“If I don’t end up in jail again, I’ll probably open up a tattoo studio here in Periculand,” Hastings said, the faintest tinge of optimism seeping into his voice. “I noticed they don’t have one.”
“Oh,” Eliana blurted, her gloominess popping like one of Calder’s water orbs. “I… You like tattoos?”
He shrugged, his long hair shifting as his shoulders moved. “Not necessarily, but I’m the sketchy kid who grew up in jail—the one everyone’s secretly afraid of. They’re all expecting me to get into some shady profession.”
“Tattoos aren’t shady,” she said, her lips inching upward as she removed her hands from his.
His surprise was evident as she yanked on the collar of her t-shirt and pulled it down to expose her bare shoulder, nearly as pale as the fabric surrounding it. Against it was a short thread of seemingly random black dots that formed what could have been a constellation over her shoulder blade—a tattoo. Astonished, Hastings blinked and leaned closer to study it better.
“It was illegal,” Eliana said, covering her shoulder with her shirt again before others could begin to gawk. “To get the tattoo, I mean. Zeela and I got them together before she was taken here. I overheard my parents saying she would have to go, and…I wasn’t sure I’d ever get to see her again, so we both got these tattoos dotted in Braille—except they’re flat, not bumpy. We both learned Braille when we were young, since she used to be blind—sorta. Her tattoo says SEE, and mine says LISTEN.”
Hastings’s lips twitched, as though he wanted to smile but the movement was foreign. His shoulders had relaxed, and he wore an expression of fascination rather than irritation. “Guess I don’t know you as well as I thought I did, either. You never seemed the tattoo type.”
Her smirk was coy as pink rose in her cheeks. “If…you actually do want to open a tattoo studio, I’d…I’d do it with you. I like drawing, you know… But you shouldn’t do something just because it’s what everyone expects you to do. What do you really want to do?”
His expression became somber again as he fiddled with his hands. “I know what pain feels like—excruciating pain. I want to take that pain away for people—physically and mentally. Even if I could just heal one person, that would be enough for me, but I can’t. I…” He inhaled, his voice choppy and shaky for the first time since Eliana had met him. I can burst people’s blood vessels, he thought to her, the words flowing so quickly through her mind that she almost didn’t catch them. I could just look at you right now and force your veins to explode. I could kill you—or anyone—and I have killed people. In juvie, I killed two boys—on purpose. They murdered my friend, the mind reader. They beat him to death just because he was an Affinity, and I snapped.
Eliana closed her eyes, willing herself to remain calm. The agony on Hastings’s face as he spoke to her through his thoughts was enough to shred her insides. She’d experienced others’ pain before and felt their deepest regrets, but this felt so personal coming from Hastings. Although they’d only known each other for a month, he was the first person she’d ever resonated with so strongly—except Zeela, perhaps. His outward passiveness and inward turmoil were so familiar to her, but this was a whole new level of anguish—one she couldn’t quite comprehend.
“I’m…so sorry,” she said, choking on the words as they spilled out. Her eyes were open now, and she watched as he leaned even closer to her, his whisper full of feverish desperation.
“I don’t feel guilty about it. I don’t feel bad about killing those kids—not even now. I enjoyed it, Eliana. I’m…a monster. I’m a murderer. My Affinity is a curse I shouldn’t have. When I was young, I had frequent aneurysms, my blood vessels bulging and weakening in my brain. Some of them hemorrhaged—popped—and I should have died, but instead…my body adapted and healed and I stopped having them, and then…I started giving them to other people. I… When I was six, I…” He paused, taking in a shaky breath and rubbing his forehead beneath his messy hair. Perspiration beaded on his sandy skin, and his thin body shook where he sat. “My…my mother was all I had. My father left her before I was born, and she had to take care of me—deal with all of my health issues alone. I loved her, but…but one day, I got angry with her and—and…”
And I killed her.
