56. Lilia
FIFTY-SIX
LILIA
I glared at Greyland as he approached me outside the dining tent. I’d been in Brighta for over eight weeks now, but ever since he was discharged, I’d barely seen him.
I’d been spending my days with the healers, trying to keep busy, but it wasn’t helping. He was all I could think about. I kept wondering if he was healing. But it wasn’t like I could just ask him. Greyland and I were far from friends.
The only time I saw him was at night because our brothers were forcing us to stay in the same communal tent. But even then he tried to avoid me. He usually came into the tent hours after I was already there. I would try to stay awake just so I could see him. It was the only time I got a glimpse at how he was recovering.
He slept on the opposite end of the tent, the furthest he could get from me. I swore I felt his gaze on me on the days I pretended to be asleep. But most days, I actually was asleep.
It wasn’t new. My brother always joked that I would sleep my life away if I could. But he didn’t know I had a different life in my dreams, a life that was now dead. No matter how much I slept, I hadn’t dreamt of Greyland Noren since he took me to the cabin.
And I tried. A lot.
I missed him, missed that version of him.
It made me question everything.
Neither of us brought up what happened in Tennebris, and I kept wondering if I made it all up. Maybe it wasn’t true. Maybe I imagined everything between us. Maybe I’d been so crazy trapped inside the cabin that I started making up false realities as a coping mechanism for being alone.
He wasn’t helping my conflicting emotions because he acted like nothing changed between us. Any chance he got, Greyland avoided me. If I was already in the dining tent, he’d take his food and leave. If he saw me with Sie or Peter, he’d walk away. He was even refusing his check-ups with the menders. I knew because I looked. He was supposed to come back daily to make sure his rib fractures were healing properly. But he never came.
But now he was walking right toward me, and I realized it was the first time I was getting a good look at his face. I knew he lost an eye—I read the healer’s notes about ten times before I finally let it register, but this was the first time I was actually seeing it—well, kind of seeing it. He had a patch taped over it until the stitches closed, which they should have fully healed by now, but he kept reopening them. Or at least that’s what I gathered from Peter. I overheard him talking to Sie about it, about how Greyland refused to stop training, how his healing was slowed because of it.
I was surprised he still looked just like he had in school. Intimidating. Mean. Dark. Attractive —
If losing his eye was affecting him, he wasn’t showing it. As far as I knew, he refused to talk about what happened.
“Are you writing your name down for the menders?” he asked. He nodded toward the second sign-up sheet. The one listed for non-frontline-fighting .
I was so shocked for a moment, all I could do was stare at him. I hadn’t spoken to Greyland in months, and now he was just casually asking me if I was signing up for the non-fighting sheet?
It infuriated me.
“No,” I snapped, turning toward him.
I actually had thought about signing up to be a mender… a lot. It was constantly on my mind.
All I knew was that I didn’t want to get left behind. I told Peter whenever the time came, I was going to Lux and Tennebris. I didn’t want to be stuck here, waiting while everyone else was off doing things.
I already did that. Months of it, trapped inside the cabin alone. Waiting. Thinking. Going insane.
So wherever the crowds were going, I was going too.
Lately, I hated being alone. It had a visceral effect on me now. Just the idea of it… of being trapped in a camp that was completely deserted… I shuddered. When Grey left me in the cabin, I thought he was coming back. He promised me he was coming back… I knew he saved me. I knew I should be grateful. I would have suffered the same fate as my parents if he hadn’t. And what he went through to get me there…
“Then what are you doing with the pen?” His one eye trailed down to my hand, bringing me back to the moment.
“I’m signing up to fight,” I said.
He laughed. It was soft and gentle, unlike when he used to tease me in school, but it still had me seeing red. He stopped as soon as he saw the scowl on my face. “You’re serious?”
“Yes,” I mumbled as heat rushed to my cheeks. I diverted my eyes and stared down at the grass instead. “I’ve been training with my brother and…”
The next second the pen was ripped out of my hand, and he looked—pissed.
“What the hell, Greyland? I was going to— ”
“You aren’t fighting,” he cut me off.
“Yes, I am.”
“No, you aren’t.”
