Chapter 16
Wrong Question, Shadow
My fork clinked against the ceramic plate.
Someone had hand-painted a rooster in the middle, but it lay hidden beneath the mashed potatoes and green beans.
I hated that sound—clink, but it was hard to look at my plate of food and avoid all interaction between fork and ceramic while a ghost and a magician sat at the same table as me, trying to explain how Salah Walton hadn’t died that day.
I’d seen the blood. I’d heard the Mods announce in their muffled no-nonsense tone, “No pulse.”
Soren sat to my left, but I’d been ignoring him as much as possible since he’d dragged me out of that room with the grotesque tapestry and lectured me for “sneaking around just asking for trouble”.
Winifred’s cooking was delicious, but it was no match for the resurrection of the dead—especially someone I’d once considered a friend.
Apparently, Zuri’s ability to heal reached far beyond scraped knees and elbows.
One of the Mods who came to collect Salah’s body from the tile floor had been a member of The Way.
A moment of serendipity. He’d lied and said she was dead so he could get her to Zuri and hide her from the Administrator she’d gotten herself wrapped up in.
The adulterous Administrator had indeed been plotting her death—just as they had done to Lillemore. He would have killed her himself if she hadn’t attempted it first.
Veda recruited Salah into the Guild after witnessing how proficient she was with the underground network, and Salah now helped procure supplies produced in The Tower for exiled members of The Way who hid in the outskirts.
That was what they’d spent the last forty minutes trying to explain in a way I could understand.
Chilled fingers grazed over my shoulder before Soren whispered beside me, “Eat.”
“I’m sorry, Ellie,” Salah said for the twentieth time, her voice trembling with genuine regret and sorrow.
It took me a moment to comprehend her words, Soren’s single syllable still reverberating in my ear.
Salah Walton was just as beautiful as she had been back when I considered her a friend, but it was strange to see the sadness in her eyes.
Even when she’d told me she couldn’t do it anymore, Salah had maintained her signature Pulse-ready smile.
Now, her mouth curved downward, and the corners of her eyes wrinkled with apology.
“I wish I hadn’t put you through all that, or that I could have let you know I was okay afterward.”
I looked down at the food I’d been stirring into spirals on the plate. I’d tried everything save for the pork chop, but only a single bite of each. I speared a lone green bean and brought it to my mouth without chewing.
“She did ask us to tell you,” Winifred chimed from the end of the table, “But we couldn’t let her risk her safety for that. If you had reacted too lightly to her death, they might’ve grown suspicious. It would have put you both in danger.”
I shook my head. I wasn’t mad at Salah. I was still too shocked to feel much of anything.
The green bean sat in my mouth, and Soren tapped my thigh twice with his knuckle.
“You have to eat, Eliana.” His voice dripped through my ear canal and straight into my chest.
I flicked my eyes toward him, then back to the plate.
I started chewing and moved my leg away from his hand.
Across the table, the tiny redhead chattered enthusiastically to that demon spawn Adriel about someone at a place called Chapel who was ‘recovering well’. Zuri hadn’t stopped talking since she’d traipsed into that tapestry room.
She was the reason I’d woken without so much as a bruise. All she had to do was touch people, and their wounds healed at impossible speeds. That’s how she’d explained it all in one breath.
“So,” I tried, after I’d swallowed the green bean.
Nothing happened.
I tried again. “So, Zuri?”
Silence slammed into the room.
Zuri’s head snapped toward me, pale green eyes wide.
Adriel rolled his dark, brown eyes and stabbed his fork into a cube of meat.
Unfortunately, I’d caught everyone else’s full attention, too.
They’d all been haphazardly watching me since we sat down—late and apparently supposed to be sorry about it. Winifred had been waiting patiently for us to eat the meal she’d made while we were off gallivanting through the hallways.
“You said something about your healing thing being a…” my eyes flicked to Salah. “Um, what was the word? Charister?”
“Charism,” Zuri corrected.
“Yeah, what is that?”
I hadn’t prepared for Soren’s hand to fall on my thigh beneath the table, and my body jolted under the weight.
But for some odd reason, I didn’t push it away quite yet.
When he’d shoved past both Zuri and Salah to get to me in that room I’d snuck into, he’d taken my elbow and frog-marched me out. I hadn’t protested at first because I was still shell-shocked after seeing a ghost. But once in the hall, I’d found my voice.
“Don’t touch me!” I’d screamed, and I guess I’d sounded severe enough.
