Chapter 8 #2
At least I can avoid whatever feral mood Salvatore’s gotten himself into. Perez has just directed him and Stella to work together—although when I peek over at them, Salvatore is watching me rather than his partner.
I flick my gaze away in time for Byron to plant himself a couple of paces away from me, his expression impassive. I definitely don’t have to worry about him making any come-ons. He was never liberal with overt flirting even after we were matched.
It’s easier not to think about my Byron if I don’t meet this one’s eyes. I focus on the pinwheel instead, but my mission itches at the back of my skull while the fractured bond stings my palm.
He might be one of the last people to have seen Other Elodie the night she died. But how the heck can I find out if he knows anything without sounding like an amnesiac?
Maybe if I phrase it like a challenge rather than a question…
“Together again,” I say coyly. “This shouldn’t be hard. You have no idea what I got up to after last week’s special practicum.”
Neither do I, of course.
Ideally, Byron would retort that I told him what I was going to do or that he saw me sometime later that night. Instead, he replies in a voice as flat as a crop circle, “You have no idea how little I care. Let’s get on with it.”
Okay, he probably didn’t see or hear anything then. One more possibility checked off my list.
It’s getting awfully short.
Shoving aside the hopelessness of that thought, I shift my attention to the problem at hand.
The exercise has three elements: spinning, illumination, and transport.
Divided between the two people, it’d probably be easiest for one to handle both effects around the blades and the other to put all their effort into guiding the entire contraption through the air.
Byron doesn’t know it yet, but he’s got a raw bloom glim, plenty of punch. He’ll have an easier time with the larger scale magic, and I’m decently agile with delicate manipulation.
“Why don’t you float the pinwheel, and I’ll spin it with a little fire?” I suggest.
He folds his arms over his toned chest. “Right. So you can do the flashy parts and I’m stuck with the grunt work?”
I can’t stop my eyes from darting over to meet his. “That isn’t how I was thinking about it.”
“Sure, Devine.” His sarcasm is pure ice.
Fuck, he was a prick before our matching, wasn’t he? Even if he didn’t get as in-your-face about it as Salvatore.
This Elodie wouldn’t have ducked her head and scurried on by like I used to feel I had to.
“Fine,” I reply, equally tart. “Then we’ll handle it the other way around. I can manage either part perfectly well.”
Byron scrutinizes me for long enough that my pulse starts to beat double-time as I hold his gaze. “I suppose that’s what you were aiming for all along.”
I resist the urge to throw my hands in the air in exasperation, but do take the opportunity to turn away from him. “I just said I’m good with either way. You wanted to get on with things. Decide which way I’m sabotaging you the least and let’s start already.”
He’s silent for a moment, presumably running some sort of calculus of impressiveness, and gives a brisk nod. “We’ll stick with your original strategy. I’ll lift the device first. Get the blades going as soon as it’s off the grass.”
He tugs up his gloves, a supple beige leather that coordinates with the gold trim on his blazer, and flexes his fingers as he gathers his concentration.
I ready myself too, reaching out to the faint hum of ephemera woven into the grass, the soil beneath it, the saplings, and the buildings on either side of us.
The energy tickles through my nerves, so familiar and shapeable it’s comforting.
This I can do exactly the same way I could back in my own reality. A few things haven’t changed.
The pinwheel’s base rises off the ground without so much as a wobble. Byron was able to nab that number one rank for a reason.
I don’t dawdle about pushing my own intent toward the device. With careful but forceful jabs of my will, I push the metal blades as if with a gust of wind—and then light up the air around them with a ring of flame.
There’s nothing on the metal surfaces to fuel the fire, which I’d imagine is by design. I have to keep feeding the blaze with magical energy as I continue nudging the blades around.
Professor Perez ambles over to observe. “You two have divided up the task neatly.”
“Elodie wanted to stick to the little things,” Byron says in a bored tone before I can adjust my concentration enough to speak.
The little things? After he complained that his part was “grunt work”?
My teeth grit, and the flames crackle hotter, but Perez is already walking on. Has he given Byron all the credit just from that one comment?
I felt a sort of kinship with the Bloom Practicum professor in my world. We were two of the few brown faces in a sea of mostly pale haughtiness. I figured he understood what I had to deal with. He was always patient with me.
But he’d have no reason to be kind to Other Elodie. Radiants only know how she talked to him.
Not pale but plenty haughty, Byron elevates the contraption to the level of the roof. He has to ease it to the side when Salvatore and Stella’s veers briefly toward us and then glides it across the yard to the ledge.
As I keep the blades turning and flaming, my temper settles down into the calm certainty of magic.
We’re doing a perfect job of it. Every movement is tightly controlled, just like the professor wanted. Byron and I have always collaborated well, with the magic I was willing to perform around him.
Basic ephemera-driven magic comes with limitations. When you’re drawing on external sources, you tire yourself out faster than when you’re simply tapping into the glim inside you.
But our innate power only focuses on one area… and not always one we actually want to pursue. With this ability we lucents all have to bend the world’s energies to our will, I can do almost anything.
No matter who I’m with or what world I’m in, I’m never going to stop reveling in the thrill of it.
I can just imagine what Byron’s face looks like right now too, the trace of awe that softens his expression when he’s working his magic. I don’t think there’s anything my Byron ever loved as much as he loves that act. Maybe not even me.
But in my real life, he happily combined his skills with mine…
I drop my hands and flop back on the bed with a growl of frustration. Byron pokes his head around the doorframe, his brown eyes gone even darker than usual with concern.
“It’s the stupid Illusion project,” I grumble before he has to ask. “No matter what I do, the images I conjure keep falling apart.”
