“Not every Affinity is good for combat, though. Yours is, and Hastings could probably scare them away, but we need…more…”
“We need Adara, you mean,” Tray said dryly, glancing at him through the dim room. “She’s reckless, Ackerly. You don’t know her like I do. If we tell her what her Affinity is, she’ll go berserk. She’ll be a loose cannon—especially if this turns into a war—and even Aethelred agrees. Everyone saw what happened in the cafeteria, but he said no one’s allowed to talk about it. I doubt Nero will listen, but still…”
“What if she hurts more people, though—by accident?”
“Destruction is in Adara’s nature. If she doesn’t know her Affinity, she might hurt people by accident, but if she does know her Affinity, she will hurt people on purpose—that I can guarantee.”
30
Pawns
“I’m not sure why you’re all acting so weird around me,” Adara said as she dug her fingers through brittle dirt. Ackerly had told her the soil in his garden had to be soft when replanting his plants, and she was the only one capable of actually digging through the cold ground since Nero destroyed Ackerly’s tools. Her hands and clothes were caked in a layer of dusty dirt, but she didn’t care, since she’d stolen this entire outfit—a thin sweater and jeans—from the school’s Lost and Found, which Tray had, obviously, condemned.
The grumpy Stark twin sat on a tree stump outside of Ackerly’s garden, a book in his lap he read almost ceaselessly with only a few brief scowls in Adara’s direction whenever she spoke. Eliana and Hastings sat on their own stumps beside him, watching peacefully as Ackerly and Adara worked to restore his garden to its former glory.
It was November 9th now, a day after Adara had woken up in the nurse’s office, and everyone was being oddly civil with her. Tray’s snide comments had become worryingly rare, and Nero had nothing to ridicule her about at lunch. Even when she’d threatened him and his gang for what they’d done to Ackerly’s garden, he hadn’t retaliated—he’d shrugged and said, “Do what you like, Stromer.”
The weirdest reaction of all had been produced by the Pixie Prince. Since classes had been canceled, Adara hadn’t woken up until nearly noon, only to find she was mostly alone in the Residence Tower. Eliana had left earlier, so Adara rolled out of bed and strolled through their empty doorway alone. As soon as she was in the corridor, she had realized the door to room 306 was ajar, and within was the Pixie Prince.
Peeking in, she had felt like a bit of a pervert, since he was changing, but only his shirt was off, and with his chest bare, she could see the four puncture marks below his clavicle she’d created with a fork a few days prior. Lips curving mischievously, she had kicked the door open, causing Calder to jolt. His shirt was half on, so he’d quickly yanked it over his torso before staring at her with bewildered blue eyes. Though his hair was disarrayed, he hadn’t moved to fix it; he was as still as a statue.
“Good morning, Pixie Prince,” she’d greeted, leaning casually on the doorframe. “Aren’t you going to chide me about how I barged in here just now—or about how I stabbed you on Sunday and tried to annihilate your master, Nero?” Calder’s lips pursed, but he hadn’t vocalized a thought as his fingers twitched at his side. “Should I tell you to drown me? You don’t seem to like that much,” she prodded with wiggling eyebrows. Still, he didn’t speak. He had gazed at her differently than before—with a higher level of respect and perhaps a tinge of fear. “Well, at least you aren’t gushing about how happy you are to see me—that would make me want to stab you again. I was hoping for some heated banter, though. Don’t you want to rant about how much of a nuisance I am? You haven’t insulted me for two days now. Aren’t you just itching to piss me off?”
Swallowing, he’d regarded her uneasily before inching slowly toward the door. She had watched him in blinking bafflement as the always-cocky Calder slipped by her and then scurried toward the spiral staircase without a word.
When he’d disappeared from sight, she had been peculiarly disappointed. She thrived on the way people jumped to quarrel with her before, and she was left with the oddest inkling that she might have woken up in an alternate universe.
