by Rowan Rook
This had all been a mistake. He was twenty-four, now. His twenty-fifth birthday was in just a few months. He should have stayed at the Academy and lived out what remained of his life in peace, as Amaranth, the Human scientist. He should have focused on finishing the Not—perhaps he still could have. He should have enjoyed his simple days...with Shakaya.
But he'd been greedy. He hadn't been satisfied. In his last-minute quest for accomplishment, for an impossible redemption, he'd lost everything. He'd die alone. He'd die alone bearing a name that belonged to a boy who should have already died long ago.
Why...? Why did it have to turn out like this? Why now, at the end?
Jeriko reached out to touch his shoulder.
The Lyrum startled and flinched away, staring at the Human through wide eyes. What would they do to him, now that they knew?
Images flickered through his head. The Human bolting him down. Prodding him with needles. Filling him with wires. Forcing him to perform Translation until his body stopped working. Muting his mind with drugs. Throwing him in a cage and twisting the lock.
...Now where might he have gotten those ideas? He swallowed, struggling to calm his pounding pulse. He felt naked beneath the Human's gaze, as if he'd been stripped and nailed to the floor.
"Amaranth..." Jeriko tried, his tone careful and slow.
"My name is Anson," he corrected dully, finally managing to move his tongue. Amaranth had just been brutally murdered. He died the moment he'd introduced himself to Shakaya with his old name. Not once since his escape twelve years ago had he thought he'd ever become Anson Anwell again, but as his everything kept shaking and his heart kept hammering, it became all the more undeniable that Amaranth was dead.
Jeriko blinked, confusion passing over his face, before he seemed to understand. "Anson...you don't need to be afraid. We already knew." His eyes drifted toward the window. "Well, everyone but the unfortunate exception of Ms. Johanne."
Anson couldn't bring himself to answer. His body wouldn't stop trembling. No matter what he did, it wouldn't stop.
Jeriko frowned. "I'm sorry. That was cruel. It...wasn't supposed to happen. Del... As the leader of our Lyrum division, Del unfortunately has a lot of power. She does what she pleases."
Sorry? The Butterfly had stolen everything he'd worked toward for the last ten years, and he was sorry? Anson didn't possess the energy for anger. It took all he had to raise his eyes. "How?" Each word scratched his dry throat, "How did you know?"
Jeriko was quiet for a while. "We've been watching you for a long time. Longer than I'm sure you'd care to know." He hesitated, licking his lips. "In fact, that's why we decided to start this process when we did. We waited as long as we could, always looking for the best opportunity, but you're already twenty-four. We could wait no longer."
Anson was silent with a terrified sort of awe, his shaking fingers forming fists. "Why? Why me? What's so important about me?"
According to Shakaya's confession, she had, indeed, been ordered to befriend him. Why on Auratessa would anyone force her to do such a thing? Why would anyone even spare him a second glance?
Jeriko looked down at him, his green eyes solemn. "We did it all because you are the one who will rewrite Auratessa."
Chains tightened around Anson's chest with every word the Butterfly said. He gawked up at Jeriko. "You all want the same thing, don't you? So why does it have to be me? I don't even have much longer to live..." The admission sucked the air from his lungs. He'd wrested with that fact in his head countless times, but something about saying it aloud made it real. A whimper came out when he tried to continue.
Jeriko waited patiently, only standing there with that simple sympathy on his face.
Anson managed a deep breath. "Why not have one of your own people collect the Inkwells? Why couldn't you all have left me be?"
"I don't believe I'm at liberty to explain." Jeriko looked away. "You're special. Let's leave it at that."
"Special?" Anson laughed. "I'm just a hypocrite." He couldn't help but smile bitterly at the echoes of his sister's words. "I'm sick of this. All of this. Give me straight answers, or I'm finished here."
Jeriko said nothing.
Where on Auratessa would he go if he abandoned the Butterfly? If he abandoned the disaster that he and Shakaya had embarked on together? There was no way in Hell he could return to Riksharre, and even if he could, he wouldn't. But was the Academy an option now, either? No. Definitely not.
