The Pixie Prince: An Affinities Novella (The Affinities)

by Kirsten Krueger

  “Calder Mardurus is troubled,” Colton said one October evening, his deep green eyes rising from his book to study his roommate.

  They sat at one of the rectangular tables along the perimeter, the library’s back wall of glass beside them giving way to the darkness of night. Calder had been tapping his pencil against a blank piece of paper until Colton had spoken, but now he glared.

  “Stop reading my life like a book. Obviously I’m troubled—we’ve been here for a freaking month and I don’t have a power yet.”

  “You do; it’s simply asleep within you—”

  “When did you start seeing the Otherworld?” Calder interrupted, mostly to rid his thoughts of the fact his creepy roommate had been implying for the past few weeks.

  “I have always had the Sight—”

  “Bullshit.” Aware that a few studying students now glowered at him, Calder leaned forward and hissed, “How did you get your Affinity?”

  Colton’s lips twitched for a moment before he said, “I was always an avid reader, and my Affinity chromosome gave me the ability to see fiction come to life. The Otherworld is how my imagination and others’ manifest in this world. My mind is a vessel of imagined things. Countless thoughts are buried in my brain, and they bud and grow before my eyes—”

  “So, it’s like an obscure form of mind reading?”

  Hostility overtook Colton’s previously enlightened expression. “No—”

  “That’s what it sounds like,” Calder insisted as he began to tap his pencil again. “Can you show me the Otherworld? Does your Affinity allow you to do that?”

  “Only I—”

  “Okay, yes, I know, you’re special, but have you ever tried showing these images to anyone else?”

  Colton scratched his fuzzy green hair, straining to think. “I…tried to show Demira a few months ago. All she saw was darkness.”

  Leaning back in his chair again, Calder scrutinized his roommate and paused his tapping to say, “You should practice showing people. It could become useful.”

  “It would be useful now,” Colton murmured, his vision focused on a point beyond Calder.

  “Why?” he asked carefully, unsure if it was safe to turn around.

  “Because then I could show you the other version of yourself sitting at that table over there.”

  Without hesitation, Calder pivoted to find there was, indeed, another Calder Mardurus sitting four tables down with the same overgrown hair, dark eyes, white t-shirt, and—and orange cargo pants.

  “Ruse Dispus,” Colton said at the same moment Calder realized who it was. “He fears Nero will notice him in another form, but as you, Nero’s girlfriend’s brother, he assumes you won’t be looked upon as prey.” Calder opened his mouth to ask where Nero was, but then he saw his hulking form stomping through the library, alone for once. “Alas, Nero is looking for you,” Colton said with wondrous excitement as he watched Nero approach the disguised Ruse.

  Clutching his pencil tightly, Calder observed from afar as the bully halted in front of Ruse’s table and began a gruff, unfriendly conversation with him.

  “Nero demands to know where Nixie is,” Colton narrated, “but you say you don’t know. Shockingly, he does not get angry. He simply folds his arms—”

  “I can see them,” Calder snapped under his breath. “Just tell me what they’re saying.”

  “He wants to know why you haven’t shown him your Affinity yet. You say you only show your Affinity to people who aren’t barbaric pigs—”

  “Shit” was the only word Calder blurted before he fumbled out of his chair and rushed down the line of tables. Nero’s arms, crossed over his chest, bulged, and if Calder weren’t Nixie’s brother, he probably would have punched him through the glass by now, because Ruse was still spewing insults.

  “Or pea-brained hippos, or mindless boars, or—ooh—raging rhinoceroses. That’s a good one…”

  Calder cleared his throat, averting Nero’s furious attention toward where he stood only a foot away. The ire on his face merged with bewilderment when he comprehended what he was seeing.

  “Dispus,” he growled, but he wasn’t looking at the boy in the chair; he was looking at Calder, who managed to keep his expression casual, even when anger reddened the bully’s skin.