“It’s not like I’ve never been knocked unconscious before,” Adara continued now, since none of her friends had replied. She glanced at Ackerly, kneeling in the dirt along with her, but he kept his green eyes focused on his plants. Seth was outside the wooden perimeter of the garden, too engrossed in juggling a soccer ball with his feet to look at her.
“Don’t you like that we’re all being nice to you?” he asked before accidentally dropping the ball and cursing under his breath.
“No, it’s weird,” she answered, looking around at all of them with suspicion. Eliana forced a smile at her while Hastings appeared as indifferent as usual. “You’re all acting like I’m some fragile being on the verge of shattering.”
“Well, if it makes you feel any better,” Tray began, glancing impatiently at her with eyes as brown as the tree stump he sat upon, “I was hoping you’d stay in a coma forever.”
“Thank you, Nerdworm. I do feel better now, actually. Anyone else wanna hurl some insults at me? I think it’ll brighten this gloomy day.” Her face rose to the sky, overcast with thin gray clouds that hazed the afternoon sun.
“You’re dirty,” Hastings offered with a shrug, “and no, I don’t mean that in a sexual way.”
Adara threw her head back as she laughed, and Eliana’s lips curled into a smirk. “I do like to get dirty,” she mused, examining her muddy hands and clothes. “Maybe I do have an Affinity for plants. Greenie, toss me one—”
“No,” Ackerly said with an inflection much firmer than his usual nasally one. “I’m not letting you kill my plants. Nero already did—”
“And it was my fault, I know. I already apologized to you, and I never apologize to anyone.”
“I-I’m not mad at you,” Ackerly muttered as he buried an onion bulb.
“How could you be with the way she threw herself at Nero to avenge you?” Tray derided. “You can say she’s unintelligent, but you can’t say she’s disloyal.”
She rolled her eyes before reverting her gaze to Ackerly. “Let me try my plant Affinity, Greenie.”
Biting his lip, Ackerly finally looked up at her through his dirt-smudged glasses. “Adara…you… H-haven’t you seen your hair recently?”
“Mirrors are for people who actually care about their appearance,” she scoffed, waving him off dismissively.
“I saw you putting on eyeliner in the mirror this morning,” Eliana said, earning a deathly glare from her roommate. The boys all smirked.
“Fine. I have seen my hair, and yes, it’s redder than it was before—as are my eyes.”
“The demoness in you is finally surfacing,” Tray said, his smugness radiating.
“Demoness?” Seth repeated as he bounced the soccer ball off his head.
“He means female demon—demon-ess,” Adara explained, her reddish eyes still narrowed malevolently in Tray’s direction.
Wiping her hands on her jeans, she rose to her feet to address the group more defiantly. Eliana shifted on her tree stump while Tray slowly closed his book. Ackerly had stopped planting, and Seth’s soccer ball had fallen limply to the ground, rolling away in the breeze. Hastings’s typical nonchalance dwindled, leaving room for uncharacteristic apprehension.
“My hair and eyes are changing, which, I’m smart enough to know, means I’m harnessing my Affinity.” She paused to shoot a pointed look at Tray, who almost cowered. “I know you all know what my Affinity is. You might think I’m oblivious, but I’m not. I don’t know what happened, but something happened in the cafeteria after I passed out, and one of you will tell me what it is. If not, I’ll have to use whatever power I have against you all.”
It was an empty threat, of course. She had a strong inkling as to what happened in the cafeteria, and she knew with clarity what her superpower was. Watching them squirm about it was the first—and mayb
e only—positive effect of her horrible Affinity.
Seth choked out a cough, violently shaking his head. “Oh—oh no. You shouldn’t do that.”
“Yeah, maybe you should just calm down,” Tray advised. It was the gentleness of his tone that set Adara over the edge. If being coddled by Tray Stark was part of her Affinity, she really didn’t want it.
“Calm down? You want me to calm down?”
“Uh…yeah,” Ackerly said timidly. “I think we, um, all do…for everyone’s safety.”
Adara’s dirt-coated hands were balled into fists, but she didn’t get the chance to verbally or physically erupt before two figures suddenly appeared beside the garden.
