by Lyn Forester
“You’re angry you find his scent pleasant. You’re...attracted to him?” At her tight nod, my voice softens. “It must be horrible to have no control over something like that.”
“I will not give in to such base instincts.” Her fingers turn white around her pen. “Your man is safe from me.”
“He’s not my man. And whatever you do or don’t do is up to you.” I curl onto my side, hugging my pillow. “I won’t hate you if you pursue Nikola.”
Her bleak gaze meets mine. “No, but I will hate myself.”
Secrets
Over the next three days, tension fills the air.
Myrrine actively avoids Nikola, choosing to share her tablet with Garrett instead. Nikola seems relieved by the switch and uses the opportunity to stay close to my side when not forced to work on the term paper directly with Myrrine.
His nearness agitates Felix, who alternates between making nice with him and shoving him away to cling to my side. When his arm isn’t around me, Felix sticks to Connor, who tolerates everyone’s erratic moods with calm fortitude.
For my part, I waffle between enjoying the extra moments with the twins and bordering on a panic attack from all the physical stimuli. I escape to my room most nights after dinner just to find some peace. I bring out my robot butler, and Myrrine and I alternate on choosing the music to play. Thankfully, her personal issues occupy her mind enough to stay on her side of the room and leave me alone, while Bastian simply exists in the spaces we leave unused.
On Thursday, when we venture to the library between the end of class and dinner, Felix flat out refuses to join Trevor at their usual table, forcing the gangly man to join us at our table. Myrrine takes that as her cue to abandon Nikola and their other partner to their own devices and shoves her way between me and Connor.
Sensing an encroachment on my attention, Felix slips an arm around my shoulders, which Myrrine ignores as she presses to my other side and sniffs the hair around my ear.
“Hey, pinky, back off a little,” Felix snaps when her braid brushes his arm.
Myrrine leans past me, her cheeks an anxious swirl of purple and blue. “Caitlyn does not mind. She is my friend as well.”
I struggle to ignore the pair, my eyes fixed on an article about the previous Mr. Blue’s family line. While I don’t actively stop Myrrine from sniffing at me, I wouldn’t go so far as to say I don’t mind it. One side of my brain understands she’s trying to use my scent to wash away Nikola’s, while a deeper part understands that my scent arouses her to some extent and her sniffing my ear could be considered light foreplay.
I’ve rejected her advances before when she was more direct, but some guilty part of me says I should ask her to stop smelling me, knowing I’m unable to return her affection.
“Well, this vanilla frosting smell is meant for me,” Felix growls, his arm tightening around my shoulder. “So, you should stop using her for nose porn.”
Myrrine rears back, the purple in her cheeks deepening with anger. “I would never use Caitlyn like that. And it is not the artificial lotions she applies that I find appealing. It is the sweet flower of her real scent.”
Across from me, Garrett’s sandy-blond eyebrows shoot up, his vibrant blue eyes alight with interest. “You can differentiate between natural and applied scents?”
“Yes, of course.” Light as a breeze, Myrrine’s fingertip brushes my throat. “Especially here.”
I clutch my tablet tighter, my patience with the pair holding on by a thread.
Felix’s eyes narrow, and he leans in, his nose against my neck. He inhales deeply, his lips brushing my skin and his voice loud in my ear as he mutters, “Vanilla frosting.”
“No, flowers.” Myrrine leans in for another sniff. “You’re just not refined enough to tell the difference.”
“Your nose is broken, puffball.” Felix leans past me to look at Connor. “Bro, come settle this.”
Slamming my tablet down onto the table, I thrust my chair back and stand. “I’m done. I’m going back to the dorms. I’d like to be left alone.”
Connor rises, concern clear on his face. “What about dinner?”
“I’ll grab something from the snack room.” After shoving my tablet into my satchel, I sling the bag’s strap over my shoulder. “I just need quiet and no more...” Helpless, my hands open and close on my strap. “This. No more this.”