My eyes flared as rage sputtered through me. I knew it wasn’t smart. The most logical thing for me to do was to mend, and it wasn’t that I hated healing. I actually loved it, and I planned on continuing to help out while we were in Brighta. I found a weird sort of comfort from working in their tent these past couple of weeks. I was fascinated with the mix of Advenian and mortal medicine and how they seemed to combine both. It was what I wanted to Trial in, what I would have done if I had any powers—not that it mattered anymore. I was declared a servant before Greyland dragged me into those woods. I knew if I was still back in Tennebris, I wouldn’t have been allowed to mend.
So his comment shouldn’t have bothered me, but it did. It pissed me off that he didn’t think I was capable. “I’m fighting,” I said between gritted teeth.
“I’ve seen you fight Lander, Lilia. You’re not fighting.”
“He had compulsion—”
“And you think the Advenians we’re going up against won’t?”
I didn’t answer right away. Memories from the last couple of weeks at Kitlarn Academia flashed in my mind. Of Lander ripping my clothes off, of him using compulsion and forcing me into the bath… of Greyland watching it all…
“Look at me,” he said, and I realized I’d been avoiding his face. “They ripped my fucking eye out of my head, Lilia. Do you want that to happen to—”
“Stop,” I cut him off. I knew what he was trying to do. He was trying to scare me so I wouldn’t write my name down. But why did he even care? He acted like I didn’t exist ever since Sie brought me here. “I liked you better when you were ignoring me,” I said and watched as his jaw set .
He stepped toward me, close enough that I could smell the mint on his breath as he bent his head down to look at me.
“Sign your name up for the healers, Lilia, or don’t sign up at all.” His voice was lethal, set, hard.
I should listen to him. Despite the fact that I was sick of people telling me what I could and couldn’t do, what he was saying was smart, even if it pissed me off.
The idea of fighting terrified me and it didn’t help that I wasn’t getting better at it. Peter told me I had to train if I was even considering it, but I was awful. He tried to mask his frustration, but I could see it. Vallie was moving strides past me while I was still stuck on the basics. I should sign up for mending, but I wanted to fight.
Ever since I watched the broadcasts where they were murdering all those zeroes, my mind was officially made up.
It should have terrified me even more, and honestly it did. Luxians were brutal. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t scared, but I was fighting. For all the zeroes who were killed, for how they treated us in school, for my parents…
I was going to fight for them.
I wasn’t going to just sit back and let things happen to me anymore. I was going to make a difference…
“You can’t fight,” he said again when I didn’t respond. “You don’t have—” He cut himself off, but it was too late. I knew what he was going to say. You don’t have any abilities.
I stared at the zero brand and my scar down my forearm. I instinctively pulled my sleeve down to cover it. Greyland noticed. Of course he noticed. He went to open his mouth to say something, probably another crude remark, but then closed it.
My wrist was burned, while his was still blank. I couldn’t take it anymore. Not after what happened.
It felt too raw.
I wanted powers so badly. I wanted to be strong like Peter, but I wasn’t. I had nothing but my two hands—my two powerless hands.
“I didn’t mean that,” he said softly, but I barely heard him. For some stupid reason my brain started to replay the day in school when they came to brand everyone that was a zero. All the students were forced into the Kitlarn auditorium. Then one by one, they made us walk onto the stage, passed us a knife, and had Alec compel us to cut our forearms.
Then they separated us into two groups. The ones who were forced to cut their own skin and the ones who could refuse.
If we were compelled, it was a telltale sign that we were a zero. A compulsion user couldn’t compel a ranked Tennebrisian. And although I knew I was a zero, I knew there was no magic in my bones, I’d still held onto hope all these years. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe my powers were simple. Maybe it just hadn’t manifested yet.
But when Alec placed the dagger in my hand, and when the cold tip of it felt like it was burning a hole through me, I heard his compulsion sing through my body. My hands shook as I dragged it from my elbow to wrist, carving the blade deeper than I’d intended. I watched in horror as blood poured out of me, as I gasped in pain, and tried to drown out the sinking sensation that came with the realization of what just happened.
It was my first time I was ever compelled.
I didn’t even get a second to process it before I was thrown toward the back of the stage. They branded us, marked us before our Trials, then sold us as slaves to our classmates.
