by Kira Stüssy
He stood up briskly and hustled to the door like he could not get there fast enough, “Well, I’m glad you’re alright. I’ll see you tomorrow.” And he was gone.
*
Later that night, I made my way down the twisting spiral staircase in search of some food.
Ash brought dinner up to me like he always did but instead of sticking around to provide entertainment, he simply dropped off the silver platter and left. With everything that had occurred, sleep was not really an option. So, as I laid in bed staring at the ceiling for hours on end, my stomach eventually started to growl, a low rumbling sound. Soon enough, the edgy growl evolved into a horrendous roar.
Therefore, I was forced to creep down the dark hallways, trying to ignore the pressing fear in the back of my mind whenever a shadow flickered or a floorboard creaked. I pulled the thin scarf that wrapped around my shoulders tighter to my body. I licked my salty lips, the fresh blood filling my mouth. My lip biting had reached a new level of excessive since my arrival in Nostos.
I entered the kitchen area silently and scoured the counter tops for any food that hadn’t been stored away. But of course, the palace staff proved to be impeccable at upkeep and the counters were spotless. I sighed and stepped toward one of the many cupboards, my stomach on the verge of howling.
I reached for the handle and…
“What are you doing?”
I yelped and spun around to see Caspian walk into the kitchen, “You scared me.”
“Sorry. I heard you coming down the stairs. Is everything alright?”
“You heard me?” So much for being silent. “I can’t sleep, thought I would eat something.”
He nodded understandingly and approached the cupboard, swinging the wooden door open to reveal containers upon containers of canned fruit. He snatched a jar of orange substance and motioned for me to sit down with him at the bar. I plopped down on the stool beside him and dug into the orange stuff once he popped the lid. The fruit didn’t taste like normal oranges, they were tarter, but no doubt delicious. I checked the label reading, Soles Fructum.
We sat in quiet for a few moments before I needed to break it, “I’m getting tired of all this not knowing.”
“I think it’s just one of those things that will come little by little. It sort of seems to be how these people work.”
“Yeah, well I don’t like it.”
He sighed and stretched his arms above his head tiredly, “What I do know, is that no matter what, we got each other, you and me. Right?”
I grinned and stuck another candied soles fructum into my mouth, “Always.”
*
Caspian trudged up the university steps, his stomach pleasantly full from lunch, with Mira slouching at his side. He dared not ask her about the problem when she when she seemed to be traveling into a depressed mood. And by the way her and Ash bickered that morning, she was most certainly in a mood. Caspian, with a small grin, thought back to earlier that morning. He had still been rubbing sleep from his eyes downstairs in the foyer when he heard a loud crash sound from the top of the spiral staircase.
Mira’s screeching voice followed, “What is your problem?”
Caspian heard her door fling open and Ash’s relaxed tone drift down the stairwell, “You mean other than being way too attractive for my own good?”
“You’re an idiot.”
“An idiot who has personally delivered every meal to you since you got here just because you are too stubborn to sit at the table like everyone else!”
“I never asked you to do that!”
“Well don’t be expecting special treatment from now on. Happy?”
With an irritated huff, Ash marched down the stairs, hands shoved in his pockets, with Mira following a considerable distance behind him.
Caspian would never admit it aloud, but with all of the time those two had been spending together, he had begun to wonder if something more than friendship might be developing there. Not that Ash was a bad guy, he just couldn’t be called good. Nostos remained completely new to them and in Caspian’s eyes, snuggling up to magical creatures felt peculiar, even if he happened to be one himself.
Only yesterday the girl’s limp form had been found on the front steps of the school. As he walked up those same stairs, he was not all that surprised to find that all of the blood had been cleaned up, not a single drop in sight. Even with the lack of gore visible, Caspian could not get the image of the black-haired girl out of his mind. Her blood curdling shrieks echoed in his ears. He shuddered unwillingly.
Today, they would actually be attending the All Kingdom class, since yesterday the session had been so rudely interrupted by a gory attempted murder. Just another typical day in the magical realm of Nostos.
“We don’t know anything about Nostos.” Caspian muttered to Erion as they walked through the front door.
“They won’t expect you to.”
“Won’t people start to wonder why I don’t fit a specific Knowledge?” Mira questioned, her lips puckering with frustration. Caspian knew she must be dissecting, once again, the strange matter of her unknown powers.
Ash responded, “Well, you are from the human world, so people might just figure something about that makes you different. And, as you have pointed out, just one glance could tell a fool that there’s something odd about you.”
“Nice.” She growled.
A flare of anger lit inside Caspian as he glared at Ash, “Watch it.”
All he got was an eye roll and a shallow smirk.
He walked beside Mira while she scowled ahead. Eager to lighten the mood he said, “Hope we don’t see anyone be brutally injured today.”
She clearly wasn’t listening to him, “This is so ridiculous. Everything here is. I’m some sort of freak, I get it, and I’m tired of everyone pointing it out.” Caspian knew that by ‘everyone’ she meant Ash. A small flare of irritation rose in his chest. Mira had been constantly complaining about her lack of self discovery since their arrival in Nostos. Caspian had loyally stayed quiet and listened to her ranting. But she had yet to shut up and listen to him and his confusions, because, by golly, he had them. He pushed the unusual anger away, baffled at himself for being so selfish. Mira had a lot more to be wondering about than he did, he was aware of his Knowledge while she still wandered around in the dark trying to figure hers out. It took a few minutes but he eventually excused the feeling away and out of sight.
