THE ELECTRIC HEIR

by Lee, Victoria

  “And when did you figure this out?” Dara flung the question at him like a grenade—there was no right answer there; Dara had to know that. His cheeks were bright with anger. “Last time I saw you, you didn’t remember a goddamn thing I told you about him. When did you figure it out? Before you slept with him?”

  Noam couldn’t answer, couldn’t say a word. Everything he might have told Dara was jumbled in the back of his throat, too many excuses, too many hollow apologies. He couldn’t keep looking at Dara either. Looking at him meant imagining a younger version of Dara, all wide eyes and baby fat—imagined how vicious you’d have to be to ever want to hurt him. Fuck. Noam pressed his face into his hands instead, eyes clenching shut against his overhot palms.

  “After?” Dara pressed.

  “I swear I didn’t know when we started—when I—” When I threw myself at him. “But I figured out—I put a Faraday shield around my own mind so he couldn’t influence me anymore, and that must’ve done something, because then I remembered what you told me about Lehrer, and—”

  “And you kept sleeping with him?” Dara’s voice spun higher in pitch. Noam didn’t have to open his eyes to guess that sound was Dara kicking the dresser.

  “Would it help if you—I can take the shield down, you can read my mind, you can see for yourself—”

  Dara’s footfalls went silent. Noam lifted his head to find Dara standing there in the center of the room staring at him with an incredulous look on his face, lips parted. “Noam. I took the vaccine, in the quarantined zone. I don’t have magic anymore. I can’t read your mind.”

  Wait, what?

  “And even if I could,” Dara went on, “I wouldn’t want to. Why the hell would I want to see—god, Noam!”

  Noam almost didn’t believe him. The idea of a Dara without magic was—it was—Noam couldn’t wrap his mind around it. Magic and Dara were so intertwined as to be synonymous. That was who Dara was: the too-powerful, too-brilliant prince of Carolinia.

  If Dara didn’t have telepathy anymore, Lehrer might be able to read his mind. That was what had kept him from being able to do so before, wasn’t it? Dara’s telepathy interfering with Lehrer’s.

  Noam couldn’t tell Dara the truth now, not without taking the risk it’d get back to Lehrer.

  But if Dara was anywhere near enough for Lehrer to read his mind, they were all dead anyway.

  “I had to keep sleeping with him,” Noam said. “Don’t you get that? I’m trying to bring him down—I remembered everything you told me, about the virus, the vaccines—I’m trying to kill him, Dara! If I don’t act like everything’s normal, he’ll know something’s wrong!”

  “That is such bullshit, Álvaro.”

  “It’s not,” Noam insisted. He pushed up to his feet and moved toward Dara, reaching for him—he wanted to touch him, had to feel the solid weight of Dara’s body under his hand. But Dara stepped back almost as quickly and shook his head. He was crying, too—the tears hadn’t fallen, not yet, but his eyes gleamed with them. “I love you, Dara—I swear, I never meant to . . . to hurt you, I just—I swear to God.”

  “You love me?” Dara’s voice cracked, his hands balling into trembling fists. “Forgive me if I find that incredibly hard to believe. First you left me—you sent me off to the quarantined zone alone while you stayed behind with Lehrer—then you start fucking him? Were you just waiting for me to leave so you could—”

  “It wasn’t like that!”

  “Really? Because it sounds like it was just like that.”

  “I didn’t—” he started, but Dara didn’t let him finish, just grabbed a discarded book off the end table and hurled it at him.

  “I don’t want to hear it. I don’t. You say you love me, but you’re exactly like every other guy I’ve ever fucked, aren’t you? You’re not different at all.”

  “Dara—”

  “Who started it?”

  “I don’t . . .”

  “It’s a simple question, Noam. Even you should be able to figure out the answer to this one. Who. Started. It?”

  Dara was practically luminous with rage, limbs quivering ever so slightly. And he was—god, but he was right to be; this was all Noam’s fault, Noam’s idiocy. His cheeks burned. Still, he owed Dara this much. He owed Dara the truth.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I was . . . I was really drunk, Dara; I couldn’t even see straight. I remember kissing him. That’s about it.”

