by Etzoli
I didn’t like what I had to do to him though. Carl was my friend, and I was still hurting him right then. Of course, of course , it had to get worse.
“It didn’t seem like that,” he said, confused.
“I don’t know what else to say, Carl.” I sighed. “You met someone, but it wasn’t really me. I’m sorry.”
“You’re wrong.” I raised my eyebrows at his harsh tone. His eyes narrowed, and he tossed the branch aside. “ That was you. This?” He leaned in and picked up a little keychain on my bag. A cute plastic squirrel, something I won at the arcade a long time ago, and kept on every backpack I’d had since then. “This isn’t the real you. This is just some façade you’ve put up.” He sat back down again. “I’d bet anything you’re armed right now, yeah?”
I nodded slowly. Ever since we’d started talking, I’d actually let go of the knife, but it was still gently pressing into the small of my back as I leaned against the tree.
“Yeah, because that’s you. You’re still her, not Jenny. You’re Jennifer Demovi-Ralaev .” He said it with awe, almost as a whisper. Like it was something inspirational. “You’re a fucking legend, not some silly high school girl.”
“ Seka nara vack do you know my name?” I snarled, shocked. That name was private. Carl couldn’t possibly know it. Only the people in my suunsyl knew that name.
He recoiled in fear at my sudden shift in tone. “I—”
“Talk, masasak-la , or I’m gonna get violent.”
“Reynir told me,” he blurted.
“…And how the hell did Reynir Cellman know?”
Carl looked down at the forest floor. His voice got very quiet. “…Because he tortured it out of a Sylf. Her name was Ruvalei. I think.”
I stood up abruptly. The blanket fell away. My hand went straight to the knife. Not to attack Carl or anything, but I definitely wanted to stab something. “Ruvalei Dusylari?” I asked, forcing the syllables through my teeth. I already knew the answer though. There were very few Sylves that spoke enough Linguen to be worth torturing, and I knew all of them. I’d taught all of them.
“…Yes,” Carl answered nervously. “I’m sorry.”
I started pacing in front of the tree, deliberately crunching the leaves with each step. I needed to express my rage somehow, get some kind of outlet.
I hadn’t known where she went. We never found out what happened to her. Naeflin cried for days straight when she vanished. We both did. Naef’s sister was the kindest, sweetest person in the whole forest. Super timid, but when she came out of her shell, she was an amazing cook and the most beautiful singer you can imagine. She taught me everything about history and culture, especially the music. She wrote her own songs, too, and I’d learned them all.
She went missing not long before the first border raids, when my happy life had finally shattered.
“Did he kill her?” I asked, looking up at the sky, trying desperately to see her star—though I knew it was forever lost to me. It was a whole world away, and she’d died alone in the depths of a dungeon on a torture rack, far from the roots of the world.
“Yes.”
“ Syldavacka, ” I growled. I kicked the tree trunk, though it didn’t make me feel any better. “I’m glad that dektolal kapar-basal is dead. Blake should’ve killed him slower.”
“Wait, what?”
I stopped pacing. I’d just said something I really, really shouldn’t have. I turned in place, very slowly, to look at Carl. His face was an unreadable mask.
Well, guess we both learned something shocking and terrible today.
“Blake was there?” His voice was too calm. Unsettling.
Oh stars, don’t connect the dots. Don’t be logical and smart for once in your life, Carl. “Yeah. Blake and I were both there,” I said cautiously, fighting against my own emotions. I was still roiling from what I’d just learned, even as I tried to hide the secret from Carl.
“But you never made it into the throne room. And Matt should’ve known what was inside…” Carl’s face contorted. I braced myself. He’d figured it out. Matt should have known better. “He sent Blake in there to do.”
“Carl—”
“He knew. Matt fucking knew,” Carl muttered. I could hear the iron in his voice, the cold steel of Kalleddor. “Matt fucking sacrificed Blake.”
“We all knew,” I said weakly, but Carl was already up and moving.