  “Mardurus, actually, but I can see why you’re confused—”

  The fist slamming into Calder’s face was unlike anything he’d ever experienced. Sensation drained into nothing, leaving him momentarily numb as his body flew back and landed on the nearest table. The girls studying there screamed and ran as Calder sprawled on top of their books and papers, dazed and unfeeling, until pain trickled into his awareness. His nose felt like it was on fire and his brain felt like mush within his skull; every bone in his body ached.

  “You are…as dumb as you look,” Calder choked out, blood seeping into his mouth as he eased upright. The world spun around him, but he could still clearly distinguish the odium simmering off Nero as he said, “Dispus is a Physical; I’m wearing green pants.”

  Nero blinked, his eyes darting from Calder’s green cargo pants to Ruse’s orange pair. When the truth dawned on him, he didn’t punch Ruse the same way he’d punched Calder. Instead, he reached for one of the empty white chairs and lifted it in the air, intending to smash it on the boy’s head with blunt force.

  This time, Calder was enraged to the point that he probably would have defended Ruse if it meant being an inconvenience to Nero. Dispus probably deserved a beating for constantly irking the bully, but Calder would have stepped in for the shapeshifter, even with his bloody nose and his ringing ears, if someone else hadn’t pried the chair from Nero’s hands first.

  Without the chair counterbalancing his weight, the brute fell forward, catching himself on Ruse’s table before whirling around to snarl at whoever had unarmed him. When his eyes locked onto the chair still suspended in the air by an invisible force, his thick jaw dropped in astonishment.

  “What the…”

  “Corvis!” a feminine voice hissed as the librarian came stomping down the nearest aisle of books. One of her hands was extended, as if she were levitating the chair by sheer mental will, and her teal blue eyes, which matched her teal blue hair, were alight with agitation. When she finally stood beside Nero, the teen dwarfed her by over a foot, yet the short woman managed to widen his eyes.

  “I have told you not to make noise in the library!” she whisper-yelled. Though she was gentle and practically silent when lowering the chair back to the floor, Nero still winced.

  “So…you don’t care that he almost murdered me—only that he made noise?” Ruse questioned, his words loud enough that the librarian shushed him.

  “I don’t want to have to bring you to Mr. Periculy,” she said to Nero, her hands now trembling at her sides, “but he has likely seen what you’ve done, and he will expect me to bring you to him.”

  Nero swallowed as Calder hopped off the table and fought to steady himself.

  “The principal will be impressed to see you’ve gotten more creative with your violence,” Calder reckoned, meeting the bully’s eyes tantalizingly. “Before now, I thought you only knew how to punch. So innovative with the chair—”

  Nero lunged at Calder again, ready to prove the smaller boy’s words with another fist to the face, but the librarian threw out her hand, halting all movement in his big body.

  “Will you walk with me?” she asked, her voice inaudible to the other students who had begun to gather around the scene. “Or must I use my Affinity to bring you up to the principal?”

  The look Nero shot her was indecipherable to Calder, but the librarian must have dealt with him often enough to understand he was surrendering, for she relaxed her posture and led him across the library, of his own accord, toward the stairwell.

  As he wiped the blood from his mouth, Calder gave the spectating students a murderous glare that caused them to scram, leaving him and Ruse alone by the tables with Colton watching from a distance. Wh
en Calder met the shapeshifter’s eyes again, they were no longer dark; a warm bronze had lightened them, along with his hair, while his skin had morphed from Calder’s pallor to a tanned hue.

  “Is this what you really look like?” Calder asked.

  With a shrug, Ruse stood, now a few inches taller than the primary. “Roughly.”

  Sniffing and finding his nose was ripe with pain, Calder resumed an expression of animosity. “Don’t ever become me again.”

  “I promise I’ll never let you see me become you again—”

  “No, just…don’t.” Groaning, Calder combed his hair back from his eyes and realized that it was crusted with his own blood. “We might both be on Nero’s bad side, but we aren’t friends.”