His resolve fading, he pressed a different wound. "Shakaya said..." He hesitated. He wanted to ask—he needed to ask—but he was also afraid of the answer. "She used the term 'Editor.' What does that mean?"
Jeriko sighed. Just as Anson gave up on an explanation, the Butterfly spoke, "Anyone could claim the Inkwells. Not just anyone could use them. You can." His gaze found Anson's. "In fact, you're the only one. There isn't anyone else."
Anson's heart shuddered with a strange, uneasy thud. Absurd. This was all absurd. "What am I? What is the Editor?"
Jeriko offered him an apologetic smile, his green eyes softening. "I'm sorry. I've told you all that I can. If you want to know more, you'll have to talk to my Overseer, herself."
"Your Overseer...?" He blinked. "The Human Overseer?"
"Aydel, of course, is the Overseer of our Lyrum division. Sylan—I believe you've met him—is her Vice Overseer." A grin escaped onto Jeriko's face. "I'm the Vice Overseer of the Human division, myself. You can puzzle out who my Overseer is, then, can't you?"
To his own surprise, Anson realized that he could. Hair rose on the nape of his neck. "Rickard?"
Judging from Shakaya's words, he'd been manipulated by the Butterfly from the moment Rickard invited him into the Academy. At least now...at least he finally knew why the Head Scientist had wanted him there. He was the Editor, after all, and his boss had been one of the Butterflies—an Overseer, at that.
Jeriko nodded.
"How can that be?" Anson shook his head. "The Butterfly is a partnership of Humans and Lyrum. How could someone like Rickard, who mistreats Lyrum so terribly, rise so far into power?"
Jeriko let out a bitter laugh. "My skin color, for one. I'm not alone in thinking the Overseer should have been me, but it was never going to happen. The Butterfly might strive for unity between Humans and Lyrum, but it still has its own prejudices."
Anson paled. "I'm sorry."
"This society is shit in more ways than one." Jeriko let out a tired sigh. "Still, I'm sure you won't argue with me when I say that Rickard is a fantastic liar. Her charisma serves her well, and she has promised the Lyrum division that she will betray the Academy when the time comes. I doubt she anticipated the disastrous amount of casualties that came from Riksharre's rebels, but that was why she didn't warn anyone else about the attack on the labs—to prove her loyalty to the Butterfly. She has to at least pretend to be on our side." He scoffed, "Although she certainly didn't mind the humiliation the disaster caused for Verox, either."
...Rickard had truly promised to betray the Academy? Anson's first instinct was to insist that was impossible, but Rickard had seemed to care so little when her department and its research had literally gone up in flames.
Jeriko gave him a smile soaked in irony. "The power she holds over the Academy, and the power the Academy holds over the rest of Auratessa, is also seen as an asset. She has prevented the Academy's specimen program from expanding nearly as much as it did under the Head Scientist before her, and has actually done what she can to prevent Verox and his soldiers from discovering Riksharre for as long as possible. Hell, she was the one who told us which train car was bound for the south—and who made sure you were onboard. Her Rune is quite the asset, too." He let out another bitter laugh. "I don't think she expected Del to crash the train car, though. She was furious. I'm sure she's furious again, right about now. For people of such importance, those two are always at each other's throats."
The Head Scientist, the person who'd controlled so much of his life, had bee
n in league with the sister he'd thought was dead. She'd let him believe that she believed his lies, when all along, he was the one deceived. She must have snickered after all of his attempts to conceal the Not's true nature. Shame's fangs sunk deeper into his stomach.
In the end, did Rickard truly care about anything, about anyone? If she'd never been loyal to the Academy, was she truly loyal to the Butterfly? Anson studied a memory of her smug face. Promises or not, he had a hard time believing the Head Scientist had any Lyrum's best interest at heart. According to Shakaya, Rickard had once been a member of the Sentinel. "How do you know Rickard won't betray the Butterfly, too?"
Jeriko shrugged. "All I know is she hates this world even more than you do."
Anson scoffed, "Why should she feel that way? She's Human, and she has far more power than anyone should. She should be the last person wishing for change."
A smirk snuck its way up Jeriko's cheeks. "How sure are you that Rickard is Human?"
Anson blinked before his eyes narrowed. "You can't be serious."
