by Emme DeWitt
“Evangeline,” Aleks said softly. “I’m so sorry.”
I sprung out of my curled position, another punch of guilt causing my stomach to convulse. “I—”
“It’s okay,” Aleks said, shaking his head softly side to side. “Take your time. Just breathe.” He was crouched about where I had instructed him to retreat, staying on the far side of the mess on the floor. His posture reminded me of someone trying to coax a distressed animal into trusting them.
Another wave of guilt rolled through me.
“It’s my fault,” Aleks’ warm voice said, winding through the murky cloud of emotion swirling around me. “I pushed your boundaries too far. I am very, very sorry.”
“I should never,” I stressed aloud, “never do that to anyone.”
My body continued to tremble, but the tears slowed as I tried to put into words what I was feeling.
“You have every right to protect yourself,” Aleks said. “Whether it’s me or a stranger, whatever their intentions are, you have the right to do what you need to do to feel safe. Do you hear me?”
I shook my head back and forth.
“If I could just build better barriers, I wouldn’t have to put myself in those situations,” I said, more to myself than to Aleks. “I need to do better than that. I can’t be taken by surprise by anyone. I’m not safe.”
“Hey,” Aleks said, “that is not true.”
“Aleks, I could have made you do anything,” I whispered in horror and disgust. “If that’s not a monster, than I don’t know what is.”
Aleks reached toward me but stopped himself. The pool of black mist darkened around his ankles. Even without the full strength of my abilities, I could tell he was really angry. I would be, too, if someone had just taken control of my mind like that. Maybe I should be locked up if this is what I was capable of doing to people. It had seemed so unfair before, but it was looking more and more practical the more I realized I couldn’t control myself as well as I had thought I could.
I felt a light pressure on my ankle, and my eyes refocused to see Aleks standing in front of me. As I had spiraled down into my own thoughts, he must have approached me. I looked at him, slightly confused. Why would he want to be anywhere near me after what I had done to him?
Aleks tentatively took one of my hands in his, testing the boundaries of what was safe and what was not. A knife of anguish sliced through my gut.
Even Aleks was afraid of me now.
I was so spent, I didn’t even think about my barriers until it was too late. Our connection flared to life and the dark cloud dissipated once we shared the same common space. Aleks squeezed my hand lightly, drawing my attention to it.
Nothing bad happened.
The sky didn’t fall.
Aleks didn’t keel over dead.
I was so tired, I could barely manage to be relieved. As I stared at our hands, I felt a light brush on my cheek.
Aleks tucked my hair behind my ear. His thumb brushed the remaining moisture from my many guilty tears and held my face. His eyes searched for mine, waiting until we were locked back in once again.
“Evie,” he whispered, sending an excited chill down my spine. “I will do whatever necessary to protect you. From others. From yourself. From me.”
His hand squeezed mine again. Through our connection, I felt a surge of warmth. This was not the fire from last time but rather a more muted glow. I sighed out loud, allowing myself to sit in the warmth for as long as possible. Another tear escaped down my cheek, and I closed my eyes to try to concentrate. I needed to be vigilant so I wouldn’t slip up again.
Then, I felt a light kiss on my cheek where the trail of the tear had started. The warmth flared a little more strongly, but remained a neutral shine. It didn’t seem nearly as dangerous as before.
Aleks pulled me into a comforting embrace, and I buried my face in his chest. I clung to him as I let all the anguish and fear and guilt leak out in my tears. After a while, though, my tears dried up, and I was left holding onto Aleks, never wanting to let go.
“I don’t know what to do,” Aleks said, his voice muffled through the mostly closed door to my bathroom.
I had fallen asleep briefly after expending all my energy on crying and being beaten to death in an emotional hurricane. Aleks had carried me back to my room, even going so far as to pull the curtains down around the bed to give me further privacy.
The light from the bathroom glowed a vibrant orange against the deep red carpet, and I stared blankly at the strip of light as his words floated through my hollow mind.