  Dara stared at him like he still thought he could slide between the pages of Noam’s thoughts and read the truth there. “Did he tell you to sleep with him?”

  Noam knew what answer Dara wanted. Maybe not hoped for, but what answer Dara would find more palatable than the alternative. He even thought about lying. But he couldn’t. He’d done enough, hadn’t he?

  “I . . . don’t know. But I don’t think so. He . . .” God. “He wouldn’t have needed to tell me to do anything.”

  Dara’s mouth twisted, like he was going to say something else and then thought better of it. What came out was: “Fine. If you don’t remember who started it, perhaps you remember who continued it.”

  Noam wanted to die. “Me.”

  The anger was gone, bled out. In its absence Dara was pale and still, his eyes black iron. Noam hadn’t seen Dara wear this mask since . . . since before they had sex, when Dara still held him at arm’s length. Seeing Dara slip behind that façade once more was like being stabbed. It hurt. Badly.

  “I see,” Dara said. He crossed his arms, tapping his fingers against the opposite bicep. “I think you’d better go.”

  Noam stepped toward Dara again, reaching for him—hoping if he touched him, somehow, he could make Dara see . . . see what, exactly, he didn’t know, but it didn’t matter. Dara knocked Noam’s hands away with a quick stroke of his wrist.

  “Leave.”

  “I can explain—”

  “I don’t think you can.” Dara strode across the narrow room to open the door and glare at Noam through narrowed eyes. “I don’t even want to look at you. You need to leave.”

  Dara looked more than willing to enforce that using his fists.

  Noam felt sick, the kind of sickness that fermented in his marrow and poisoned his blood. “Okay. Okay.” He couldn’t meet Dara’s gaze as he slipped into the hall, though he passed close enough to smell the cigarette smoke clinging to Dara’s clothes. He turned, hoping to say something—I’m sorry, maybe, or Can I come back later, but Dara slammed the door in his face. A beat later, Noam felt the twist of a metal latch.

  He didn’t hear footsteps. Dara stood right there on the other side of the door. If Noam tried, perhaps he could have sensed the heat of Dara’s skin against his clothes, the movement of his blood. He could have used magic to unlock that door and shoulder his way back inside and make Dara listen.

  He did none of those things.

  Instead he went down the narrow stairs, caught the bus at the corner, and returned to Lehrer’s apartment. He made it back a scant five minutes before Lehrer arrived in his slim chancellor’s suit to kiss Noam’s temple and ask if Gisela had been by with the groceries, thankfully oblivious to where Noam had been. Noam begged off dinner pretending to have a headache and lay alone in the darkened bedroom with Dara’s words replaying themselves in his head, long past when Lehrer went to sleep himself. When the first gray light of dawn finally crept through the cracks between the blinds, Noam knew it was already too late to repair his mistakes. Whatever he and Dara had was broken now. And it was no one’s fault but his own.

  Noam dreamed he stood at the entrance of Dara’s bedroom. Not the barracks. And not the room as it was in the apartment now—barren of personality, empty of anything to suggest a boy had ever lived and grown up there.

  No. This room had an occupant. An IV pole stood next to the nightstand, its bag filled with a clear fluid. The curtains were drawn. A clock ticked on the wall, counting down the days.

  On the bed, a figure curled up beneath the covers. Dara’s black ha
ir flared against the white pillowcase. Even bundled up in blankets, it was clear he was too thin. Breakable.

  The IV line snaked down from the pole, vanishing under the duvet. Its contents kept Dara alive, but they also kept him powerless.

  Noam opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. Dara shifted, shivered, the duvet slipping off one shoulder; sweaty skin glinted in the dim light. He’s dying.

  He’s dying.

  It’s my fault.

  Someone was standing right behind him.

  “Dara,” Lehrer’s voice murmured in Noam’s ear, his breath hot on Noam’s nape. “It’s time to wake up now.”

  Noam lurched upright, his throat burning and someone’s hands gripping his arms, Lehrer’s hands—Lehrer, restraining him—

  “You’re okay—”

  “Don’t touch me,” Noam gasped, swatting at those arms and shoving at the mattress with both heels. “Don’t touch me!”