It was meant to humiliate us, and by doing it in front of everyone… it worked. They didn’t want us to wait, didn’t want any of us walking around without the entire world knowing we were nothing to them… that we were all nixes.
I tried not to cry as the poker clamped down around my wrist and the zero was sealed into me. I tried to not dwell on the fact that this was final .
I’d been so scared they’d pull us all out of school and wouldn’t let us take our Trials at the end of the year. But thinking back to my last weeks there, it would have been a mercy if they took us out that day. They forced us to finish the year, but the way our classmates were allowed to treat us afterward…
I huffed. How trivial it all was now. My parents were dead. Greyland’s parents were dead. We only had each other and our older brothers, and Greyland could barely stand to be around me.
Did I make everything up?
He never liked me in school. I knew that. He ignored me like I was the human plague.
I ground my teeth together because he confused me. Why did he put so much effort into saving me?
I have to get you safe first. It was what he said before he promised me he’d go back for my parents. He told me he’d bring them to the cabin and to wait for him. Only he never came back, at least, not in the same way I thought. I couldn’t decipher between what was real and what was a dream anymore.
Everything was a nightmare, and I was losing my mind.
It wasn’t until Sie and the strange girl rescued me that I knew for certain what happened.
Greyland was caught. He saved me, and then he was caught for it. And now he lost his eye. I wasn’t even sure how he was coping with it.
Seeing him in the healer’s cot when I first arrived was seared into my memory. Seeing how badly he was beaten, what he went through. We all lost our parents, but Greyland was forced to watch their deaths firsthand. How many more deaths would we see as a result of this war? What else would we have to go through? I thought things couldn’t get any worse. I thought being sold to our classmates was the lowest we’d be treated, but I was wrong. Now they were murdering us, trying to kill every rank zero in existence.
“What are you two doing?” My brother’s voice snapped me back to reality. He pulled me into a hug before I could squeeze out of it. A large grin was smacked across his face, exposing his dimples as he looked between Grey and I.
Sie, on the other hand, wasn’t smiling. His gaze was settled on his younger brother, on the pen Grey was now holding.
“What are you doing with that?” Sie seethed.
“What it looks like I’m doing. I’m signing up.” Greyland straightened.
“No. You. Aren’t.”
“To hell I’m not. You don’t get to tell me what to do—”
“Yes, I do. I’m your older brother, and you aren’t fighting.”
Grey turned his back to Sie and finally brought the pen to paper. He managed to write out the letter “G” before Sie grabbed it from him.
“What are you doing, Sie? Give that back.”
“Not until you tell me you won’t write your name on that paper.”
Greyland ground his teeth together before he started to turn around to walk away. “Whatever, I’ll just sign it later when you aren’t around.”
I was pretty sure Grey only meant to say it under his breath. He didn’t mean for his brother to hear, but Sie didn’t miss a single word of it. His body flared with golden markings as he let his compulsion wash over him. “You will not write your name on that paper.”
Greyland stilled, turning around slowly to face us, then rolled his shoulders, the only indication that the compulsion went through him. “You promised…” he started, ground his teeth some more, then forced himself to unclench his jaw. “You promised you wouldn’t use your total mind control on me.”
“That promise was made before we were in the middle of a war. You aren’t fighting.” His voice softened as he added, “You’re still recovering, Grey.”
Greyland stared at Sie in shock, anger radiating off of him as he clamped and unclamped his fists. A part of me was happy to see Greyland compelled. Sie was the only person who could do it—he was the only person in our kingdom who could compel a ranked Tennebrisian—and I loved that Greyland now knew how it felt.
I smirked. The Noren boys were too eerily similar and both hot-headed. Most people claimed that Grey was the gentler, softer one, but they didn’t go to school with him. They weren’t on the laughing end of his amusement. They weren’t bought by his friends and forced to serve them—
I gently stepped in front of Sie and pried the pen from his fingers. Greyland watched every second of it. I felt his gaze on me as I signed my name on the fighting paper.
“You can always sign that one,” I gestured toward the one he told me to sign. The one that said non-frontline-fighting .
Then, I sweetly smiled at him before I walked away, knowing I was leaving him seething behind me.