Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
Ido not get the hang of it in no time.
In fact, after trying to mount the thing and get it to move, I land about a million times on my butt. Luckily, Mace has taught me how to set the board from the ART, so that it only hovers a few inches above ground, and even if I don’t hurt myself seriously, my pride is awfully bruised.
Mace pulls up close to me with obnoxious easiness and grace. ‘You’re too tense, Ellie. You should be more relaxed on the board. Incremental moves to guide it and let yourself glide forward.’
I get up on the board again. My entire backside is aching, and I can see far enough in my future to know that I’ll use the Pocket Healer on the bruises tonight. A six-day trek is looking more and more tempting by the minute.
‘That’s it,’ Mace says. ‘Get right back on it. You’ll figure it out.’
‘You’re a terrible teacher,’ I snap.
‘Glide, Ellie, glide.’
I lean forwards to smack him, but he easily evades me, leaning to the side and setting the flyboard in motion. ‘Yes, go on and provoke me, Mace, you won’t like what happens when I do catch you.’
‘Maybe I want you to catch me,’ he says, stopping a dozen feet from the shore, hovering above the water.
I have to chase him. But I’ll be soaking wet if I fall.
When I fall.
I grit my teeth, set my feet into position, and lean forward.
Just a bit. The board picks up speed, but then I get scared that I’m moving too fast, so I lean back.
The board stops abruptly and I have to windmill my arms for balance, trying to avoid falling again.
I’m close to the shore, and the last thing I want to do is roll in the mud.
Mace sighs. ‘Ellie. What’s wrong? It’s more like ice skating than you think. You were always great at ice skating.’
I wasn’t, not really. But I had a lot of fun. It’s interesting how Mace remembers this, though. ‘Why did you stop skating, Mace?’ The question is out before I can think twice.
‘It seemed pointless, in the beginning. Doing it alone.’ He looks away. ‘And then, the PR Team at The Citadel forbade it. They said it wouldn’t look good if I fell on my arse and people saw footage of that. They said it would affect my credibility.’
There’s so much wrong with these statements that I don’t even know where to begin. ‘A PR Team is working for you?’
‘For The Citadel,’ he amends. ‘That’s how legends are born: with a team of people behind, working to show you off from the best angles.’
Yikes. It’s a bit scary.
‘That’s not the point, though,’ he says, and I can tell he wants to move away from this conversation as fast as humanly possible. ‘Ice skating?’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘On it.’
I take a deep breath and allow muscle memory to take over. I lean forward, just a bit, and even if the position of my feet is weird, the board begins to glide forwards and over the water. I lean to the side, and the board follows in the movement. Oh.
This isn’t as hard as it seemed. It’s still a bit weird, since I have to carry my backpack, but if I keep my movements slow and controlled, it’s not impossible.
I set my sights on Mace, letting the board glide above the surface of the water, and when I’ve almost reached him, I lean back slowly to bring the board to a stop.
I miss him by a few feet, but I’m calling it a win.
It turns out, riding a flyboard is all about balance. Go figure.
‘That’s more like it,’ Mace says. ‘Now catch me.’
He sets off in a rush, tilting his board so that water sprays on my mission uniform.
I take off after him, and even if I’m too much of a chicken to glide at high speed, I’m roughly following his movements.
When he turns sharply after having reached the opposite shore, I coax my board into a loose curve.
When he rushes towards the cliff, I follow, too focused on him to overthink what I’m doing.
I pick up more and more speed, the wind rustling through the strands that have flown loose of my ponytail.
I remember why I loved ice skating so much: the way I feel in my own body, the way that every small shift matters. The freedom.
I’m giggling before I know it. Mace and I slip into a pattern of loose eights, on opposite ends of the infinity shape, weaving in and out in imperfect lines. But it’s beautiful and fun, and even more so because we’re doing this together. Just like it used to be.
I whoop with joy. When we cross paths, he grins.
We meet in an arc at the far end, right beside the cliff. My cheeks are aching from smiling, his hair is tousled, and the colour is high on his own cheeks.
He lifts his hand and shapes his purple magic in a disc, but I’m not afraid of it.
His killing magic never hurt me when we trained.
Instinctively, I lift my hand, generating a thin arc of my own power, and bring it closer, to meld with his.
Our powers melt together, gliding along each other, in endless flowing patterns of brilliant white and purple.
I can feel the skate of his magic alongside mine, the thrum of his power beyond me.
I feel the rush of more, of something earth-shattering waiting for me behind a thick wall, its whispering calls muted.
There are no words for this.
Just the flow and the power and the glide and the balance. I push more power into my thin strip of shield and Mace answers. The weave of magic shines with blinding intensity, but it feels right, and it feels wonderful.
It feels like everything I’ve ever thought seeing Mace again would be.
‘Mace,’ I say, ‘this feels so good. So right.’
‘I know,’ he grins. ‘It’s always—’ He pulls his hand back abruptly, stopping the flow of his magic, then looks towards the cliff wall.
‘Alright, Ellie, it seems you’ve got this.
Now all we have to do is climb.’ He pulls out his ART and toys with the board’s settings.
‘You have to set it to go higher. But before that, we have to enable the safety straps. Just to make sure that nothing happens if we lose our balance. Mind if I do?’
I nod, still confused and slightly whiplashed from the change of atmosphere. We were on the brink of something magical.
Mace taps on his ART and tight metal straps close around my feet like a boot. I make the mistake of looking up and I’m instantly dizzy.
I gulp. I’m not a big fan of heights.