“No, no, she’s fine now. Sleeping,” Aleks said to the person on the other end of the phone. His voice had woken me from my exhausted stupor. Little spikes of worry darted out from his dark aura, and all I could wish was for the darkness to just cooperate and keep everything on the other side of it. Aleks was usually one of the few people I didn’t have to manage so directly, but the closer we became, the more his cloudy aura seemed to open to me. As if I didn’t have enough other puzzle pieces to maneuver.
“What did I do?” Aleks repeated, a guilty pause speaking volumes for him. “What do you mean?”
You know what they mean.
“She fell apart as soon as she used her commander mode on me. I don’t know how else to explain it,” Aleks continued. “I don’t get it. If it was anyone else, they would use that power to their advantage widely and loosely. She reacted like…like her body was rejecting it.”
Aleks fell silent, but I could hear him fidgeting in the bathroom. The clank of various objects being picked up and sloppily set back down tinkled back through the cracked doorway as the voice continued.
“I guess that could make sense,” Aleks said. He sighed. “I just don’t know what to do to help her. She almost completely cracked. I don’t know how much longer she can handle both Elevations.”
The sliver of orange carpet grew larger, and I heard Aleks’ bare feet pad softly on the plush carpet toward me. I snapped my eyes shut, hoping he hadn’t seen the whites of my eyes in the darkness.
“We’re going to need to make a decision soon,” Aleks said to the other end of the line. “I’d really hate for us to lose the Queen. We can play without a few of the others, but not her. Without her, we’ve got virtually no chance.”
Aleks sighed.
“Yeah, agreed. I’ll keep my eye on her,” Aleks replied in finality. “We’ll talk again tomorrow.”
I felt the corner of the bed sink as Aleks sat at the foot of my bed.
My muscles tensed, trying not to show the movement had registered to my supposedly sleeping frame. I was sprawled facing slightly away from him, but somehow, he could tell I wasn’t fully asleep.
“Evangeline? Are you awake?” Aleks whispered across the bed. He was close enough that he reached out to lightly touch my ankle. I could feel his concern through the sheets and comforter. Or maybe I had just imagined it.
I stirred, feigning just waking up. I shifted my frame slightly toward him while pulling my ankle out of his reach. My hand draped over my eyes slightly, as if I were trying to clear my field of vision. It was quite the Oscar-worthy performance, if I could say so myself.
“Aleks?” I said, my voice naturally scratchy after a long crying session.
Icing on the cake.
I tried to analyze him through my hooded eyelids in the dim light. Beams of light from the bathroom fell far enough into the room for me to read his face quite clearly.
The phone call made me extremely uncomfortable and on edge. I wasn’t sure who I was talking to anymore. The Aleks who made lame references and kissed me like the world was ending or the Aleks who was the heir to a prominent Elevated family trying to stay one step ahead in the race for power among the supernaturally gifted.
I was not amused by being compared to a chess piece.
But Aleks’ face looked concerned. His eyebrows creased, forming a cute series of V’s on his forehead. His clear eyes darted over me, surveying me for any signs
of distress. Maybe both Aleks’ could exist in the same place.
I wished I could believe him. A bitter taste lingered in my mouth. As much as I wanted to rely on him, to trust in his words and intentions, I couldn’t quite reconcile in my mind who I thought I had come to know and the person who had been talking strategy on the phone mere feet away from the person stuck in the middle.
Even in the half-light of the room, I could make out the swirling mass of energy surrounding Aleks. As much as I wanted to rely on it for my barrier between our thoughts, the more I realized how complacent I had become. Before, I could rely on my own senses and intuition to know a person’s true intention. Sure, I had difficulty turning it off and separating myself from it when I needed to protect myself, but I was always one hundred percent sure of what I was dealing with. Beneath convincing facial expressions and body language, I could read the truth.
