—”
“I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!” he shrieks.
“Stop it,” I cry.
“You’re a monster. You knew you could hurt people! You said you didn’t want to! You knew your mom was right and you did it anyway!”
“Bernice—”
“She knew you were a monster! That’s why she told you not to use your magic! She knew what you are!”
“Stop it!” This time I shout.
I feel so much hatred. The rage closes around my heart and pierces every bit of sympathy I have, bleeding me dry.
For half a second, Bernice’s pupils are on fire, then he falls to his knees. The shock of it sends me tumbling back, but I don’t move. Instinct tells me to shout for my mom, but when I try the words don’t leave my mouth. I’m trying to look away from Bernice, but I’m looking at his body as it falls forward and my own burns.
Killing him, I’m killing him.I’m both aware of it and entirely confused about what is happening. The trees around me catch fire, like in the dreams, and I run, like in the dreams.
This time when I call my mom, the words finally escape my mouth. I run into her arms, like in the dreams, and she tells me to put the fire out, like in the dreams.
“What happened?” she says, holding onto my arms.
“Bernice,” I cry. “I think he’s dead, Mommy.”
Mom grabs my hand, saying, “Show me where.” My hand is a quarter of her size.
We walk together in utter silence while sobs rack through me, stopping over Bernice and Nova’s very dead bodies. Mom’s hand goes stiff in mine, and I can feel my fear pumping adrenaline into my blood.
She reaches down and puts her fingers on his pulse without looking at me. I don’t remember this part of the dream. She looks up at me like I am a stranger. An evil, volatile, malevolent stranger.
“Is he dead?” I squeak.
I can’t say anything more.
Mom shakes her head, her eyebrows creasing together and her mouth curling in disgust. She hates me. I know this irrevocably. This is the face of hatred.
This is the look I think I’ve always feared.
“Is he dead?” I ask.
She looks away from me like she can’t stand the sight. “Go home, Desdemona,” her voice is severe. “Don’t mention this to anyone and just go home.”
“Mommy—”
“Go. Home. Now.”
My lower lip trembles and trembles and trembles as I walk all the way back to the dwelling, where I cry in our bed.
When Mom finally comes home, she walks to me and grips my cheeks harshly. “Knowledge is a weapon when you know how to wield it, do you understand?”
I nod.
“More powerful than any fire.”
I nod.
“Do you understand?”
I nod.
Mom puts her necklace in my hand, and just like when we practice my magic, she tells me to feel.
When I see my reflection, my eyes are red.
Mom takes it back and my head feels fuzzy. All I can remember about today was Bernice, screaming at me that I’m a monster and a Nepenthe, after I told him everything about myself.
And something else. Something that has to do with her…
Mom says again, “Knowledge is your weapon of choice. Do you understand?”
Knowledge is a powerful weapon. Bernice knew it. He knew me. He wielded it against me.
“I understand.”
“Fair.”
I close my eyes and open them in…
The ballroom.
I’m still here? It feels like I’ve spent months away. It feels like I should be shorter.
Aralia stands in front of me, her arms outstretched as three students slam against an invisible wall.
“I could use a little help here!” she shouts.
I can’t seem to move my body. I can’t seem to do anything.
“Desdemona!”
I’m petrified, aren’t I? That look in my mom’s eye—it replays in my mind again and again while students charge all around me, screaming and shouting.
“Arcane!” I hear over and over.
My hand goes to my chest. “My necklace,” I mutter, dropping to my hands and feet. I’m barely able to move while I try to scurry through the floor. I’m stopped by Aralia’s shield of air. The invisible wall.
“Drop the shield!” A familiar voice shouts. “I’ll take her to safety.”
“My necklace,” it’s all I can say. “I need my necklace!”
Someone charges for me with a sword in hand, and I’m only just getting to my feet when someone steps in front of me.
A severed hand falls to the floor. A scream rings through my eardrums.
Lucian crouches down, picking me up at my waist and hauling me over his shoulder. I claw at his back. “Lucian, I need my necklace!”
He doesn’t even give me the decency of a response, and I grow tired of trying to tear his heavy coat. I let my body go slack in his. What is he going to do to hurt me when apparently I can just burn anyone to death?
In the darkness behind my eyes, I see my mom shaking her head before she walks quickly to the entrance of a dwelling I don’t recognize. Her hands swing over the neck of a man. I think it’s Freyr. I can see her chest trembling with breaths.
“I’ve missed you,” Freyr says into her hair.
She grabs his cheeks. “And I’ve missed you.”
“How is she?” Freyr walks to me and I recoil, even when I tell my body not to. He looks over his shoulder at my mom. “You wiped me from memory?”
“I can’t give her any more instability. She’s already destructive enough as it is.” Her voice is so far from the one I know. Like she’s angry with him.
Or me.
“Isa—”
“I know, I know, nurture trumps nature.” She sits next to Freyr in front of me. “It’s easier said than done.” The way she’s looking at me… it’s like she doesn’t like me. She sounds exasperated when she says, “She’s already killed people.”
“Isa,” Freyr says sternly, turning to her and holding onto her shoulders to turn her to him too. “You can’t keep saying these things in front of her and wiping the memory. The emotional imprint is never gone.”
“I know, I know?—”
He cuts her off. “If you can’t love her, find a way to give her love. She’s a sentient weapon. Treat her just as fragile.”
“Gods,” Mom drops her head into her hands, “what were we thinking?”
“It’s too late for regret, my love.” His hand shifts to her cheek, and they stay looking at one another. It’s so… tender. “Do you have anyone helping you? I understand if you do.”
“There’s never going to be anyone but you.” Freyr’s head tilts. “There’s no one helping me,” Mom clarifies.
“Okay.” He looks away.
Mom goes still. “Why? Is there someone helping you?”
“Never. I spend my entire life in that room.” A beat later, he says, “Have you spoken to Willow?”
“I’ve seen her a few times. But she’s not good. As much as I try, she won’t tell me what they’re making her do.” Freyr nods. “Do you have any more questions about the past? Because I’d really like to be here with you now.”
“Just one last thing. I know you don’t want her.” Freyr looks at me, and only now do I realize that when I try to speak, I can’t hear myself. My mom’s a Light Folk, and sound is Air’s territory. She knew the truth my whole life. “But by nature, you are good. She can be too.”
“Is that all?” Mom says.
“Yes.” Freyr drops his head.
She picks it up and kisses him.