They filed into the classroom of stone walls and elaborate paintings. Caspian spotted two empty chairs side by side in the front row and yanked Mira along with him to snatch them before they were taken. He ended up on the end, Mira beside him next to a Wielder boy with white blond hair. Caspian shifted in his seat to talk to Mira only to see that the Wielder had already started up a conversation with her. Uncomfortable and awkward, he began to face the front again when he spotted the midnight hair and bright green eyes that stole his breath every time he saw them.
Laurel Wilmot.
She rushed in, her long hair windswept across her pale face. She scrambled into an open seat next to Ash in the very back, her normally icy gaze lightening at the sight of him. Caspian’s heart sank, although he wished it wouldn’t. Of course she was fond of Ash, BFF’s with her brother and he had that whole bad boy vibe going for him. According to Mira, girls liked that sort of thing. She had tried to force him into a leather jacket last year saying the girls at school would think it was hot but he slunk out of it after the first ten seconds and hurried back into his tee shirt. But now, as he watched Laurel laugh at something Ash said, he considered rethinking the leather jacket aversion and wondered if you could even buy that sort of thing in Nostos.
*
“Roman.”
I had just sat down at one of the tables next to Caspian when the voice startled me. I jumped a couple feet and looked to my right and met the brilliant blue eyes of a Wielder boy with hair like morning sunlight. A dark mark on his wrist caught my attention; a black tattoo with an eye-li
ke symbol. Below it read: dominium ex evocates mittebant. It was the same tattoo that I had seen on Rezza’s wrist back in Lincoln City. I remembered something about Wielders earning Ink but I had no idea what it meant.
I blinked once before regaining my composure. “Sorry, what?”
“Roman. The name is Roman Castell. And you’re the human, right? Mira?”
“Well…”
“I’m only kidding,” he chuckled and I joined him nervously, desperately wishing I did not have to have this conversation with a Wielder. I barely understood the duality of my new life yet, it dictated every move I made. What do I do? What if he finds out? What if he already has? Could he tell that I had some of the same sort of blood running through my veins? He cocked his head to the side with squinted eyes, “You and your brother are the Elementals from the human world, everyone knows who you guys are.”
“Oh, gotcha.”
“Nostos must be pretty different from where you came from.”
“You could say that.”
He pursed his lips and studied me further, “You don’t really seem like a typical Elemental.”
Awh Crap…
“Well, it’s…uh…because…”
But he held up his hand, stopping me mid-ramble, “Hey, no judging. What do I know about Elementals anyway?”
He leaned over me and started having a conversation with Caspian. They were laughing about something but I tuned them out, the teacher had just walked in.
The woman slunk into the room like a feline, wrapped in a hooded dark robe. When she lowered the hood, she revealed a mysteriously beautiful face. Her skin pale as snow and her eyes a dull red. Long, chocolate hair framed her face, contrasting greatly with the pallor of her skin.
Her voice made of whispers, like wind rustling the leaves of a tree in the fall, fluttered through the rows of desks, “Hello, class. We will continue our last discussion on Shades. We already spoke of their abnormal strength, speed, and reflexes. What else is enhanced about Shades?”
It was Erion who answered, “Other than their creepiness, their senses are amped up.”
“Correct. And why are their eyes red? Anyone?” Nobody answered, but the Shades all glanced at each other and grinned.
Avery, the Seer girl in the back of the class, responded confidently, “It’s due to the diet. Shades must drink blood to survive, not a lot, but they must feed at least once per week. Their bodies are designed to drink the blood of a lesser creature called humans. This is why Shades can Transport between dimensions, it is necessary for survival.”
“Excellent! Today we will be discussing the bite of a Shade. Who knows what happens when a Shade drinks a human’s blood and then kills them?”
Roman beside me blurted a response, “That human becomes a Shade.”
I blinked in disbelief.
“Right, but only if that human is killed within twenty-four hours of the bite. Shades can be Born, which is when Shades reproduce, or they can be humans who were Turned.”
The more I learned about Shades, the more I thought they sounded like vampires. I glanced back at the Shades in the class and caught the smirks they all wore. One girl with red eyes saw me staring and smiled, but instead of normal teeth, two extra long canines glistened back at me menacingly.
I gulped.
*
That evening, Ash sat, with his head in his hands, in the silvery light of his dark room.
In his mind’s eye, he could see the stark black hair of the girl on the university steps. He could picture the crimson blood that poured from her multiple scratches and her screams still sounded crisply in his memories. A few days ago, once the class had been dismissed and the entire Elemental faction of the Legion arrived, Ash and Erion had to inform their superiors that the girl lying injured before them was the same girl they had witnessed be taken by the Hartrainian Wielder during their previous Scouting trip.