Not with Aleks. The clouded aura of loose Elevated energy blocked that flow of information. I had thought my other instincts were strong enough to determine his motives, but I was seriously beginning to doubt myself. I couldn’t trust anything that had happened between us.
It was tainted now.
I was just a chess piece after all.
“Did I wake you?” Aleks asked, small blips of worry leaking through both his barrier and mine.
“What’s going on?” I asked. I waited for the answer, knowing he wouldn’t interpret my question the same way I was asking it.
“You passed out in the kitchen, so I brought you up to your room. Are you feeling any better?” Aleks said.
“Do you feel it?” I asked. I waved my hand toward the swirling mass I was fairly certain only I could see. Offense didn’t quite suit me, but I was willing to try again.
“What?” Aleks said, looking around him like he had spilled something on his shirt.
“The energy,” I said. “Or whatever you want to call it.”
“The black stuff you mentioned before?” Aleks said. “No. Why?”
“It changes sometimes, you know,” I said, half to myself. The changes had been bothering me, but I’d been thinking about so many other things that I hadn’t thought through the possibilities of what Aleks’ aura changes could mean. At this moment, it seemed like the most important answer I needed to find. Maybe it would unlock everything else or at the very least give me an answer to the ball of questions that had become Aleks.
“It does?” Aleks replied, his tone overly cautious. “Like how?”
“The texture sometimes,” I said. “It used to be sticky and thick, like oil or tar. It’s more smoke-like now. Wispy. But the color darkens sometimes. I wonder if it’s your mood…”
My voice trailed off. The answer couldn’t be so simple as a mood ring.
“It used to be wilder,” I mumbled, finding the effort of explaining my infantile theory extremely draining. The words weren’t right. “Now, it behaves more when I’m around. Like a stray puppy that bites at first, but warms up to you later.” I started to chuckle, the laugh lasting only a few seconds until a wave of exhaustion derailed my amusement.
Suddenly, it was nearly impossible for me to keep my eyes open even to slits. In moments, Aleks disappeared in front of me. The blackness of sleep pulled me under, and I never did get an answer to my question.
Eli burst into my room and marched straight to my bed. Her anger had woken me from down the hall, so I was both mentally and physically prepared for the covers being ripped off from on top of me. Still hated it though.
“Your boyfriend is coming,” Eli seethed. “So much for the appointment rule. Real great boundary setting, by the way. Your tantrum was so worth it.”
“Technically,” I began, lounging back on my elbows, “the appointment rule was for Aleks’ uncle, not his lackeys.”
“This is your ten-minute warning,” Eli spat. “You’re lucky I even care to give you that much of a heads up.”
“Your disdain is showing,” I said, my words pointed and fierce. Eli’s body was shaking with agitation, but she remained sentry at the side of my bed. To make matters worse, Aleks and Niko appeared in the doorway.
“Any idea why your friend would be coming?” Aleks asked. His fingers were busy unrolling his shirtsleeves and buttoning the cuffs closed. “A bit unexpected.”
“I’m an empath, not a psychic,” I said, shrugging to no one in particular.
Niko coughed in the doorway, his hand covering his face quickly to mask his smirk. Eli growled at me from the edge of my bed, and I bristled at the vibration. It didn’t help that her normally well-tamed emotions were rocking against my barriers insistently.
I turned to Eli, gathering my legs underneath me.
“You need to keep your animosity to yourself,” I said, holding her gaze coolly.
She bristled again, but I was already walking across the mattress, leaping down from the foot of the bed. I snatched a few articles of clothing from my wardrobe and marched into the bathroom.
I poked my head back out to my audience.
“If anyone wants to figure out why Brendan’s here, maybe you should be there to greet him at the door and ask him yourself,” I said. “In the meantime, I’m going to get dressed.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Niko said, his eyes sliding to Aleks, whose fingers had frozen trying to button his non-dominant cuff hand.
Niko disappeared down the hall, and Eli dodged past Aleks in a whirl of anger and embarrassment. The energy of the room quieted substantially once she had left. I let out a breath and began to close the door to the bathroom.