“Wow—twenty feet, everyone!” Hartman announced proudly, his eyes protuberant with glee. He was holding tightly onto Lavisa’s arm, but she shoved him off upon realizing they’d safely reached their destination via teleportation. She wore tough black fabric that appeared to be fighting attire, and judging by the small beads of sweat on her brow, she and Hartman had just been practicing their Affinities together.
“You need to work on the dizziness aspect of it,” Lavisa grumbled, struggling to balance herself in the grass. “Are you making a speech?” she added to Adara after seeing the way she stood in the center of the rectangular garden.
“I was making threats, actually,” she replied through gritted teeth. “Do you know what my Affinity is, too?”
Lavisa ignored her, which was as good as an affirmation. Revealing her Affinity to her friends—or to anyone—had never been on her agenda, but the wretched act had been thrust upon her, and she couldn’t even blame Aethelred for it. Her own stupidity had led to this. The worst part was not that everyone knew her Affinity but that they knew she couldn’t control it. If she could, it would have been a badass power, but she would never control it because she would never stop fearing it.
“We came to inform you of the election results,” Lavisa announced, extracting Adara from uncharacteristically deep thoughts. “The final numbers are in.”
Everyone was alert now, their bodies tense with anticipation. The presidential election had occurred the previous day, and the numbers had been so close between the democrat and republican candidates that no one had been sure who would win. Harold Hauser and Olalla Cosmos hadn’t had much of a chance, but all of the Affinities were curious to know which political party would determine their fate.
“Emmett Ventura won,” Lavisa said, evoking a vindictive laugh from Adara.
“The Pixie Prince will be furious. He’s got beef with that guy. Remind me to rub it in his face later, Greenie.”
“Well, we knew it’d be bad either way,” Tray sighed as he stood and placed his book on the stump. “It’s probably best that Ventura won, though. He won’t be shy about the fact that we’re his enemies, and maybe that’ll make the public sympathize with us more.”
“Or maybe it’ll make the public think we are their enemies and they’ll all want to kill us,” Adara suggested. “Olalla was the only one who could have saved us.”
“Well…what do we do now?” Ackerly asked, his green eyes like a sad puppy’s.
“We still have time,” Tray said as he began to pace, his face set with determination. “We have two months to train and prepare for whatever the government plans to do to us. The current president doesn’t care much about Affinities, but Ventura does. He went out of his way to sneak in here, and that means he knows how to sneak in here. We won’t be safe unless we can defend ourselves.”
“Angor won’t let the government ruin this town,” Hastings said like a mantra. “He loves this town and hates the Reggs.”
“We don’t want this to become a fight between Affinities and Reggs,” Lavisa said sharply. “Not all Reggs hate us. We can’t generalize an entire race of people.”
Hastings’s dark red eyes rose to meet hers. “I’m just saying we shouldn’t be worried.”
“But we should be prepared,” Tray added, tapping his chin as he contemplated.
“I’m surprised you want to fight, Nerdworm,” Adara put in with a sly smirk, crossing her arms and dirtying her sweater. “I thought you’d be advocating for diplomacy and that kinda dumb shit.”
“We won’t be the aggressors—we will try to talk to them. I just don’t think they’ll want to talk to us. They group us with terrorists, and nobody wants to negotiate with terrorists.”
“The Regg ambassadors are coming today to talk with Angor,” Hastings told them, his gaze fixed pensively on Ackerly’s plants. “They want to use the people of this town to fight the Wackos. Angor’s going to assure them they don’t need to.”
“How?” Eliana asked, the wideness of her sapphire eyes indicating Hastings hadn’t discussed this with her previously.
“He wants me to show them my Affinity,” Hastings responded ruefully. “He thinks we can convince them I’m the only person who needs to fight the Wackos. He thinks I can eliminate them all, by myself.” There was a pause during which Hastings glanced up at everyone, waiting for someone to speak.
After a collective silence, Adara cocked her head to the side and said, “Are you waiting for us to ask you what your Affinity is? Because we already know.”
“Yeah, we’ve known for a while,” Seth added apologetically.