‘We’ll start ascending.’ He frowns at his ART, setting the boards in motion and cutting off any attempt I might have made to go back to that blissful state of awareness between us.
I curse this man and the emotional constipation that he’s unable to shake off. But is it that? Maybe there really are no feelings for me behind those walls he puts up.
The flyboards float higher and higher, putting more distance between me and safe ground. A pit opens in my stomach. I really, really hate heights.
The clasps from the flyboard hold me in place, and I do my best not to look down. I stare instead at the cliff face, which stares right back.
‘We’ll be perfectly safe,’ Mace says, lowering his voice. ‘You can’t fall. Remember that. I’m sorry. I know you’re afraid of heights. I should have thought of telling you to take some of that emotion-supressing medicine before we started going up.’
‘Yikes,’ I say. ‘No, thank you. I won’t be touching those things anytime soon. They’re horrific.’
Mace is watching me with an odd intensity. ‘I was on them for years,’ he says, his tone even.
My heart starts to patter. ‘What? How can you be so chilled about this? That’s terrible. Why would you do such a thing?’
‘My mother gave them to me. After my powers manifested. I struggled, at first, when I was moved to the Barracks.’
My mouth is gaping open. He struggled? And he tried to see me, as he said himself. There was no one there to make him smile – I know that, with an irrefutable certainty. Instead of helping him, his mother suppressed his emotions. My throat feels tight. ‘Mace. I’m so sorry.’
‘No, you shouldn’t be,’ he says. ‘Without them, I couldn’t perform to the best of my abilities in training. My mother was right.’
I clench my fists in anger. ‘No, Mace, there wasn’t a single right thing about it. You were a quiet boy. Probably the most emotionally constipated person I knew. And your mother did all she could to make you push down whatever you were feeling?’
I’d had no clue what he’d been going through. If I could turn back time … I don’t know … I’d crawl to him, through a sewer if I had to, to find him and hold his hand.
No wonder he’s turned out the way he has.
‘If you think I was emotionally constipated, you should have seen my mother before she?—’
‘Before she what? Mace? Did something happen to her?’
Mace stares at his boots. ‘She died in a war with the Pikenians. A year and a half after my powers manifested. My father died a year later, also in the field. I?—’
‘I’m so sorry,’ I breathe. I had no idea. I didn’t know.
And I feel like I’ve failed him more than ever. I had no idea what happened to Mace in between us being friends and when he started cropping up in online articles because of his achievements when he was about fifteen. I’d always wondered, but did I do a fucking thing?
No.
I didn’t.
I just gave up on him.
‘That’s fine. I struggled with it, too. Back then.’ Mace closes and opens his fist. ‘The Healers simply upped the dose of the emotion suppressants. I was fine after that. I went off them a few years ago, when I was sure I could keep my emotions in check.’
‘Mace,’ I breathe. ‘This is terrible. This is beyond awful. They should have helped you deal with your emotions, not make you suppress them.’
‘I said it was fine, Ellie.’ His voice is cold. ‘I performed better in training after that. I even won the Gladiator Games the following year.’
I wipe a stray tear that’s falling down my cheek. They failed him. I failed him. Everyone did.
‘Training was all that mattered,’ he says.
Turned him into a good little soldier, I think with bitterness, and my skin crawls.
‘My parents lost their lives in the wars, Ellie. There is only one way to honour their deaths: being the best that I can be. Getting a leading role in the field. Making my parents proud. And maybe becoming Central Command one day. This matters to me.’
I shake my head. There’s so much that I don’t know about Mace anymore. They created the perfect poster boy, a cardboard image of Mace, devoid of feelings. Does Mace think it’s worth it? Giving up pieces of himself so he can become who The Citadel considers the epitome of success?
‘Central Command isn’t being decisive enough with the Kingdom of Piken,’ Mace says. ‘They keep attacking us. We need to take effective action and end the wars once and for all.’
‘You want to avenge your parents.’
He nods. ‘This is why I need to be the best and perform well in this mission. Otherwise, I have no chance of ever becoming Central Command.’
When one of the Commanders dies, the others pick another Warrior in their stead. But they have to be nothing short of extraordinary in order to be chosen. Which Mace is.
While I … I couldn’t be further from that.
I’ve never been more aware of the chasm between us than I am now.
At the same time, I want to smack him until he comes to his senses. I understand his obsession with ranking well in this mission, with getting a top job after his Apprenticeship. I understand, but I also don’t. It feels so hollow.
‘How will you avenge their deaths if you share their fate in the field?’
Mace grinds his jaw. ‘Maybe I’ll help usher in a new age of peace.’
‘And what will you do after that?’
Mace has been trained for a single purpose: to be a top Warrior. To kill. What will he do with himself if there are no wars to fight?
The flyboard levels out, and the terrifying ascent is over. It glides over rocky ground, before coming to a stop again. I do feel like we’ve climbed a mountain.
Mace taps something on his ART and the clasps around our feet are released. He lifts his gaze carefully, chewing on his lip. There’s so much intensity in his eyes and it scares me.
How could I ever apologise for letting him down so completely and thoroughly?
I can’t. I simply can’t. So I take a good look around us. We’re a few feet from a patch of woods, of course, but it isn’t just woods. There are tumbled rocks between them, and stretches and stretches of fucking asphalt with huge holes and weeds and trees coming out of it.
‘Mace,’ I say. ‘What is this place?’
He’s looking around, too, and he pales.
‘By Mars,’ he breathes. ‘I think this must be one of the old cities. The ones that existed before the Fragmenting. The ones that were destroyed during the wars.’