Jeriko waited, that smirk still on his face.
Anson retraced Rickard's image in his head, sorting through everything he knew about the woman he'd called his boss. No. Rickard had to be Human. After all, her hair was gray and her skin showed signs of aging. No Lyrum lived that long. "She's not a Lyrum."
"No." Amusement, likely meant to stay hidden, lit up Jeriko's face. "But she is an Otherling."
Anson's tongue tangled up any reply he might have managed.
Despite what both species liked to believe, Humans and Lyrum were, in fact, genetically similar enough to jointly reproduce. At least, to an extent. Such a conception resulted in a child called an Otherling, and such a child would surely live a miserable life. Others, as they were often called, were ostracized from the societies of their parent species for their dual lineage, and faced disgust from both sides. There was no place they were welcome. They often disguised themselves as whatever species they most resembled, and for this reason, the exact population of Others remained unknown.
Due to their rarity, science still knew little about them. Their features, however, varied from individual to individual. Some were physically strong, some weren't. Some had Translation, some didn't. Some lived long lives, others died young. The most common configuration seemed to be someone with the body of a frail Human, weak Translation, and a lifespan of about forty to fifty years. They couldn't bear children of their own, however, which was why they weren't considered a species in their own right. Instead, society saw them as outcasts, flukes, accidents. Otherlings were as close as anything in Auratessa came to a union between the species, yet these unfortunate children often faced the worst of both Humans and Lyrum.
Still, Anson had ached to study them, even if the Human blood in their veins made that illegal. To think, Rickard had been an Other, all along... Like him, she'd carried Lyrum blood through the Academy's labs. He almost laughed.
"Only a few of us know this particular secret," Jeriko added, "so don't go telling everyone I told you. Especially not the rest of the Human division. Most of its members still think its name is accurate. Rickard feeds them from her palm."
"Does Shakaya know?" She was perhaps the worst victim of Rickard's lies. He'd always suspected that Rickard had pushed her to befriend him—it was obvious, really—but to think that she'd been blatantly ordered to serve as his bodyguard... A hollow pang washed through him.
"She does."
Anson's eyes widened. Impossible. How could Shakaya know that Rickard wasn't Human and still obey her?
"Rickard convinced Shakaya that she hates what she is," Jeriko added, as if reading Anson's mind. "She told her that she wants to be Human—that her own lineage is one of the reasons she wants to lead the Butterfly in rewriting Auratessa. She convinced her that her partial Humanity means she has a 'Human heart.'"
For Shakaya to believe something like that...she must have been desperate. It was no wonder she reacted with such disgust each time someone called Rickard her mother.
"What happened to Shakaya? Where is she?" he finally asked. He'd wondered for a while, but hadn't been able to force such difficult questions to form on his tongue. "Has she really been a Butterfly since she was just a child?"
"Who knows where she is. When she wants to be, she's almost as good at hiding as Del." Jeriko paused for another sigh. "And yes, she has. Rickard pushed her into it when she was barely old enough to understand what she was signing up for. But she...was always something of a special case. She would never willingly work with a Lyrum, much less a whole division of them." He offered Anson a sad smile. "Rickard came up with more lies, just for her. Her promise to Shakaya is nearly the opposite of her promise to the rest of us. She convinced her that she plans to betray the Lyrum division—that she'll use the Editor to erase Lyrum from the world, giving Shakaya her revenge and rewriting herself as a Human. Shakaya will be furious with her now, that's for sure."
Anson stared blankly at the bedsheets. "Rickard won't hurt her, will she?" Since the Overseer gave Shakaya the role she'd abandoned, it stood to reason that she was going to be furious, too. With lies upon lies, what was a person like Rickard capable of?
Jeriko didn't answer right away. He dug into his pockets and fetched what looked like a cigar. He lit it with a match and pushed open the window with a moaning creak. "I'm sure she will."
Alarm tingled on Anson's spine.
"She'd threaten to have Shakaya expelled from both the Academy and the Butterfly all the time. It was how she stopped her from fighting back. I'm sure Shakaya wants nothing more to do with the Butterfly, and the main reason she wanted to stay at the Academy...was you." Jeriko sucked in a deep swig of smoke and let it out in a long breath. "Maybe now...maybe now she'll hurt Rickard, too."