Their advisers simply listened without judging and seemed to accept the fact that the boys had done close to nothing when the girl was captured. But Ash’s wrenching gut told him better. If he had just flown a tad faster, hesitated a second less, or knocked Erion out before taking off, the girl might have been saved. Or maybe if he could just get a handle on his powers.
Ash lifted his head and glared back at his black Knowledge. He focused the constant burning sensation that always smoldered inside him. He tried to harness the blaze within him into a single point of energy. When he looked down, his hands were engulfed in flickering orange flames. His eyes glazed over as he stared down at his little parlor trick.
Even just accomplishing such a simple task as lighting his hands on fire had taken years to master. The first year he had tried to contain his Knowledge, he set more things on fire than he cared to admit. He concentrated again on the flames that licked his hands and mentally pictured the fire being subdued and pushed back into his body.
The inferno that had just been swarming his hand extinguished, and where most people’s skin would have been blackened and charred, his was left completely unscathed. So much power but he couldn’t safely use any of it.
I should have been able to do something. It’s all my fault.
*
The next day, the Seer teacher returned and told us all about her Kingdom, “Seers are mentalists. We See things beyond what is happening in the present, specifically the future. But Seers also read emotions and sense thoughts. We are able to communicate with one another mentally, handy for private conversations.”
Throughout the entire lesson, my head ached terribly and my vision was fuzzy, colors and shapes floating in front of my sight became dizzying. My eyesight spun horribly more and more lately. I spent that majority of the class focusing my attention on not throwing up.
Class concluded, thankfully. I stood up and gathered my things. I looked back to where Ash and Erion sat, they were tripping people as they walked by and I blew a loose hair out of my eyes, trying to mask my frustration towards their immaturity. It took all of my willpower to stop checking on them and to ignore the fact that Ash looked just as devilishly handsome as he always does. Caspian and Roman chatted animatedly. I saw Caspian nod and leave the room. The two of them had really hit it off. I was glad Caspian had found a friend, even if I had thus far failed in that category. I prepared to walk after him when someone stopped me by laying a hand on my arm.
I glanced back and met the blue eyes of Roman.
“Oh, hey.”
“Hi,” he flashed his set of perfect white teeth at me, forcing me to acknowledge how good looking he was, and continued, “I was wondering if you had any dinner plans for tonight?”
“Oh.” This took me aback. Aside from our first encounter, Roman and I had really only spoken between his conversations with Caspian. Not to mention, we had only just met. “Isn’t it against the rules? You know, for the Kingdoms to, uh, mingle?”
“Mingle?” He laughed heartily, his good-natured smile beaming back at me, “Yes, of course. I did not mean it like that. I just thought you could use a friend. It must be hard, being thrown here without a clue. I just thought, if I were you, I would want a friendly face around.”
I thought about letting him down, telling him that I was busy and it couldn’t work out tonight. But then I remembered the lonely meal I had eaten last night since Ash refused to bring up dinner after our fight yesterday. I reconsidered. “You know what? No, I don’t have a single plan tonight. I’m free.” I spoke louder than necessary and reveled when Ash looked over at us.
“Great! See you at seven then?”
“Yup,” I muttered as he strode away. I checked the back of the classroom again but Ash and Erion had left and I was all alone in the room, “Totally free.”
Chapter 11
I still had a few hours until I had to meet Roman but I couldn’t be alone for another second.
The clock announced that I had only been in my room for half an hour. But with my high anxiety and constant fidgeting, it felt much, much longer. I could
n’t even place the source of my stress because every time I mapped it out in my head, it seemed to be coming from about a million different places: my unclear Knowledge, cloudy father figure, the girl on the university steps, and for whatever reason, Ash. I hated that he no longer came to keep me company after school or brought up my dinners. I sort of missed his political talk and even his rude jabs about the puffiness of my hair. I hated the fact that he was angry with me. I tried to write more lyrics in my notebook but the words just would not form in my mind and every note I hummed came out off tune.
So, being the needy baby I am, I stomped down the spiral staircase and quietly walked down the hall to the correct door. I pounded my knuckles on the wood, ignoring the sharp pain that greeted me and waited impatiently as the footsteps from within drew closer to the door.
The tenant’s confused face peered out at me, “Mira, you okay?”
“Can we talk?”
“Sure?” Caspian let the door swing open far enough so I could enter. I stepped inside and looked around. I hadn’t visited Caspian in his room that often, preferring instead to stay upstairs for the majority of my time. The walls had been painted a pretty green-blue color since the last time I had seen them, but otherwise it was essentially the more masculine version of my own room, complete with a bathroom, sofa, wardrobe, you name it.
I planted myself on his sofa, sinking into the plush cushions. He slowly walked over and joined me; I could practically feel the hesitant tension rolling off him in waves. I sighed and leaned back. He did the same.
“Is Iris in her room?”
“Yeah, you should see it. The palace staff had it decked out in pink everything. It looks like it’s made of cotton candy.”
I laughed half-heartedly.
Finally, I said, “What’s going on, Cas?”
“Uh…”
“I mean, our dad is some sort of evil psycho, Xavier or whatever, a girl has just been mauled by an enemy magical country, and nobody can seem to figure out what the heck is wrong with me!”