Chapter 16 #4
Harper nodded. “Body-shaming. Thinking my parents wouldn’t be proud of me. It was awful.”
That sounded awful but not like what I’d experienced.
“Yeah. It was awful,” I agreed.
“I had a vision that I walked up to the Veil Stone and touched it and then died,” Luna said, and we both stared at her.
“Yikes,” I offered.
“What did you experience?” Harper asked.
“Similar stuff,” I lied. She didn’t look convinced.
“Well, whatever it was, it’s in the past,” Harper said. “You get your marks and move forward.”
Right.
I yawned. “I’m exhausted. I think I need a nap.”
They nodded. “Meet us later for bowling.”
“Okay,” I said and headed back to my dorm.
I planned to lock myself in my room for hours, but when I passed Daphne’s room and glanced inside, I slowed. She lay on her bed with her hoodie pulled over her head, staring blankly at the wall.
“Are you sick?” I asked softly from the doorway.
She shrugged.
“Can I come in?” Asher had alluded to mental health problems with Daphne before, and I didn’t want to leave her if she was depressed and needed someone to talk to.
“Okay,” she muttered.
“I got my marks.” I showed her my arm.
She glanced at them and sat up on one elbow. “Holy crap, Stella. That’s a lot. Slayer? Congrats.”
“Thanks.” I sat on the floor, looking up at her. “Worst couple hours of my life. I don’t even know how long I was in there.”
She sat up fully, and I inspected her more closely. It looked like she’d been crying, and I felt badly because I knew it was probably over Asher.
“I barely got my two marks.” She showed me her arm. “Tracker. I couldn’t stand hearing all that bad stuff.” She tapped her head, and I nodded.
I thought that the more trauma you had, the more marks you had, but that would mean Daphne definitely would have more.
She’d run off to the woods when she found out her parents had died and she had seemed to struggle ever since.
“It doesn’t really make sense to me how it works.
” I told her. “How I have so many and some…” I didn’t mean her but stopped when I realized how my words might sound.
She nodded as if she was okay with the comparison. “The Veil Stone exposes your inner darkness, things you need to work through, but it can only show you what you’re strong enough to handle.” She rubbed the two marks on her arm. “I’m not very strong.”
“Hey, don’t say that. You are. People who have never had to deal with anything hard are the ones who aren’t strong. You’ve been through a lot, and you still get up every day and push through. That’s strong.”
Her eyes filled with tears. “I like that. Thank you.”
I didn’t know what else to say, and I wanted to hug her because she looked so incredibly sad, but we weren’t that close.
“I broke up with Asher,” she finally said.
I stiffened. “I heard. Why? You guys seemed so happy at the beach.”
She shook her head. “He hasn’t been happy with me for years.”
Yikes. I felt like I was walking on land mines.
“Is that why you broke up with him?”
The tears that had been welling in her eyes fell over and onto her cheeks then. “We haven’t been romantically in love for a while. I kept trying to force it, because I never wanted to lose him, but…”
A small sob escaped her, and I popped onto my knees and pulled her in for a hug.
“And for the first time, I was in the dining hall, and I found myself looking at Clay Green and wondering what he kissed like,” she admitted.
I pulled back at that confession. “Yeah, that seems like something you wouldn’t do if you were happy in a relationship.”
She nodded. “But Asher is my best friend. He saved me when I was drowning, and I just don’t want to lose him. But he deserves to be happy too. I know he’s only stayed with me because I beg him to get back together every time. It’s pathetic.”
She sounded like a small child begging her mother to keep her favorite toy.
“I don’t think you will lose him. I think what you have is really special, and it will just be different now.”
She sniffed, wiping her nose. “Really? Different how?”
I could see the anxiety well up inside her. It felt weird to be counseling her about Asher.
I shrugged. “You guys can still talk and hang out, but maybe later that night, you go on a date with Clay Green and kiss him.”
She grinned, cheeks going pink. “You better not tell anyone I said that.” She pointed a finger at me.
I held both of my hands up. “Promise.”
She sighed, releasing all the breath she’d been holding. “You think it will be okay? He’ll still want to be my best friend?”
I did. The way he spoke about her, I knew he’d love and care for her forever, and it was insanely attractive to me.
“I do.”
She nodded, pulling her hood off and smoothing her hair like she was coming out of a cocoon. “Did he do okay with his marks? I should go see him.”
I nodded, ignoring the slice of jealousy that rushed through me. “He did. He got a lot of powerful ones. He’s a striker.”
She stood, sighing. “Hey, thanks for checking on me. I was in a doom loop.”
I chuckled. “A doom loop?”
She nodded. “My therapist calls it that. When you just loop on all the negative stuff. It’s hard for me to get out of them sometimes.”
I walked with her to her door. “Happy to get you out of your doom loop anytime, Daphne.”
She gave me a genuine smile then. “Thanks.”
That night, Celia came to visit me in my dorm room when I was alone.
I sat at my desk, peering down at my chipped nail polish, hoping to God she wasn’t here to talk about the mark.
“I spoke to Akari. Stella, can I see the shadow mark?” Her voice held hesitation. Like the words were dirty or taboo.
I flinched. She was here for that.
I swallowed hard, peering up at her, and found compassion in her gaze.
With a nod, I pulled up my sleeve, and the compassion turned to fear for a split second before it was gone.
“Akari said not to show people. I don’t know what it means,” I told her.
She nodded, taking one more look at the rune before pulling my sleeve down.
“I think that is wise, Stella.”
It was wise to keep my rune a secret?
“Why?” I asked.
Celia moved to sit at the end of my bed and looked into my eyes. She took in a deep breath, and her shoulders slumped on the exhale. “People fear what they don’t know. Unfortunately, we don’t know a lot about that rune, and what we do know isn’t good.”
Her words scared me. And I wanted so badly to tell her everything, to show her the storage unit and my mother’s letter, but something held me back.
The warning in my mom’s letter that I couldn’t trust any hunter with her secret.
Was the secret that my mom was working with vampires? Because that wasn’t something I would support or be proud of. Or was the secret somehow tied to this mark?
All these questions kept me up well into the night, and I wasn’t excited about the days of training ahead.