Jeriko's eyes watched the sea beyond the glass. "Rickard sculpted her into what she is. Her parents had passed on their hatred, sure, but when Rickard took her in, there was still a light in her. She was only a scared child. Rickard drained her until there was nothing but that hatred left. She turned her into her personal killing machine. That poor girl..."
Anson's fingernails dug into his sheets.
"She really did care about you, you know."
Anson thought about the Shakaya he'd met ten years ago, and then about the one he knew now. He thought about yesterday, her Butterfly badge held out in her trembling fingers like a talisman. He thought about the tenderness of her touch in the Hazza inn. He thought about the way she'd looked at him, then. She wouldn't have gone that far for an act. He could believe that their relationship had begun as nothing more, but not that it had ended that way.
In some twisted sense, he understood. She had cared for him. In fact, she'd loved him. She would never admit that now because it would threaten her hatred. If she acknowledged that she could truly care for one, it would contradict the monsters she'd made of Lyrum in her head, and she would have to face her own emptiness, her own guilt. To her, the hatred was what mattered most. It was why she woke up in the morning. Whoever said that love was always stronger than hate was a fool.
Anson closed his eyes as cold loss crawled through him. "I know." His heart thudded, shallow and hollow. "I cared about her, too."
Ƹ̴Ӂ̴Ʒ
"Aydel..." Rickard hissed, the name roiling on her tongue. She reached for an accusation, a reprimand, but what Aydel had done was so ludicrous she couldn't find any words worthy of it. "Aydel, what have you—"
"What I felt was best." Aydel stood by the door in Rickard's private room aboard the ship, her arms crossed and her eyes bright, a sickening smile plastered across her face, oh so pleased with herself. "And you can't argue that. I'm an Overseer, same as you. We're equals."
As if, Rickard thought, not unlike she had so many times before as she pretended to cooperate with Verox, biting down on her tongue. But Aydel was different. She wasn't just incompetent—she was an active liability. If the Butterfly failed, it would be because of her.
&n
bsp; "Equals," Rickard echoed, holding in the explosion. "Exactly. The affairs of the Editor affect us both. You had no right to interfere the way you did."
Aydel's lips creeped higher up her cheeks, as if she were trying not to laugh. "Not so. I was well within my rights as an Overseer. You could have done what I did, sure. You simply chose not to." Her smile didn't budge, but her nails dug into the sleeves of her cloak. She might have been standing with her arms crossed to conceal her shaking. "I needed that taste of revenge, and oh, was it sweet."
Liar, Rickard bit back. When Aydel smiled so wide, it meant she wasn't happy, at all.
"Consider yourself lucky that you didn't." What Aydel may have intended as a chuckle came out as a sigh. Red flushed her cheeks. Her eyes shifted toward the window, hiding tears, perhaps.
Rickard's teeth grit. "Lucky? I may well be the least fortunate person on Auratessa."
This time, Aydel did let out a snort. "I'd bet I could beat you at that, too."
You haven't beat me at anything, despite your best efforts.
"Let's take the emotions out of it." Rickard held up her hands in what wasn't quite a surrender. "All I'm asking is that you don't do anything that might jeopardize our opportunity with this Editor. We've been preparing for years. We can't waste the only chance we've got." Rickard swallowed. "After all, we likely don't have much time left, you and I."
Aydel's eyes shifted back to the Rickard, narrowed. "And thank the Author for that."
The two Overseers stared at each other for a while.
"As the Human—"
Aydel laughed.
"—Overseer, I hope to have the Lyrum Division's full cooperation, but if you're going to keep sabotaging our efforts with such careless—"
Aydel whirled on her. "Let's get one thing straight. You don't control my division. You don't get to decide what we do and don't do. I was voted the Overseer because my Lyrum trust me. For good reason, too. I have the Editor—my brother—beneath my thumb. What I did wasn't just for me. Someone needed to bring him back to reality. Now that he knows he has no home to return to—that the security you built for him is gone—he has no choice but to stay with us. And he will. He's stubborn, desperate, alone. I've got him where we need him."