Chapter 35 #2
“Why are you so afraid of getting close to her?” Ezra asked. Or at least that’s what I think he asked. “It's destined.”
I gingerly pushed the door open enough to slide silently inside and tried to inch closer.
“You know why!” Soren’s shout startled me. I took a step back too quickly and knocked the door closed with a loud thud.
Fudge!
Even if I hadn’t frozen for a beat too long, Soren still would have caught me. He appeared around the corner in a flash.
“If it isn’t my Little Shadow,” Soren drawled from the end of the aisle they’d been whispering in, poised like a bull ready to charge.
I stood there, still frozen in his cold stare.
“Ah, Eliana,” Ezra said as if he had been looking for me all along, not hiding more secrets about me. “We’re just about to start the Communion Ceremony. Let’s head back to the cafeteria.”
As he brushed past me, I turned and headed back through the door after the older man, knowing that if I didn’t go with Ezra, Soren would probably tear me in half for spying on him. That or he would kiss me and wrap me up in him all over again, only to leave me as a lone puddle on the floor.
“Where’d you disappear to?” Farren asked once I reached our table again. “Trying to escape while no one’s watching?” She laughed, and a few crumbs tumbled out.
The violinist announced that there would be one more song before the Communion Ceremony. Some dancers took that as their cue to trickle back to the tables. I took it as my cue to stuff my face in an attempt to avoid Farren’s question.
There was a lull between the end of the first song and when Ezra would begin his speech that allowed Adriel’s voice to ring out across the room.
“She is one of them!” Adriel shouted, mere inches from Soren—I hadn’t even seen him return. Adriel’s inflamed face contrasted starkly with Soren’s ashen, unreadable expression. “Her father works for the enemy, and her mother—”
Soren slammed his fist down on the table, sending a plate flipping over to shatter, cutlery clattering across the floor.
“It’s not up to us!” he shouted. “You’ve seen the writing on the wall!”
“Her bloodline’s polluted, Sor,” Marigold snarled from behind him. “It’s impossible that it’s right. There has to be a mistake.”
My spine locked. There it was again—polluted. Mutts. Half-bloods. Always spoken like rot. Like a disease.
I’d never escape it. Not even here.
“The Fire doesn’t make mistakes,” Soren bellowed. “It chose her. Regardless of how foolish and selfish she is, Eliana is the one we have to protect.”
Foolish and selfish?
Ouch.
The whole room watched as he moved the entire table aside with one hand and took a step toward Adriel. It would have sent the other boy scrambling if he’d been even a little more sober.
All I felt was an awful sense of déjà vu.
Nothing had changed, despite all the training we’d done together. The team was still a joke.
And this asshole was about to defend my honor while simultaneously insulting me—if that wasn’t the epitome of my relationship with Soren.
“Besides,” Soren continued. “If she doesn’t belong here because of her lineage, then I don’t either. That ‘mutt’ you’re so disgusted by? She’s at least a mix of the same species.”
His voice caught on the last word. And I suddenly understood. He wasn’t just defending me. He was talking about himself. His bloodline was tainted, too. He was an abomination even by The Way’s standards.
“That’s not what I meant,” Marigold whined, reaching to take hold of his elbow.
Soren wrenched free so violently that Marigold fell into the table.
Salah grabbed my hand and squeezed it. I didn’t know when she’d arrived at the table, and I didn’t squeeze back, but I was grateful for someone to interrupt my daze. My features shrank into a scowl, and I clenched my jaw instead of crushing her hand in mine.
“I don’t care about your stupid visions and the damn stories you read in those old books,” Adriel spat.
For a second time, I agreed with him.
Double retch.
He’d pretty much taken the words out of my mouth before he grabbed an unopened bottle of wine, smashed it against the table, and rushed at Soren’s neck.
Soren’s hand was already there, around Adriel’s throat, before the glass could make so much as a nick.
The whole room gasped over the clattering of forks or spoons dropping and whimpers from those too afraid to stand up and do something but too curious to flee.
No one dared look away from the sight of all the color draining from Adriel’s face, his veins turning black, and a wisp of fog flowing from between his parted lips toward Soren.
Seemed Adriel never learned.
“Soren!” Veda stood across the room. “Don’t!”
Soren released Adriel, and the latter sputtered as if he hadn’t just had his very soul sucked halfway out of him.
“I can enjoy the Charisms and fight for the guild without having to believe in your stupid lore,” Adriel said to Veda now, but the words were in gasps and chokes. “She doesn’t belong here! And if Lover Boy can’t see that, then he doesn’t either. Or is everyone forgetting what he di—”
“I’m so done with this!” I screamed. I’d moved without meaning to, and now stood in the line of fire.
“I don’t even want to be here, much less have you two shouting about me in front of a bunch of freaks that want me to save them from some imaginary bad guy, while there is a real bad guy that deserves to die! ”
No one moved.
“I didn’t ask to come here, remember?” I continued, proving Soren’s evaluation of my foolishness. “You’ve all imprisoned me here against my will! So, just let me go, and we’ll all be rid of each other!”
I’d not made it through my last two sentences before the murmurs started up, a fervent buzz of shock, hurt, and anger humming around the room.
“Enough!” Winifred’s shout stilled the snarling curses that were starting among the crowd.
“I want all seven of your team in my office. Now,” Ezra said evenly as he stepped beside Winifred, then walked out of the cafeteria.
I was fast beginning to wonder if my life had entered some endless loop of making the same mistakes over and over again.
Or maybe it wasn’t me making mistakes, but me allowing the same damn thing to keep happening without stopping it, without changing anything.
I was the movie quote version of insanity.
I had to start doing things differently if I wanted different results.
Something had to break, not in me, but around me. If I wanted different results, I couldn’t just survive. I couldn’t just keep going along with everyone else’s plans. I had to act. Choose. Torch the expectations of the world and decide who I wanted to be and what I wanted to do.
How? I couldn’t say quite yet.
One thing was for sure: I was done following their rules.