“I can’t, Jen.” Carl’s voice was thick and pained, and I felt for him. I felt so much for him I could barely breathe. He turned to leave, and I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. “I just can’t.”
I watched him turn and walk away. I knew he was starting to cry and hiding it, and I could feel tears forming in my own eyes. I’d screwed up badly today. That conversation had gotten way out of control.
I fell back against the tree again and pulled the blanket up tight, ducking into my hood and closing my eyes as tears rolled down my cheeks. Memories of Naeflin, and Tethevallen, and Ruvalei, poor Ruvalei, took over my mind. I let them swallow me up, desperately shutting out the real world to hide in the other, if only for a little bit longer.
Chapter 8 — Matt
“It’s been a whole day. The Stokelson kid’s still not home?”
“The father promised he’d call.”
“Well, I think we got our first suspect, Portman.”
“That’s not news. The mother put us on to him already.”
“Why didn’t you mention him to the chief?”
“I don’t want to ruin his life preemptively, if it turns out he’s uninvolved. The chief’s taking this one personally. Anyway, we shouldn’t stay idle. I’ll head to the school. You should go back to the mother, ask to look at Blake’s computer for more leads.”
“What am I looking for?”
“Recent online chats, search history from the last couple days. Anything to fill out our timeline.”
Not having my own cell phone was getting to be a real problem.
I’d heard from a friend about an… incident , involving Jen in the halls between second and third period, but he didn’t know anything more than that. Without any way to get in touch with her, I had no way of knowing what was going on. Stress compounded in my head all day. I barely heard half of what my econ teacher was saying. My fears were growing by the hour, but there wasn’t anything I could do. I wasn’t likely to see Jen until late that night. We didn’t share a lunch time today, and she’d be gone when I got home. I wouldn’t see her until after I got back from work.
Work. A normal job, where I got paid to do something by someone else in charge. Part-time at a convenience store. I’d picked it up for some experience, plus the extra spending money. Mom trusted me with the money she brought in, but I never spent any of that on myself. Most of it was strictly for the family’s needs, and the rest went into a rainy day savings account. I only spent my own money on myself.
The job was painfully dull. Endless restocking, reorganizing, cleaning. No matter how many times I went through a section, it’d always be messed up again minutes after I walked away. Somehow, even when the store was empty. It felt like a ghost was deliberately screwing with me.
Not that I had to deal with ghosts anymore.
The story wasn’t particularly well trafficked, so I had a lot of downtime. In the past, that usually meant a lot of hanging out with whatever coworkers I had that afternoon. Screwing around, goofing off, making up games we could play that wouldn’t wreck the aisles. Whatever. Of course, whenever my coworker took a break, I’d lapse into boredom again. I used to be so terrible at being idle. I had to be doing something . Even if it wasn’t productive, even if it wasn’t enjoyable , so long as I was engaged I could feel at ease.
Calm, quiet moments were now precious gifts, every last one of them. It gave me time to think. Time to reflect. Time to plan. I’d learned quickly that if I didn’t slow down and consider everything, find the best approach I could, I’d end up with even more failures and regrets.
I didn’t want control. That’s not me. I’d love for someone else to be in charge. I’d prefer that. I hate the pressure. I hate what I’d been forced to do. The decisions I’ve had to make, with lives in the balance, but nobody else was going to do it. By chance, or by fate, or by sheer stubborn resilience, I’d ended up in charge of the whole rebellion.
I had so many things still weighing on my mind. Tasks unfinished, problems unsolved. There were a dozen advisors, policymakers, and members of the court awaiting my decisions. Kings, princes, vassals, dukes, lords, and a myriad of other titles I barely understood, all wanting meetings, jostling for favor. They’d decided that since I was such a great leader, I was obviously the best person to take the keys to the whole damn kingdom.