The air emptied from Eliana’s lungs, making her feel as hollow as the expression on Hastings’s face. Water glassed his eyes, but they were blank and ghostly as they stared past her, as though the memory was flashing in his mind. After a moment, she realized, to her terror, the scene of his mother’s death was playing in his brain, and in his unguarded and despaired state, he was unintentionally allowing Eliana to witness it, as well.
The image was indistinct and hazy, but Hastings’s anger was red and blaring. His mother stood before him, beautiful even in her horror—a horror the young boy didn’t recognize until it was too late and the life had already left her dark eyes and her body had crumpled to the floor.
The irrational anger then subsided into an even stronger emotion of sorrow; the weight of it was so crushing that Eliana fell against the back of her chair as though Tray Stark had just dropped his pile of books on her. It was forced empathy, and she felt as though she’d just unintentionally murdered someone she loved—Zeela, maybe—but Hastings hadn’t meant it to be cruel to her. He hadn’t meant for her to see it at all, she realized, as she stared at him through a veil of stinging tears.
“You…” he began numbly, his glazed eyes protruding with consternation.
“I—I’m sorry,” she stuttered, a soft cry in her throat as she spoke. She tried to swallow down the ache that resided there, but it wouldn’t budge. This was all so mentally defeating—the fact that Hastings could burst blood vessels and that he’d done it to his mother. If she’d done that to anyone, especially her family, there was no way she would have been able to move on. She would have wanted to die.
“No, I’m sorry,” he insisted, swallowing as he closed his eyes. “I didn’t…want you to see that. I should have been more careful…”
A tear slipped from Eliana’s eye and she hastily wiped it away before he or anyone else in the library could see. People had already been staring at them enough over the past few days, and she didn’t want to give them a reason to start more rumors, nor did she want them to see her vulnerability.
“I understand now,” she said, her voice cracking. After coughing quietly, she added, “I understand why you didn’t want to tell me.”
Hastings nodded, his eyes open but gazing out the window instead of at her. “I don’t understand why you’re still sitting here.”
“There are secrets—tragedies, mistakes—that we shouldn’t have to bear alone.” Her voice was firm, even though her eyes were bleary. “I know you didn’t do it purposely. You were just a child—”
“It’s no excuse—”
“No, it’s not, but it does make it different than if you were to do it now.”
His eyes met hers, a wave of heartache flashing briefly across his features when he registered her grief. “It wouldn’t be an accident now. It wouldn’t have been an accident if I’d killed the acid kid on Friday night, and that’s why I’ve been so frustrated—so cold and distant. Angor and I have been…working on it, and I should have control over my Affinity by now. But…when I saw Dave hurt you, I almost felt like…like he was hurting my mom the way I had, and I exploded with self-hatred directed at him. It’s not that I think of you in a motherly way,” he amended with the quickest shimmer of humor in his eyes, “but…I care about you.”
“I care about you, too,” she whispered, her eyes still wet as she smiled at him. “It seems…silly, since we’ve known each other for such a short time, but you’re the only person I consider a real friend here. You’re the first real friend I’ve had in a while, actually…”
“You know I’m not lying when I say I feel the same,” he replied, his tone more serene than it had been in all of her time knowing him. “Solitary confinement isn’t the most popular place
to make friends.”
A candid laugh escaped her throat, and she had to brush another tear from her cheek. She should have been embarrassed, she thought, to cry in front of Hastings, but something about the way he looked at her made her feel it was okay to cry—that it was okay to feel emotions that were her own and not others’. He was a killer, cursed with an Affinity for destruction, but somehow he was her closest friend, and she wouldn’t have wanted him to be any different.
26
Unfathomable Pasts
“I know you have weapons, Mustard. Just give me one.”
Sitting cross-legged on her bed with a textbook in her lap, Lavisa lifted her dark yellow eyes to the doorway where Adara leaned, arms crossed purposefully. Over a week had passed since the Wackos had broken in, but Adara’s forearms were still covered in slowly-peeling scabs that she’d done her best to wield as sympathy-provoking tools. Unfortunately, Lavisa was immovable.