  “Jesus—okay, sorry.” The hands let go.

  Noam sucked in another agonized breath, and the room slid into focus. Not Lehrer’s room. Not Lehrer’s hands.

  Taye sat at the foot of Noam’s bed, eyes wide and gleaming in the darkness.

  Right. Noam wasn’t at Lehrer’s anymore—it was Thursday night. He was in the barracks. Lehrer was nowhere near him.

  He was fine.

  Taye had both hands twisted up in his pajama bottoms. “You were having a nightmare,” he said, like Noam hadn’t figured that out yet.

  Noam was shivering even though the heat was cranked up high. He scrubbed both hands over his face. “Yeah,” he said eventually. “Sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “Waking you up.” Noam’s hands dropped back into his lap. Taye hadn’t moved from his perch, was still watching Noam like he thought Noam might start screaming again any second now.

  “It’s no problem,” Taye said. “You . . . kind of do this a lot, actually. So I figured maybe I should try and help for once.”

  You do this a lot. As if Noam didn’t already want to sink into the floor and die of embarrassment. “How often?”

  “Um. Pretty much every night you’re in the barracks?”

  “Great.” Noam’s head tipped forward to rest against his palms. “Cool.”

  At least it was just Taye in the boys’ dormitory. There was no one else around to witness Noam thrashing and screaming in his bed—in Dara’s bed—every other night.

  Only now Noam was wondering how often this actually happened. If some nights Lehrer lay awake and watched Noam squirm and cringe away from unseen shadows. If Lehrer knew what those dreams were about.

  “I can get you some water or something,” Taye offered eventually.

  “No. I’m good. Thanks.” Noam made himself look up again. “Really.”

  A brief smile passed over Taye’s lips. “I had them a lot, too, when I first came here,” he said. “It’ll sound stupid. I mean . . . my parents are still alive and all. I don’t have anything to be upset about. But the red ward . . .”

  Noam still remembered the girl’s corpse lying next to him in that hospital room, her face locked in an eternal mask of pain. That was in his nightmares just as often as Dara. Just as often as Brennan with his brains splattered all over the wall.

  “I get it,” Noam said. “It’s a lot. Especially if you were a little kid.”

  “I don’t want to make you talk about it if you don’t want to,” Taye started, “but . . . he was my friend, too, you know.”

  “Dara.” Noam sighed. “Yeah. It’s just . . . I helped him get out into the quarantined zone. I don’t know if I told you that. So it was my fault he—”

  Died. Only Dara wasn’t dead. He was here, now. And Noam had ripped his heart right out of his chest.

  Noam wet his lips. “It was my fault he had to go through . . . all that.”

  If Noam had never gotten involved in the coup, Lehrer would never have needed to take Dara out of the picture. Dara would never have been locked up in that apartment. Dara would never have seen his future as a choice between suicide and a slower death out there, lost in the wilderness but free.

  “I used to imagine . . .” Noam swallowed against his raw throat. “I used to pretend he’d gotten better out in the QZ. That he was out there with all the stars, could see every constellation. Dara never seemed like the type who would like hiking, you know? But he told me he did. Once. Or that he wanted to try it, anyway. He said the only thing keeping him from packing up a bag and setting out on a trail for two weeks was the fact that he’d want to bring at least six or seven books, and they’d be too heavy to carry.”

  Noam laughed a little, the sound surprising him. Taye grinned too.

  “Shame he never told me that,” Taye said. “I could have made those books weigh next to nothing. Exponents, and all.”

  “You’re gonna have to teach me that trick someday,” Noam said.

  “Sure thing.” Taye paused a moment, drumming his thumbs against his knees. Then: “Dara really liked you, you know. He didn’t always act like it, but he did. Dara told me you were the most confusing person he’d ever met. Coming from him—”

  “That’s a compliment,” Noam finished and gave Taye a tiny smile. “Yeah.”

  Taye shifted back off Noam’s bed, getting to his feet. “I’ll let you sleep,” he said, crossing back to his own bunk.