But that wasn’t me anymore. I’d put that part of my life away. It was wrapped in heavy blankets, stuffed into a chest and shoved under the nearest bed. I wasn’t going to worry about it anymore—until the world, cruel and unrelenting, reared its ugly head and decided I wasn’t quite off the hook yet.
I was blissfully unaware for most of my shift. Yes, I’d heard that Jen had done something, but I convinced myself it was something minor. She’d probably just stammered out some long phrase in Etoline, or maybe she’d tried to cast some spells without thinking. It was so instinctive for her, I could see it slipping out by accident. It’d be a simple misunderstanding, something I could paper over, something we could work on.
So it was that my coworker and I were talking about totally normal things, as if another crisis wasn’t right around the corner.
“Hey, Kyle.”
“Yeah?” Kyle looked up from over by the soda machine, where he was refilling a cup of ice. He came back, chomping through a couple cubes, and leaned against the counter. “What’s up?”
“How are you and Kersey doing?”
Kyle looked surprised. I couldn’t blame him. I normally didn’t care much about relationships or any of that. I used to be totally apathetic about the whole concept. It wasn’t worth the effort to keep up. Cyraveil had changed my perspective completely. Keeping up a network of people, and knowing how they all intertwined, was essential. By now, it was habit.
“Good, I guess?” He shrugged. “We hang out a lot. It’s… going well. Why?”
“To be honest,” I said, “you’re kind of my only friend with any dating experience. Got any tips?”
“Wait.” Kyle looked genuinely shocked. “ You’ve never asked a girl out?”
I laughed. “Not until yesterday.” Which wasn’t exactly true, but I drew a pretty solid line between dating a girl and courting a princess. Especially when the latter was all about diplomatic tensions, maintaining alliances, preventing wars and keeping our respective armies in line. There were so many lines of dominoes waiting to be knocked over, I had to tiptoe around every word, in public or in private.
Very different.
“Oh man,” Kyle grinned. “Who’s the lucky girl?”
“You won’t spread it around, right?” I asked. Not that Sara was anyone to be embarrassed by, but for Jen’s sake, I felt like avoiding any attention right now could only be a good thing.
“Hey man, you never told anybody about me and Kersey. I wouldn’t do that to you either.”
“Bit different though, what with your parents.”
“I guess.” Kyle shrugged again. He was a frequent shrugger. I’d become a lot more attentive to body language and subtle cues. Reading people was a valuable skill, and way more universal than one might expect.
I tried to brush it away. I wasn’t trying to get some kind of advantage over Kyle. I just wanted his advice. I needed some dating ideas from this century.
“Anyway, what did you want to ask?”
“Just need some ideas. It’s either you or the internet.”
“The internet’s better than you think,” said Kyle. I raised my eyebrows, and his cheeks shifted to an interesting tomato hue. “Or so I’ve heard,” he mumbled.
“I trust you more than the internet.”
“You’re crazy, but whatever. So, who’s the girl?”
“Do you know Sara Monaghan?”
Kyle frowned. “The junior?”
“Yeah.”
“Not really, no. She’s in my comp sci, but that’s about it. Doesn’t really talk that much. Kind of a loner.”
That didn’t really fit with what I knew about her, but maybe she was just way different when she was around Jen. Or just that class. I couldn’t be sure.
“You asked her out?” Kyle continued.
“Yeah. We’re going out tomorrow.”
Kyle clapped a hand on my back. “Nice. Good for you. You really seemed like you could use a break, man.”
“What?”
“I dunno. You’ve just been really quiet, dude. Scarin’ me. You okay?”
Our conversation was interrupted by the chime of the front door. A customer wandered in, and instantly I knew something was off. Something about the way he moved. His body language. I watched him carefully in the mirrors mounted up in the ceiling corners. He wandered to the back, out of sight of the register, and visibly relaxed as he seemingly passed out of our view.
The refrigerator door opened, and his hand flickered out. I saw the brief flash of a brown bottle. His hand retracted again into his heavy coat.