  “So, that’s why you’ve been avoiding me this past month,” Ruse concluded with a quizzical raise of his eyebrows.

  “Along with the fact that Nero’s wrath follows you wherever you go,” Calder huffed, scowling down at his blood-covered forearm and t-shirt. “I don’t want any part of it, so leave me alone.”

  6

  Equals

  “Well, at least Dr. Pain did a good job of fixing it,” Nixie said, her face only inches from her brother’s as she examined his nose.

  Last night, when he and Colton had stumbled into the Residence Tower’s lounge, Calder’s nose had been crooked, swollen, and oozing blood, prompting his twin to rush him to the nurse’s office, where Jason Pane had healed the fracture with his Affinity. It wasn’t until after that Calder had explained how the injury had incurred. As the perpetrator’s now-official girlfriend, Nixie had not been pleased.

  “You can’t even tell it was broken,” she continued, squeezing the bridge of his nose between her thin fingers. “You’re lucky he didn’t kill you.”

  “Would you have broken up with him then?” Calder grumbled, glancing around at the empty third-floor corridor of the tower for any signs of the bully.

  “And be murdered along with you?” she clarified, her dark eyebrows perking up. Over the past month, the blue in them had magnified, along with her eyes and hair, which was organized in four short ponytails today. Calder had always found humor in her strange hairstyles, but now looking at her hair just reminded him she was evolving without him. “No, I would not break up with him if he murdered you. It would be more of a reason to stay with him—so I wouldn’t become a target. Are you telling me you wouldn’t do the same?”

  “Well, I would certainly never date Nero…”

  Rolling her eyes, she punched his arm. “You know what I mean.”

  Calder rubbed where she’d hit him and shot her a playful scowl that soon turned serious when she continued eyeing him inquisitively. “If someone murdered you, I wouldn’t rest until I held his or her head in my hands—and I wouldn’t care if I died immediately after.”

  Nixie’s expression sobered with that, but she quickly regained an air of nonchalance as she drawled, “You’re so sentimental, brother. I hope you won’t attack Fraco for giving me detention. Actually, I hope you will—that would be amusing.” With a few backward steps toward the spiral staircase, she winked at him and said, “See you after I’m done giving Fraco hell.”

  Calder was about to retort when a voice purred from behind him, “And I’ll see you now.”

  Eyebrows raised, he pivoted to find Demira lounging in the doorway of room 308, sporting a thin ivory sweater and jeans that matched the color of her braided hair. Over the past month, the turquoise hue of Demira’s features had brightened along with the improvement of her Affinity, making her freckles stand out against her dark skin and her eyes glow as they roved over him.

  “Please don’t do it on my bed,” Nixie groaned, her voice echoing through the building as she began her descent down the stairwell.

  “We won’t,” Demira assured her, even though her roommate had already disappeared. Licking her lips, she took a step toward Calder, and without even touching the chain on his neck, she twisted it tight and yanked him toward the staircase. “Come.”

  With the metal biting his flesh, he didn’t have a choice but to follow her down the steps to the lounge. “Am I your dog?” he joked when they landed on the ground floor. The lounge was fairly empty for a Saturday afternoon with only a few kids playing video games on one of the televisions and no sign of Nero or his gang.

  “I have you leashed like one, don’t I?” she mused, one finger over her shoulder to keep the invisible tether on his necklace. She often did this to lure him into her dormitory when Nixie was out with Nero, but it had been a while since they’d journeyed anywhere together. Now they were leaving the Residence Tower entirely to trek through the brisk October air toward the Naturals Building.

  “Are you going to feed me like one?” he questioned when they stepped through the door of the cafeteria. Avner Stromer and his friends were the only ones eating at the moment, and Calder did a fine job of ignoring their existence as he followed Demira toward the stairwell on the right side of the room.

  “Do you want a treat, Mardurus?” she taunted as they descended toward the basement. Her volume was low, but her voice still reverberated off the walls, settling in his ears with an ominous tinge.