“Why?” she asked, staring at the other girl with indifference.
“I want to kill Calder Mardurus,” Adara replied, as though it were a fact from science class. “I don’t know if you noticed, but he tried to drown me in training last Monday.”
“Were you asking for it?”
“Oh, she was. Literally,” a voice said from behind, and when Adara whipped her head around, she was enraged to see the Pixie Prince standing in the corridor only a foot from her. A smug smirk was plastered on his lips, and she noted rather sourly that his bruises had faded from his arms and the scars on his cheeks had healed into faint lines. Like Adara, he wore his white t-shirt and green cargo pants, though his feet were bare, indicating he’d just padded across the hall from his room after hearing Adara’s voice echoing through the third floor. “She said, ‘Drown me because I’m an idiot who doesn’t take death seriously.’”
“Sounds accurate,” Lavisa noted from within the room, her attention fixed again on her reading. Adara ignored her and instead spun to face her enemy.
“I was trying to do you a favor,” Adara said scathingly. “I should have reminded myself that I hate you just as much as I hate Nero—my mistake.”
“So, what—now I’m your nemesis?” he derided. “Are you going to play childish pranks and try to start duels with me?”
“Obviously. I’ve been passive for a week, but my grudge against you is building. You’ll be sorry when I decide to strike. Lavisa here has agreed to train me.”
“No, I haven’t,” she droned without even glancing up from her book.
Calder huffed a laugh. “You make a lot of threats for someone who doesn’t even know their Affinity, Stromer. Maybe you should save your battles for when you have some leverage. You could end up with something powerful, like water, or you could end up with something pathetic, like flowers. Wouldn’t be surprised if you ended up with a flower Affinity, actually—your extra chromosome realized how hideous your personality was and decided you needed to balance the scale with something beautiful.”
“If my Affinity is flowers, I will wish you’d drowned me.”
His face became abruptly harsh, much like it had during training the previous week. “You don’t mean that. You can’t—” He paused, exhaling his frustration and speaking again with less zeal. “You don’t have a realistic perception of reality. You don’t see past yourself in the moment, and I think that’s the main reason I dislike you. You know Fraco gave me detention for nearly drowning you? I didn’t go, obviously, but now he’ll be hunting me down until I do.”
“I’m offended to hear that, actually,” Adara drawled, her eyebrows arched. “You were imprisoned for flicking water at that republican guy, but when you almost kill me, Fraco just gives you a little slap on the wrist. Shows how much they value my life here, huh?”
“God, Stromer, this is exactly what I’m talking about—”
“Um, hey,” a meek voice interrupted, and they both turned to see Ackerly had popped up beside them. His green glasses were slightly askew, as was his sheepish smile. “Hi, uh, Calder—”
“Just because I gave you contacts doesn’t make us friends now. I would tell you to control your friend, Stromer, but you can’t even control yourself. Both of you primies, just…leave me alone—and quit talking in your sleep, Stromer. I can hear you sleep-complaining through the wall at night.”
He stalked away fast enough that he didn’t see the hint of redness surfacing in Adara’s cheeks, but Ackerly noticed her embarrassment and winced awkwardly.
“I, um—”
“I do not sleep-complain,” she fumed, her fists clenched at her side.
“Of course not—”
“He is…delusional.”
“Right. Um, are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she spat, but her tone was blazing with irrational fury. It was the first time this week that she’d felt that dormant part of her reawaken, threatening to overflow. Part of her wanted to unleash it—to prove to the Pixie Prince that she wasn’t pathetic—but…
Ackerly was cowering, and she knew it would only get worse if she lost control. She did have control, no matter what Calder said, and it enraged her that he thought so little of her.
Two people emerged from the spiral stairwell, filling the third floor with their light laughter and quelling Adara’s dark brooding. Their attitudes were so unusually unwary and free that her anger melted into paralyzing curiosity. Upon noticing Adara and Ackerly were present in the corridor, Eliana and Hastings both quieted their giggles and assumed neutral expressions.