A second later, the door chimed again and he was gone, before either of us could react. He was sprinting headlong out the door, almost smashing into it as the automatic slider didn’t open fast enough for the speed he was moving at. I wasn’t sure what scared him off. Maybe he just felt like he already won.
Lucky for me, the security camera probably got a good shot of his face. I pulled out an asset loss sheet and dutifully recorded the time and date, a rough description, and what we’d lost.
“You’re actually filling that out?”
“…Yes?”
Kyle shrugged again, and I resisted the urge to wince. “You know they never actually bother with anything that cheap. Especially not on a homeless guy.”
“We still have to fill it out.” The pen went dry halfway down. I rattled it, but not a single drop of ink was left. “Got a pen?”
Kyle shook his head, amused, and tossed me a fresh one. “Man, even the universe is telling you not to bother.”
“The universe and I don’t get along anyway,” I grumbled aloud.
While I finished filling out the form, the door chimed again. Jacob, another friend of Kyle’s and a member of his D&D group, strolled in, glancing back over his shoulder. “Jesus, that guy was booking it. What did you two do to him?”
“Nothin’. He just stole some beer,” said Kyle, hopping up to sit on the counter.
Jacob started pouring himself a soda from the fountain. “Seriously? What an asshole.”
“Nah, he probably needs it more than we do.”
“Sure, whatever. Anyway, I had something else to tell you guys.”
Kyle and I both looked up. “You came here with some actual news? Stop the presses,” said Kyle, smirking. I rolled my eyes.
“Oh stuff it, grandma. You hear what happened during APUSH?”
My heart skipped a beat. I couldn’t quite remember what APUSH stood for, but Jacob had to be talking about school. Horrible images of anything Jen might have done flitted through my mind, accompanied by visions of white beds and padded cells.
I was paying very close attention to every single word Jacob said now. Every muscle tic in his face, every shift in tone. I wasn’t going to miss a thing.
“Uhh…” said Kyle, clearly as lost as I wished I were. He didn’t sound nearly as concerned as I felt. It irritated me. Completely irrational, but still, the idea that Kyle didn’t understand the weight of what Jacob might say next bothered me more than
I’d like to admit.
“It was nuts. Carl went psycho in the middle of class, ranted to Mr. Edwards in some crazy speech about war.”
I don’t think I can really convey the emotion that washed through me when I heard Carl’s name. Panic, fear, and images of Jen drained away—but at the same time, frustration and a creeping dread slithered in, taking just as tight a hold.
“What did he do, exactly?” I asked, trying to stay casual. After all, Carl and I barely knew each other.
“Oh, he went on and on about how shitty war is. Got pretty dark. He shot down what Edwards was saying with some pretty good stuff, actually. It was super messed up and seriously psycho, but it was still smart, you know?”
My breath got easier. Carl was just letting off steam. Dangerous steam, but nothing was boiling over yet. This was manageable. Jacob kept talking about what Carl said in painfully familiar detail, but I was already thinking miles ahead. I had to consider what to say to Carl when I saw him ntext. He was getting worse, that much was clear, but I could handle that.
Of course, the next bomb was about to drop.
“So that’s why he ditched?” asked Kyle.
It was like he’d just thrown a dagger into the relief growing in my brain, pinning it dead to the wall.
“Yeah, probably. He just stood up and walked out in the middle of class. Straight out the door without a word.”
I shook my head in despair. Carl was going to be the end of us.
***
They started talking about some video game after that, something coming out soon. I might have been interested if I could actually remember the game in question, but video games were long erased from my memory. I’d filled up all that space with too much information about a world I’d never see again—if I had anything to say about it.
I didn’t mind that the conversation left me behind though. It let me get back to what needed to be done. My thoughts were preoccupied with fears of what Carl might do next, of worrying what had happened to Jen that morning, and what my next move was. There was always a next move to take, a new plan to make. I’d prayed so many times I’d never have to decide someone else’s fate again, but it always fell back to me, one way or another.