Chapter Thirteen
Nerves creep up my spine as we stand in front of the looming castle, the green vines snaking into the crevices between the stones and choking the towers. The journey back was treacherous; Eric didn’t accommodate for me at all, trying to keep up with Cassia, who stormed ahead a few hours into the trip. I’m relieved to be on my own two feet when we reach the castle, but my body still buzzes from the speed at which we traveled.
Inside the foyer, Cassia appears at the top of the staircase leading down to the training center, her cheeks dark, lips twisted into a scowl. She doesn’t look at me as she passes, but Eric catches her arm.
“Let go of me, Eric,” she hisses and tears her arm away. “I don’t want to see you.” I watch her stomp through the wooden doors and slam them shut behind her, metal rings rattling in her departure.
“Great,” he says. “Just what we needed.”
“She’s just hurt.”
“Wow. Amazing observation.”
I choose not to rise to his temper, and instead move toward the staircase Cassia just came from, but Eric puts his hand on my arm.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Eric asks.
“I want to talk to Elias. He’s down there, isn’t he?” Eric doesn’t let go of my arm. “Can you let me go? I think I deserve some answers.” I turn from him before he can respond and descend the staircase, my insides twisting with nerves as I gently push the door open and step inside the training center. Only one of the lanterns is lit, so it takes me a few seconds to adjust to the darkness. But when I do, I spot Elias. Weapons lie on the floor in front of him. He’s midway through putting them back on the wall when he turns.
“Milena?” He straightens up, standing taller. “Cassia said you were coming with Eric, but I was afraid you’d run off.”
“You never did say how you found us. Cassia said she was covering our tracks.”
“I told you,”—the ghost of a smile crosses his face—“I can always find you.”
I step into the room, my shoes pattering against the padded floors. “Was Cassia okay?”
“She’s hurt I didn’t tell her. She thinks it means that I don’t trust her.” He sighs and reaches around to rub the back of his neck. “I have to ask . . . did I—are you—”
“I’m okay. I’m just shocked.”
“I know you must be mad I didn’t tell you.”
“I’m not. I understand why Cassia is, but I’m not mad. You don’t owe me anything.” I pause. “What are your gifts? Is it just the fire?”
“I can also put people to sleep.”
The first time I’d met him outside that kitchen shack, the day I tried to escape the castle, the night I held Darius’s limp body in my arms—each time consciousness slipped through my fingers when Elias looked at me. “It was you. All those times, it was you?”
He grimaces. “Would you believe me if I said no?”
“It’s a relief, actually.”
“A relief?”
I lean closer so that our arms touch, and smile. “I kept passing out around you. It definitely wasn’t helping me with my show these people you’re not weak plan.”
“I don’t think you’re weak.”
“Maybe you don’t know me, then.”
“I know you.” He looks at the floor, the scar on his jaw catching in the candlelight dancing on the wall. “When I first saw you, huddled against that crummy building with that hollower, I thought you were stupid. You put your life on the line for a hollower who didn’t even care about you. I didn’t understand why you would do that, and I pitied you for it. I thought you were all beauty and no brains.”
Heat creeps up my neck. It’s stupid—his statement was filled with insults—but nobody has called me beautiful before. “In hindsight, it was pretty stupid.”
“I understand it now. I understand you. You’re annoyingly impulsive, but you’re not stupid; you’re loyal, brave, and compassionate. You would’ve given your life for that hollower whether or not she deserved it.” He pauses, warm fingers tilting my chin so I’m forced to meet his eyes. “You’re many things, Milena, but weak isn’t one of them.”
Blood pounds in my ears as the space between us hums with energy. “I’m sorry for being so impulsive.”
“It’s your emotions; they control you.”
The moment in the library enters my head, when I’d been transparent with him and he’d completely shut down. “Is that such a bad thing?”
“In this world, it certainly won’t do you any favors. But it makes you you, and I wouldn’t change that for anything.”
Silence stretches between us, the only sound the creaking of the foundation behind him. His words feed a part of me that lay dormant for so long. The idea that someone could like me for me always seemed out of reach. I never concerned myself with the idea of love. In my village, none of the boys I was interested in would touch me with a ten-foot pole. I quickly got used to being avoided; I learned to shrug it off when people snickered about me in the shadows. But I can’t shrug this off.
“I never should have kissed you in the forest.”
His words are like a slap to the face. “What?”
“I’ve done bad things.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
He turns his head to look at me, lips pressed in a firm line. “At first, I thought you were my punishment for all the bad things I’ve done—someone I want but can never have. But I’ve made things worse. Now, I’m not the only one being punished.”
“I don’t care what you are, Elias. You could be a shifter, a wisper, or a human. It doesn’t change the way I feel about you.”
He turns so that I can’t see his face. “You don’t understand.”
“Then explain it to me. Tell me the truth.”
“The truth? If I could go back and erase what happened in the forest, I would.”
“Is that how you really feel?” My voice hangs limp in the air as I wait for him to answer, but he just stares at the ground. “Fine.”
“Milena, wait.”