He’d listened and hadn’t touched me again until that brush of fingers on my shoulder a few minutes ago alerted me that my time for a tantrum was dwindling thin.
Cool fingers now pressed lightly into my thigh, just above my knee.
I reminded myself not to inhale too sharply. I couldn’t let him know how he was affecting me.
Veda’s voice distracted me from the shiver that bloomed at the base of my spine and curled up into my throat before sinking into my stomach—or lower.
“Charisms are gifts,” Veda said. “They’re kind of like talents, I guess? They’re gifts from the Creator.”
I focused on her, avoiding Soren’s hand like it wasn’t still there. “So, does everyone in the Guild get one? Will I get one if I join?”
If I do, I want superhuman strength so I can fight Soren without getting pummeled. Or mind-reading, so I won’t need to ask all these damn questions.
Adriel snorted.
Bastard.
I jerked toward him in my seat and growled under my breath, but then Soren’s hand tightened on my leg again, strapping me down, leashing me.
I swatted at his hand, but it didn’t budge.
“Tower Troll is at it again,” Adriel muttered.
Soren’s hand no longer held my attention.
My blood was in my ears.
This asshole has to die.
“Who are you calling a troll?!” I shouted. “Have you seen a mirror lately?”
Adriel laughed and stuck his tongue out the side of his mouth.
“At least this is my real face. How many of those procedures have you had done? Would your parents even recognize you?” He leaned back in his chair and propped both hands behind his head.
“Ah, that’s right, they don’t want anything to do with you, do they? ”
“You don’t know anything about me,” I spat. “Now you sound as dumb as you look.”
“Look, Rapunzel,” he said with a sneer. “I know plenty about your kind. We all do. I promise we know way more about you than you do about us.”
I opened my mouth with a comeback I hadn’t yet thought of when Soren’s grip tightened on me again. I heard the edge in his voice from the first syllable.
“Adriel, if you keep antagonizing her, I’ll tear your windpipe through your throat so that you won’t be able to utter another sound ever again.”
Huh.
The only thing we have in common is our violent thoughts. He also thinks about tearing out his friend’s throat.
The difference was: he was likely to carry it out.
Winifred stood with a clatter of silverware. “That’s enough, boys!”
Her tone softened when she looked at me. “I’m sorry, Eliana. They shouldn’t behave like this in front of you.”
Her words tempered the pounding in my ears, but Soren’s hand stayed like an anchor or a manacle. It kept me safe. Imprisoned me. Probably both.
“Not everyone gets a Charism,” Winifred continued, filling her plate with more meat and potatoes before sitting.
“Some have more than one. Whether or not you will—it’s impossible to say.
Even nonbelievers can have a Charism. The Creator gives them to people for reasons we don’t always understand. You might already have one.”
At that, Soren’s grip finally loosened. He didn’t let go, though. Instead, he drew small circles on my skin with his thumb.
The shiver running through my muscles was harder to ignore this time.
My brows furrowed as I again tried to pry Soren’s fingers off my leg, but they didn’t budge. Then I ended up feeling like I was trying to hold his hand, so I busied my hands with my fork and knife again because no way did I want to hold that man’s hand.
His thumb resumed its circles, drawing me into the deep.
“It’s random then?” I asked, pressing the teeth of my fork against another bean until green oozed between the slats.
“As far as we know, yes,” Winifred said.
“What about you? Do all of you have one of those?”
“I do not,” Winifred replied with a smile more in her eyes than in her mouth.
“I think your cooking should count,” Salah said with a grin, then turned to me with a soft, practiced smile. “I don’t have one either, but Veda has the coolest one ever.”
I turned to Veda, having to crane my neck to see around Soren to where she sat on his other side. This, unfortunately, brought me further into his orbit, the pressure of the whirlpool increasing.
His stupid thumb made focusing on anything else but that sensation feel like a hundred-ton weight.
Veda shrugged and leaned back in her chair. “Only if you think sha—”
“She’s not ready for that,” Soren cut in, staring at me.
His hand tightened again. Hard.
I couldn’t tell if my pulse was pounding because of his hand, his voice, or the fact that this asshole kept acting as if he could boss me and everyone else around.
“Besides,” Adriel grunted and pushed his chair back.
The wooden legs screeched against the floor, yanking my attention from Soren.
“I’d argue against divulging all our secrets to Rapunzel on day one, eh?
She hasn’t even said she’s joining. No need to hurry the prophecy along and end up with a premature bloodbath on our hands.
We still need to find the Anointed first.”