64. Chapter Sixty-Four
Chapter Sixty-Four
Argus “Headmaster” Xavier
Reaping The Consequences
Isit in the dark front room of the borrowed house and watch the quiet glow of Elowen’s windows across the street.
The neighborhood feels too still, too tidy for what’s happening inside her body.
I fold my hands, unfold them, fold them again.
The diagnosis runs loops through my mind like a punishment I deserve.
Her death sentence has been given. Rest, they said.
The nurses have started to stop by to monitor.
As if rest can steady the kind of storm growing inside her, destroying her every nerve.
She’s slipping. You can smell the decay from here.
All of this could’ve been prevented if Kalevala had just done her fucking job.
I can feel it the same way I feel shifts in the tide of the Council.
There is a thinning in the air, a soft fracture, the type that becomes permanent if ignored for too long.
If she goes, Beau will shatter. And if he shatters, he will never rise to his place, never bind the Council, never hold the line we need him to hold.
Everything depends on one girl’s pulse continuing its rhythm.
I don’t know what to do. I don’t know where to go.
I can no longer rely on the idea that Beau and Kalevala will rule together.
I’m running out of time. The council members beneath me have begun to stir.
They are starting to ask questions about who will take the throne next.
No answer will settle them until they see Beau Drewitt before them in the flesh.
I sense Kalevala before I see her. Her presence folds over the room like cold fog.
She steps out from the shadows behind me, her features sharpened with unrest. Even in her stillness there is a hungry, frantic twitch beneath her skin.
She is losing control and she knows it. She acts like a completely different person now. Totally untamable.
“You should let me handle this,” she says. “Just say the word and I’ll take care of everything. Just one easy, smooth…“ She clicks her tongue and ticks her head to the side.
Her tone is light but her eyes are wild.
She means it. She wants permission to kill her.
My stomach knots. She’s looking for an excuse to act.
A chance to finish what she started in secret.
A chance to cut the thread that holds Beau to sanity.
With nothing tethering Beau to this mortal realm, he’ll spend the rest of his un-dead life hunting down the council in order to vanquish us all from the Earth.
If he attempts to change Elowen and it doesn’t hold, it will be our consequences to reap.
I rise from the chair. I feel age in my bones tonight. It’s the weight of every mistake that has led us here. I have fought tooth and nail behind the scenes trying to get Beau to be my successor.
“You are the reason all of this has turned sour,” I say. My voice sounds distant, like it belongs to someone else.
“She should be the one dying and you know it.” I step toward her and she smiles.
She thinks she’s winning. She has lapped up every inconvenience this damn plan has brought.
I place my hands on her throat. Her eyes widen but she doesn’t step back.
She thinks this is a threat, a warning. She doesn’t understand that I can no longer give her the chance to decide anything.
She isn’t ever getting close to the Headmaster seat on the Council.
“You will not touch her ever again,” I say.
Her breath catches as I tighten my grip.
She claws at my wrists, not in fear but in irritation, as if I’m inconveniencing her.
The floor creaks under our weight as she tries to brace herself.
Her strength surges for a moment, then falters as I push harder.
I feel the sharp shift in her body when her vertebrae gives way.
Her head falls at an unnatural angle and the fight leaves her all at once.
She drops to the floor. Her limbs twitch with residual energy, but her eyes stay open, frozen in surprise.
I know this won’t kill her. It’ll only still her for a while.
She will be even more angry when she wakes, but I need time to think, plan, devise.
So, for now, she can’t interfere, and that’s the only mercy I have left in me.
The world across the street stays quiet.
And the waiting feels like drowning. If she slips away, then the Council loses its future.
I lose my future. And Beau loses the only thing that keeps him even slightly human.
I press my palms to my eyes and try to focus, but the fear rises anyway.
But the truth curls under every thought.
If Elowen dies, everything else dies with her.
And I don’t know how to stop it. Before I can react, I feel Kalevala’s presence all at once behind me.
She turns me around and pushes me against the nearest wall, “Listen. Very. Closely. I’m sick of your games.
You will stand down. I will bring Beau Drewitt to you.
He will answer for his crimes in front of the council for rejecting my claim on him. You. Will. Stand. Down.”
“Yes, Kalevala.”
“Good boy. Now, go stand in that corner and snap your neck continuously. Every time you wake, do it again. I’ll call you when I’m ready to bring him in front of the council. You all will bend to Queen Empusa.”
“Yes ma’am.”