“A month, about,” Tray said with a matter-of-fact nod.
Ackerly winced at Hastings’s astonishment. “We looked at your file in Fraco’s office.”
“Adara did,” Tray clarified hastily. “Not all of us are scumbags.”
“Ackerly helped. Does that make him a scumbag, too?” Adara demanded.
“You all know I can burst blood vessels?” Hastings asked before any arguments could ensue. “And none of you are scared of me?”
“Oh, we’ve always been scared of you,” Adara said blandly.
“Yeah, I find it pretty hard to sleep at night with you in the same room,” Seth agreed, mindlessly dribbling his soccer ball again.
“We broke you out of prison, dude,” Hartman said, his freckles quivering nervously. “Even if you didn’t have a deadly Affinity, you’d be scary.”
“I’ve never thought about fighting you for fun,” Lavisa said, shrugging, “and I think about fighting everyone for fun.”
“You’re not going to go through with it, are you?” Eliana asked Hastings, her voice soft and small.
“I don’t want to kill anyone.”
“The Wackos kill people, though, don’t they?” Hartman reasoned. “Wouldn’t it be good to get rid of them? They almost killed Adara, they almost captured you, they did capture that stretchy girl—”
“I want to save her—save people, not kill them,” Hastings persisted, his tone one of finality, “but I might not have a choice. I’m destructive—”
“No, you’re not,” Eliana injected fiercely, her voice full of more emotion than Adara had ever heard from her. “You can heal people, Hastings—you know you can. You need to show the Regg ambassadors that. Show them…show them that Affinities can be used for good. Show them we can make peace with the Wackos. There has to be a compromise.”
“I do agree we can’t just slaughter all the Wackos, but they are dangerous,” Tray said, ignorant to the tender moment Eliana and Hastings were having. Adara couldn’t help but snicker to herself. “We need to imprison them—at least until they can get individual trials.”
“That does sound good in theory, but…I don’t think we have much sway with the authority figures,” Ackerly said, rising to his feet beside Adara as he abandoned his plants.
“I don’t think we should even bother with the authorities,” she countered, her eyes slivering sinisterly. “If my Affinity is so dangerous, I’ll just kill all the Wackos so Hastings doesn’t have to.”
“Of course you would offer to execute genocide,” Tray scoffed, ceasing his pacing to glower at her. “No one’s killing anyone—”
“I have to go,” Hastings interrupted abruptly, standing from his tree stump and sta
ring blankly ahead. Adara was accustomed to his apathy, but his eyes appeared strangely glossy, and he stepped through Ackerly’s garden as though in a trance. “I have to go to the meeting.”
“The Reggs are here now?” Seth asked.
“Are you going to tell them we want peace?” Tray called after Hastings as he trekked toward the campus buildings. His gait was almost mechanical, and he didn’t turn back to acknowledge that either of the twins had said anything at all.
“I should go, too,” Eliana said, removing herself from her tree stump with a dispirited posture. “Zeela wants me to help her with…something.”
“You two are just sneaking off to make out, aren’t you?” Adara asked, eyeing her roommate playfully. “I would scold you for thinking only of physical pleasures at such a dire time as this, but I find the whole thing highly entertaining.”
“Hastings doesn’t look like he wants to make out with anyone,” Seth observed, watching his roommate disappear around the Mentals Building. “I would know. Whenever I wanted to hook up with Kiki—”
“We don’t want to hear it, Jockface. I do want to follow Hastings, though. I’d like to listen in on this meeting. Greenie?”
Ackerly’s eyes fell down toward his muddy garments. “Um…shouldn’t we change first?”
“Shouldn’t we change,” Adara mimicked with a chuckle. “C’mon. We’re going to do some spy work.”
“I’m in,” Seth enthused, following her as she jumped out of the garden and began her journey toward Angor’s office.
“I’d better come and make sure none of you do anything rash,” Tray grumbled as he gathered his book from the stump and hurried along. Hartman and Lavisa were already teleporting to catch up, silently agreeing to accompany the rest.
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