  There was nothing frisky about his inflection when he asked, “Where are we going?”

  “To finish what you started,” she replied simply, jerking the chain to pull him into the basement corridor. It was lit as well as usual, but darkness spread through Calder’s core when his vision settled on the door at the end of the hall—the one Demira’s strides were directed toward.

  “I can give it a try,” he said as they neared the silver metal door, which she opened without touching. Before she passed through the threshold, she paused to glance back at him with the briefest hint of an emotion he’d never seen on her before. “For you,” he added, hoping he was reading her expression right—that she was gazing upon him with caring eyes.

  She didn’t answer, though; she merely smirked before tugging on that chain again, guiding him into his own version of hell.

  The lights on the high ceiling were even dimmer than the last time they’d been in here, but the pool was serene, casting reflections on the white walls. It was hard for Calder to look at water with that perspective, though—as peaceful and clean. Even standing ten feet away, it gave him a headache and made him hear noises—voices.

  “Well, it looks like you are useful,” Nero droned as he stepped out of the shadows. The black t-shirt he wore clung to his massive torso, and when Dave slinked out behind him, hand slick with clear acid, the brute appeared even more monstrous in comparison. It wasn’t either of them who sent a pang of anxiety through Calder, though; it was the third person Nero dragged along, his face wet with blood and his body half-limp.

  Even in a form he had never fully seen before, he knew it was Ruse. His hair was the same lusterless silver it had been the day Nero had pushed him down the stairs, and his eyes, slowly widening at the sight of the two new arrivals, matched in shade. Mostly, it was his apparel that gave him away: a t-shirt of Calder’s favorite band.

  Now, as the shapeshifter stared at the way Demira had Calder’s chain coiled around his neck, all he could say was, “Shit-sticks.”

  Calder didn’t have enough humor left in his bones to laugh, but he did have enough dignity not to run—not that he could have, anyway, since Demira’s hold was unyielding. Looking into her eyes now, he recognized that emotion not as fondness but pity. She pitied him because she knew she had led him down here for a beating from Nero—because she had agreed to bring him to the bully in order to prove her usefulness.

  Although he was certainly feeling petty enough to spit a slew of curses at her, he kept his lips sealed and met Nero’s harsh gaze with confidence.

  “Nixie’s sassy, little brother—”

  “I was born three minutes before her, actually,” Calder interrupted coolly.

  The simple statement set Nero into a fit of fury. “You little twat. Do you know what happened to me last
night after you provoked me?”

  “He provoked you,” Calder corrected, nodding his head toward Ruse as much as he could with the metal nipping at his neck. “My involvement in that conflict was accidental.”

  “Yeah, it was all my fault,” Ruse insisted through his bloody lips, “and since you already punished me, you can let him—”

  “Don’t defend me,” Calder hissed. “You’re making me look weak.”

  “Oh, sorry for trying to help you—”

  “Enough!” Nero barked, silencing them both. Demira jerked Calder’s chain, and he bit back the atrocities surfacing on his tongue. “You two are both a pain in my ass. You’ve been obnoxious since the day we met.” He nodded toward Ruse, who tilted his head in agreement. “And you—you’re practically a normie.” Calder bristled at the offensive term Nero often used for those without an Affinity. “Your existence shames your sister, and the fact that you hang around with our group makes us look pathetic. You need to go.”

  “Go? You want me to leave?” Calder clarified, hiding the enthusiasm sparking in his chest. “Well, you might have to bribe me, but I guess, if you can break me out of Periculand, I’d leave without a fight. I’ll even bring Dispus with me to rid you of his annoyingness.”

  “Sounds fair to me,” Ruse chimed in, earning a withering glance from Calder.

  “I’m not setting you two free,” Nero spat, his viciousness mixing with glee when his gaze landed on the pool to his right. “I’m gonna send you somewhere you’ll never come back from.”