Then the door bounced back. I looked down to see Aleks’ foot stuck in the way.
“Everything okay?” he asked, his eyes searching mine intently. The concerned V lines were back. I wasn’t going to fall for that again.
“Fine,” I said, waving my pile of clothes at him. “Mind if I clothe myself before entertaining visitors?”
“Okay,” Aleks said, his frown deepening. “Meet you downstairs.”
I nodded, shutting the door again. My fingers twisted the lock home with satisfaction.
That was not very nice, a voice floated in the back of my head.
Tiny prickles of guilt itched the base of my skull, and I shook my head to dislodge them. Even though I couldn’t quite figure out who was friend or foe these days, the little voice in my head knew better than to let me treat people like that. I had to be more careful with the words and attitudes I let loose. What I did carried much heavier weight than the average snide comment.
I sighed heavily into the bathroom and caught my reflection mid guilt trip.
“You need to get your shit together,” I lectured the mirror image. “Not everyone’s motives are pure. You just have to tread lightly until you figure out what’s going on. No need to throw tantrums.”
My slender finger poked out, emphasizing the reprimand. Upon seeing the puffy dark circles staring back at me, I could only sigh again. Ten minutes wouldn’t be enough time to do a decent enough cover-up job. Whatever Brendan was here for, he would have to deal with me in my natural state.
I had one leg in my pants when a soft knock came at the door.
“Tsaritsa,” Niko said through the door. “I’m ready whenever you are.”
“Just a moment, please,” I called back through the door, all my bite already expended from earlier. I wiggled into my pants, doing a couple stretching poses to make sure the painted on jeggings settled correctly over my hips. “Do I have time for eyeliner?”
“Doesn’t matter to me,” Niko replied. “You might need some war paint today.”
“Oh?” I said, pulling at my eyelids to swipe a quick smudge of black at the lash line. “What makes you say that?”
“Brendan is under the impression he is taking you with him today,” Niko said. “The pretense is your grandmother’s wake, but Aleksander is hesitant to believe that is his only motive.”
“Hmmmmm,” I replied, wiping some color back into my face. “I see.”
�
�Ready?”
I opened the door to find Niko leaning comfortably against the doorframe.
“Ah, that would be a yes,” Niko said. A brief smile flashed across his face, but was soon replaced by his typical brooding expression.
“Can I ask you a question?” I blurted out suddenly.
Niko didn’t strike me as someone who did anything he didn’t want to do. I had never heard the story of how he came to work with Aleks, but if it were anything like the brief glimpse I got from Eli, maybe I could believe in Aleks’ seemingly good intentions. Chess piece or no chess piece.
Niko nodded.
“How did you come to work for Aleks?” I asked. “Or with. Sorry.”
“And why do I stay?” Niko replied, pushing the question further into the territory I had been aiming for.
“Yeah, something like that,” I said, slight embarrassment coloring my cheeks to a deeper pink.
“Originally, I worked for one of Aleks’ cousins, rest his soul,” Niko said, making the sign of the cross across his broad chest. The movement surprised me, more for its sincerity than anything. “It was natural for me to serve under the next master after his passing.”
“Did you have a choice? Or was it one of those choices that isn’t really a choice?” I asked, daring to dig to the heart of the question. The word “master” had irked me.
“Aleksander released me from my contract. Under that condition, I was offered employment. All previous debts had been forgiven, so yes, I was free to choose,” Niko said. He bent over me a little from his perch against the frame. “And I can leave whenever I would like.”
“But you stick around,” I said, pulling my hair over one shoulder.
“I like having a purpose,” Niko said. “I like that the purpose is a positive one.”
“So you trust Aleks?”
“Yes,” Niko said. “With my life.”
I bit my lip, not wanting to press further. I had gotten my answer. Whether I chose to believe it would be completely up to me. Pushing past Niko, I grabbed a fur-trimmed hooded jacket from the wardrobe.