I don’t listen. My walls of composure are crumbling, the pride that keeps them up slowly evaporating. I can’t fall apart in front of him, not again. I can’t let him see that side of me, and I need to get out of here fast if I want to avoid it. A hand wraps around my upper arm and spins me back around. I have no choice but to stare up at him. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You’re doing a really bad job of that.”
“I’m sorry, I’m not . . . I’m not good at this.”
“Your mood swings make my head spin,” I say. “One second, I think you feel the same way I do, and the next you’re saying stuff like that. How do you expect me to feel?”
“I do feel the same. I do care for you, Milena.”
“Then why would you say those things?” I ask. “Why would you say that you want to erase what happened?”
“I wanted to protect you from this.” He’s so close my thoughts trip over one another. “This torture of knowing that we can never be together.”
“You’re the only one pushing me away.”
He sighs and lets his hand fall away. “Do you remember when I said my mother killed my father?”
“You said it was an accident.”
“It was.”
“How did it happen?”
“My mother was an orphan who grew up thinking she was human; her parents died when she was a baby and Ana took her in. When she met my father, a shifter, she got pregnant. They were happy until. . . when she got upset once she . . .”
“She lit him on fire.”
“It ruined her. She wasn’t the same afterward and she killed herself. Ana raised me as her own and taught me everything I needed to know about being a wisper. I spent all of my childhood training to hide who I really was and learning from Eric how to mask myself as a shifter.”
All his life, he’s had to hide who he is. He’s lived with the burden that his mother killed his father, and the
knowledge that the same power runs through his veins. “I’m sorry that happened.”
“It was a long time ago.”
“That doesn’t make it any less painful. But that was your mother, Elias. That’s not you.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know you.” I swallow my hesitation and step closer. “I know you’d never hurt me.”
“I’m just like her. I’ve killed innocents before, and it wasn’t on purpose. I burned them like she did. I couldn’t control it and I couldn’t stop it. It just happened.”
“But that was so long ago, maybe if you learned how to—”
“Were you not there in the forest when I kissed you? Did you not see the way flames surrounded us?” He pulls away, creating distance between us. “I’ve been trying to learn for the past six years. There is no controlling it.”
“So what?” I stare at him from across the room, hopelessness stabbing at my chest. “Are wispers just supposed to be alone forever?”
“Wispers are immune to other wispers’ powers. That’s why the race died out so easily—it wasn’t safe to interbreed.” I want to tell him that I don’t care, that I’ve never felt like this and I don’t know how to stop it, but I can’t. “I didn’t mean to care about you.
Not like this.”
My vision is glassy. “That’s it then? You won’t even try?”
“It’s because I care about you that I won’t.”
He faces the wall. I hold myself as if I can somehow keep all the broken parts of us together. When Elias held me in the forest and said he felt the same way that I did, I felt like I could fly. But it didn’t last long—nothing good ever does.
“I’m leaving to visit the elders tonight,” he says. “Please stay until I get back.”
“If the hollowers—”
“There’s a permanent ban on leaving the village.” He walks to the door. “They won’t risk coming in. People will be safe.”
My chest stings. I want to be around him. I want to talk to him and know more about him. But being around him with the knowledge that nothing will ever happen between us is more torture than not being around him at all. “When will you be back?”
“A couple of days, maybe.”
“Be careful.” I blink back tears. Elias is slipping through my fingers and all I can do is stand here and let him.
“Good-bye, Milena.” He steps out of the training center and leaves me in a screaming silence. I want to chase after him and beg him to stay, but I stay rooted in place and stare at the ground. I don’t follow him because deep down, I know he’s right.
~
I don’t see Elias before he leaves; I’m not even sure if I want to. Instead, I launch knives at the mannequins and practice the endurance course. My body burns with adrenaline, but no matter how much energy I exert, the ice in my chest doesn’t thaw.
I can’t remember the last night I felt properly rested. Ever since I left the village, my schedule has been all over the place. But even now, in my sleep-deprived state, energy thrums through my body. I need to devise a plan. It’s futile staying here and just waiting for the hollowers to attack. And while Elias might find something in his travels, I refuse to sit around and do nothing. I owe it to the people here to try and figure out a solution. So after a quick bath, I wander the halls of the castle to find Eric. He sits at the desk in Elias’s office with a stack of papers in front of him and his chin perched in his hand, looking up at me when I step inside. “Elias has already left.”
“I’m not here for Elias.” I move to the chair opposite him. “I’m here to talk about Charles.”
“I’m busy right now.”
“We had a deal.”
He stares at me a few moments before pushing the papers to one side. “Fine. You want to talk to him, right?”
“Something like that. I just need answers, and he’s the only one who has them. Charles is convinced he needs me to complete the sacrifice, but I can’t figure out why.”
“You think he’d tell you even if you did talk to him?” he asks.
“It’s too dangerous to go to their village, and not worth it.”
“What if we try to do what they keep doing and ambush them?”
He raises an eyebrow. “You want to kill your old friends?”
“No. We don’t have to kill them, just hold them hostage or something.”