Illusion is Byron’s best class other than the bloom practicum where he gets to show off his glim. I don’t want to ask him for help, though. He’s already given me enough.
He comes into the room and sinks onto the bed next to me, resting a gentle hand on my shoulder. “What specifically do you think isn’t working?”
“I don’t know.”
No, that isn’t totally true, I just don’t know how to fix it.
I sit up and tuck my arm around his while I gesture vaguely with my other hand.
“I know the picture I want to create. It’ll really impress Professor Toft if I can pull it off.
But when I try to paint all the pieces, it all starts feeling too flat and unreal…
and then it dissolves like someone’s pouring water through tissue paper. ”
Byron tips his head to one side, a thoughtful furrow forming in his forehead. “Is that how you normally think about illusions? Like a picture you’re painting?”
“Well, yeah. How do you think about them?”
“More like…” He scoots a little closer to me so he can slip his hand right around my waist. The solid warmth of his arm steadies me.
“Don’t come at it as though you’re trying to create an illusion.
Pretend you’re going to conjure the real thing.
Pull the energy into every texture and shape and the way the light touches the surfaces, like they’re the whole objects just… hollowed out rather than substantial.”
Huh. “So basically you’re saying my illusions feel flat because I’m making them flat.”
The corner of his mouth twitches upward. “Just try it.”
Staring at the cramped area beyond the end of the bed, I summon the imagery I was trying to create. I delve into the depth of it, willing my vision to unfurl in every dimension and fill out the space.
Flowers bloom from floor to ceiling, the multitude of colors vibrant with the sunlight glowing through their petals. A heady mixture of perfumes wafts off them. Then a wind gusts through. Half of the petals whirl off their blossoms and swirl around us in a flurry of color and fluttering sound.
Byron’s arm tightens around me. He must be able to tell what inspired my project. He presses a kiss to my temple.
When he speaks, his voice has gone rough. “It’s beautiful. Almost as precious as you.”
I blink, and the memory falls away with my last oomph of power before this Byron sets the pinwheel down on the ledge, ever so gracefully. As I let the flames snuff out, I glance over at him.
His expression has already shuttered. He contemplates the pinwheel as if checking for flaws.
Oh, well. I’ll see that awe again on the Byron I belong to when I can get out of this cursed place.
I tell myself that, but it’s hard as fuck shaking off the lingering effects of the memory and the tug that’s crept back into my chest. A guy who might as well be my match is standing right there in arm’s reach.
As I grapple with the urge to step closer, Byron rests one hand against his thigh with his fingers splayed. I recognize the way his knuckles flex ever so slightly, the way his gaze subtly ticks across the crowd.
In that moment, my instinct to show solidarity, to demonstrate that he’s being seen and accepted in this moment, overrides everything else. My voice slips from my lips at barely a murmur, the way I might have at home for just his benefit. “Nine in blazers—”
I catch myself, but Byron’s already rounding on me. His jaw has clenched so tight the tendons stand out in his neck. “What did you say?”
His cold fury lashes into me. I back up a step, all the places scraped raw this morning stinging twice as hard. “I—nothing. Just talking to myself.”
If he realizes I know things I shouldn’t— For fairies’ sake, Elodie, you nearly blurted out too much with Salvatore yesterday too.
Byron doesn’t look convinced. His voice turns sharper, harder, with the clipped British inflection it takes on only when he’s especially riled up.
“I don’t know what you think you’re playing at, but you can fuck right off the mind games.
I’m keeping my spot fair and square. All you are is a fucking terror.
If I had my way, I’d have nothing to do with you. ”
The vicious words hit me like a slap. My heart wrenches.
Fragments of cutting remarks from years ago tangle in my thoughts.
“Forget her, she’s nothing.”
“Who’d want to bother with a nobody like her?”
The class-ending chime rings through the courtyard. Byron strides away. As I get a grip on myself, I spot Stella ambling toward me and pretend I don’t.
I can’t talk to her right now. I don’t think I can keep up this facade for one more minute around the actual terrors Other Elodie called her closest friends.
I stride away, barely seeing where I’m going. I manage to yank myself to the right when I notice the twins already out on the larger green. A burning sensation spreads behind my eyes and down my throat to sear through my ribs.
I have all I need, I repeat to myself, clutching the mantra. I have all I need.
There’s a dark, quiet nook around the bottom of the back stairwell. I shove past the door and throw myself into that shadowed space.
My knees give. I collapse in on myself, arms braced against the tops of my bent legs, hands pressed to my face.
No tears. Not so much as a whimper. Everyone will wonder. I can’t let anyone suspect there’s something wrong.
But there is. So much is so wrong.
How can I build the defenses I need back up, see these men as rivals and adversaries rather than the lovers they became? How can I stop their cruelty from gutting me?
I don’t remember anymore. I opened myself up too much, and now there’s no stitching the gaps shut.
A quiver runs through my shoulders. And the last voice I want to hear carries from behind me. “Elodie? What are you doing?”
Byron sounds much more hesitant than he did telling me off minutes ago. Of all my classmates, why did he have to follow me?
He probably figured I was up to something to get back at him and wanted to confirm.
I clench my teeth and haul myself upward, pushing the burn of tears as far back as it’ll go, even though it feels like my grief is scalding my stomach now.
When I turn to Byron, my chin raises to a snooty angle. “Are you stalking me now? Strange from a guy who was just saying how much he didn’t want to be around me.”
Byron’s face ticks with a suppressed flinch and then hardens. “And that’s a perfect reminder why.”
He stalks out of the building, leaving me alone and feeling as hollowed out as the illusions I conjured in the other Byron’s embrace just a few months ago.