  Noam waited until Taye was under the covers and curled up with his face to the wall before he pushed up and reached under his bed to dig out his satchel. He’d picked up a bottle of sleeping pills from the pharmacy a few months ago when the nightmares about Brennan got bad. He’d been taking them more and more often. And one pill wasn’t enough anymore. Hadn’t been for a while.

  Noam tipped four into his palm and swallowed them dry.

  He couldn’t keep this up forever. He knew that.

  But at least for tonight, it bought him a dreamless sleep.

  NATION OF CAROLINIA, County Court, Buncombe County

  In the matter of the adoption of

  Dara Shirazi ,

  a 4 year-old child assigned male sex at birth, by

  Calix Lehrer and

  [single parent adoption] , their spouse.

  I, Buncombe County Department of Child Welfare , do hereby consent to the adoption of Dara Shirazi , born in Asheville, Carolinia , on October 25, 2104 , to biological parents Nazreen Shirazi & Younes Shirazi , by adoptive parent(s) Calix Lehrer .

  My reason for giving this consent is for the best interests of the child .

  Dated at Asheville, Carolinia, this 4th day of February , CE 2108.

  (Attach seal of court) Buncombe County Dept. of Child Welfare

  Brent Michaels, Judge

  Cx Lehrer, Adoptive Parent

  Status of biological parents: Deceased

  Citizenship of biological parents: Carolinian

  Citizenship of child: Carolinian

  Note appended to record: Please advise that the child’s parents were witchings who died under suspicious circumstances at their home. Despite the adoption of the child, this remains an open investigation. Homicide has not been ruled out.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  DARA

  Given his track record, Dara thought, it wasn’t a surprise that he should end up here: draped over the bar in the pub below his apartment peeling the label off a bottle of bourbon, closer to unconscious than sober.

  The bartender had been giving him that look for the past hour or so, the look that said I’m thinking about cutting you off but simultaneously said I want you to suck my dick.

  Dara peeled another strip off the bottle label and poured himself a glass. An eighth glass, he was pretty sure. Or maybe eleventh.

  “You’re out of peanuts,” he said, lifting his voice so the bartender would hear him.

  “You ate them all.” The man was making someone a martini; he barely even glanced up.

  “That’s not the point.”

  Dara took a sip of whiskey. What was Noam d
oing right now?

  Probably also drinking whiskey. Probably an old fashioned, complete with imported bitters and a delicate curl of orange peel trapped beneath the ice.

  Noam didn’t know how to make old fashioneds. Someone else would’ve made it for him.

  Dara finished the rest of his glass in a single swallow.

  “What’s the point, then?” the bartender asked, humoring him.

  “The point,” Dara said, setting down the glass with a harsh click against wood, “is that I’m still hungry.”

  He tried to arch a single brow but wasn’t sure how well he managed it. His facial muscles felt slow and clumsy, awkward.

  God, had his tolerance really gotten that bad? He’d only been sober for six months. He should still be able to hold his liquor.

  To provide convergent evidence for such a hypothesis, Dara poured another drink and downed that one too.

  “Don’t you think you’ve had enough?”

  Wow, how had the bartender gotten all the way over here so fast? Dara narrowed his eyes at him, searching for signs of a witching teleport . . . teleportationist? Teleportpath?

  Whatever.

  “No,” Dara said, perhaps more aggressively than warranted.

  “I’m going to bring you a water,” the bartender said.

  “I hate water.”

  “Too bad.”

  The man even added a slice of lemon, for garnish. Pretentious, Noam’s voice said in Dara’s mind, and Dara suddenly wanted to throw up.

  He took the water and sipped it to push against the bile. The bartender watched with a steady gaze, hands braced against the edge of the bar. How long had Dara been here? There was only one other customer left, a sad old man at the far end nursing a dirty martini. He tried reaching into the bartender’s mind, but that only made him dizzy. These days telepathy was nothing more than a thought experiment.

  Sickness rolled through his gut, a steady sway inevitable as the tide. He couldn’t quite focus his eyes well enough to make out the details of the bartender’s face anymore. He was East Asian, with brown hair. Attractive? Maybe?