“This is peculiar,” Adara said, taking a few steps closer to where they now stood uncomfortably near the stairwell. “I wasn’t aware either of you had emotions.”
Eliana bit her lip, her eyes sliding to Hastings as though he were speaking in her mind. “We, um—your brother just said something funny down in the lounge—”
“Of course he did,” Adara growled, ferociously grabbing Ackerly’s arm and dragging him toward the stairs. “C’mon…”
Hastings and Eliana exchanged a glance before sauntering to her doorless dormitory, chuckling quietly. Adara proceeded to yank her companion down the steps and didn’t release his wrist until they were in the lounge, crowded with babbling students.
“Ow,” Ackerly muttered when she finally let go, rubbing his wrist, which was now unnaturally red from her grip. “Are we, um—Avner’s over there—”
“I don’t care about Avner.”
Without even a glance in her brother’s direction, she stalked toward the double doors and exited the Residence Tower as Ackerly scampered after her. The brisk, nighttime air hit Adara like a wall, but it didn’t chill her. If anything, the cold was just a pestering presence, attempting to penetrate her heat and failing.
“Where are we going?” Ackerly questioned, his teeth chattering as he followed her along the path toward the Mentals Building. In only his white t-shirt, he shivered profusely while Adara continued on, as though the temperature hadn’t changed at all.
“We are going to get answers.” Pausing, she gave a pitying look. “I would give you my sweatshirt, but I don’t have it because the Pixie Prince ripped it—another reason I should murder him…”
“You, um, aren’t cold?”
“No, I don’t get cold.”
“Maybe…you have an Affinity that allows you to adapt to the weather?” Ackerly suggested thoughtfully.
She wished he were right, but of course, he wasn’t. Instead of answering, she set her eyes on the Mentals Building ahead. The only illuminated windows were on the top floor—Angor’s floor— and the rest of the circular glass panes looked like dead eyes against the white structure.
“I better not have an Affinity that stupid,” Adara finally said. “I need something that will allow me to destroy Nero and Calder simultaneously. Temperature adaptation sounds more Physical than Natural, anyway.”
“Maybe,” Ackerly considered, deep in thought, “but weather is Natural, so if you have some kind of Affinity related to that—”
“Let’s not dwell on it now, Greenie. It’s not my own Affinity I want to know—it’s Hastings’s. Out of everyone in this entire freaking town, the Wackos wanted him. Why?”
“Are we…going to go ask Mr. Periculy?” he inquired with a tinge of trepidation in his tone.
“Don’t be a fool, Ackerly. We’re going to go break into Fraco’s office and find Hastings’s file.”
“We—um, what?”
“Shh,” she hissed, swinging open the door to the library and ushering him inside.
Only a few students remained in the library, studying by the bleak lights draped over endless, towering rows of books. The library itself was two stories with some of the bookcases extending just as high and therefore only accessible via the telekinetic librarian. The second floor of the library was bordered by a platform that housed tables—one at which Adara was certain she spotted Nerdworm sitting. She hauled Ackerly toward the stairwell before Tray could notice them from above.
“All the teachers and staff have a meeting in the King’s office on Monday nights,” Adara whispered as they ascended the metal staircase, trying to keep their presence inconspicuous. “I overheard Than talking to Floretta about it in training today. That means no one will be in their offices on the third floor, including Mr. Grease. Trust me, Greenie, I do my research before thieving.”
“Really? Because, uh, you’re usually fairly spontaneous—”
“Not when it really matters,” she interjected, raising her eyebrows back at him and then grinning sinisterly before continuing up to the third floor.
The corridor where the teachers’ offices were located was lined on the right with large round windows and on the left with white doors identical to the ones in the Residence Tower. The first one was marked “A. Certior” in purple letters.
“Speed it up, Greenie,” Adara commanded, nearly jogging down the hall. “We don’t have all night.”
“What time does the meeting end?” Ackerly asked as they passed the math teacher’s door.
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