He laughs. “And then what? Charles tells you what you want to know and you just let them go?”
“What would you suggest?”
“I would kill them all.”
“Are you serious?” I stare at him, slack jawed, as if waiting for him to laugh. “We don’t have to stoop to their level, you know.
Killing people would make us just as bad as them.”
“They’re not people. You really have no idea how any of this stuff works, do you?”
“Unlike you, I grew up learning how to cut vegetables, not throats.”
“I pity you.”
“Don’t you want to know why they want me too? Why don’t any of you seem to care anymore?” He looks up, eyes cold. And for a moment, something flickers across his face. Because it’s true; it feels like ever since we got back from the mountains, our investigation halted. And now, I’m the only one who seems to really care. It doesn’t make any sense. “Eric?”
He opens his mouth to respond but is interrupted when the door is roughly shoved open. Cassia stands there, eyes wide, breath ragged. “I think you guys should see this.”
“What’s wrong?”
“See for yourself.”
She hurries out, and I’m right on her heels, Eric not far behind. We skid through the halls, coming to a stop at the top of the staircase that leads down to the foyer. Cassia leans over the edge, waiting for some sort of reaction. I can’t yet see past the banister but voices rise up from below. I take a deep breath and step forward, peering over the staircase and down to the front doors. Two guards restrain a squirming prisoner.
She’s almost unrecognizable, mud in her hair and torn fragments of her dress revealing scratched and bloody skin. She struggles in their hold, her legs thrashing as her eyes shoot around the foyer. They meet mine and an invisible force hammers violently against my back.
“Millie.” Her voice is no more than a whisper as she falls still in the guard’s arms, a strangled sob escaping her throat. “Millie! ”
I inhale sharply and stagger backward until I hit the wall, my childhood flashing against my eyes—red hair and tear-stained, freckled cheeks fill my vision. Flo.
~
“We should kill her and leave her at the gates of her village, send a message to the hollowers that we’re not afraid of them.”
“Don’t be stupid, Eric.” Cassia paces in front of us. “She might be useful.”
Eric scoffs. “You don’t want to make them pay?”
“You know Elias wouldn’t want that.”
“Elias isn’t here.”
“Exactly. Which means I’m in charge. We’re not killing her, not yet.”
Their voices fade into the background as I stare at the ground, mind rattling with the haunting sound of Flo calling to me from the castle foyer. She sounded so desperate and hopeful, but all her words did was twist the knife of betrayal deeper. The moment she started screeching, Cassia ordered the guards to take her to the prisons. Flo let them take her, my name echoing through the halls as she was dragged away. I could only stare after her in shock—I barely even registered it when Cassia took my arm and dragged me into the office with Eric.
“Milena?”
I look up. “What?”
Eric and Cassia are both staring at me expectantly, but Cassia opens her mouth. “I asked how you knew her. She called you Millie.”
“She is— was— my best friend. My only friend.”
Their bickering turns to silence as they watch me. I keep my eyes on the ground.
“Don’t talk to her,” Cassia says.
“What?”
“It could be a trap. Maybe Charles sent her on purpose to shake you up.”
I hesitate. “She might be able to help.”
“If she cared about you, she wouldn’t have been your friend knowing that they planned to kill you.” Eric looks at me pointedly. “I agree with Cassia, you shouldn’t talk to her.”
I know he’s right, but it doesn’t make it hurt less. The others never pretended to like me, but there was never one doubt in my mind that my friendship with Flo was real. But just like everyone else, she watched as Charles nearly killed me and she didn’t do anything to stop it.
“What should we do, then?” Cassia asks. “Should I talk to her?” I stand, scraping the chair against the wood and capturing their attention. “Milena, don’t talk to her.”
“I’m going to bed.”
Cassia and Eric exchange glances. “Are you sure?” she asks.
“I’m really tired.”
Before either of them can comment, I turn on my heel and make a quick escape out the door, heading up to my bedroom with a vendetta. It wasn’t a complete lie. I am going to my bedroom, but even though my head pounds and my knees feel like jelly, I don’t plan on sleeping.
Seeing Flo hurt more than I expected it to but hurt isn’t the only emotion I feel. Anger floods through my body like wildfire. I’m mad that she’s here, that she watched Charles try to kill me, that she had the audacity to call me Millie. But worst of all, she pretended to be my friend. And I’m not going to let her get away with it.
~
After waiting an hour in my bedroom, and then creeping past the office to make sure Eric and Cassia aren’t still in there arguing, I sneak through the halls in search of the prison cells. It takes me three different attempts, turning down the wrong hall each time, before I reach them.
The prison cells can barely be called rooms. The roof is so low I’m convinced someone as tall as Elias would hit his head against it, and the interior path is a stark contrast to the lavish castle. The walls are a grimy green, the stones covered in moss and condensation. There are no windows; the only light comes from the lanterns strung up outside of each cell. A pungent smell of steel and blood forces me to breathe through my mouth. All of the cells I wander past are empty, my feet padding on the wet stones as water drips against the floor.
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