From the next table over, Nikola also stands. “I’ll go back with you.”
I turn a glare on him. “Didn’t I just say I wanted to be alone?”
“Yes.” He murmurs to his table partner, voice too low to carry, then walks over to join me, a careful distance between us. “I, too, would like some alone time. I will not trouble you past where we separate at the stairs.”
With no way to insist he give me a five-minute head start, I nod and turn on my heel to leave.
Behind me, Felix hisses, “Look what you did.”
“It was your inability to tell the difference between vanilla and flowers that did this,” Myrrine hisses back.
“Both of you, just drop it.” Connor releases a beleaguered sigh. “Go back to your partners and focus on your own papers.”
“A third of my team is now gone,” Myrrine points out.
“And a third of mine has been gone from the start,” Felix snaps. “At least you have people with enough intelligence to help build a compelling thesis.” His voice rises, and I cringe on Trevor’s behalf. “Yeah, I’m talking about you, deadstream! Get your act together, or you’ll never make it into office!”
Nikola holds the library door open, his attention still on our abandoned classmates. “Felix’s mood seems to be deteriorating.”
“I noticed.” I stride past him without glancing back. “I think he’s used to having more attention than he’s currently receiving, and it’s making him agitated.”
After a long pause, Nikola says, “That’s very astute of you.”
Irritated, I glance over at him. “I’m not completely blind to feelings.”
“No, I never said you were.” His black gaze meets mine for a moment. “But you don’t usually acknowledge them.”
I focus ahead once more. “He’s used to Declan being here. Having him to hang on.”
“Their relationship is intimate.” Certainty fills the statement.
Not wanting to discuss their relationship, my lips tighten into a thin line.
“But I don’t think sexual frustration is making him act out.” Nikola walks another few paces in silence before he clears his throat. “I may be out of line, but—”
“If you start your statement like that, then you know you’re out of line,” I cut in sharply.
“Yet it needs to be said regardless.” Nikola stuffs his hands into his pockets, his focus on the stone path. “It’s not a secret, the reason why Connor superseded Felix as the heir, so the information I impart on you can as easily be gleaned from a quick search through old news recordings.”
My chest constricts, but I stay quiet. I’ve purposely not gone looking, waiting for the twins to divulge the information in their own time, but that might have been wrong on my part. If the information is that common, then maybe they just hope I’ll look it up on my own.
After a moment, I give Nikola another stiff nod.
He draws in a heavy breath. “In middle school, Felix turned rebellious. He fought with his peers and became sexually promiscuous. This behavior continued long enough that his parents could no longer write it off as a phase. They sent him to a Riellio mind specialist, but the behavior persisted, and House Williams took drastic action to raise Connor’s position within the family to reassure their fellow councilors.”
I swallow the thick lump that forms in my throat. Much of that I already guessed based on the thinly veiled comments about Felix, but the thought of him at the mercy of one of those mind rapists, trying to scrub away everything that makes him vibrant along with the questionable behavior, turns my stomach.
“Even after Co
nnor became the new heir, Felix continued on his path to self-destruction.” Nikola looks away, toward the tree in the center of the path. Without realizing it, our steps slowed as we neared the dorms to prolong the set amount of time we’d stay together. “The news stations had a field day with it, predicting how long before he simply disappeared.”
“How come I didn’t see any of that?”
“The information that streams into Lonette Manor is restricted to what Councilor Lonette allows.”
Shock shivers through me, adding more cracks to my wall, even though I shouldn’t be surprised. Everything else in my life is by my family’s design, why not the information I receive about the outside world, too?
I push it down, yet another thing to think on later. “What changed? Felix doesn’t feel self-destructive anymore.”
“He became friends with Declan.”
“You’re saying Declan keeps him grounded?” An ache opens in my chest, a sense of impending failure.
How do I hold my corner of Felix’s heart when Declan already fills so much of it? And is it even my place to want that? Do I want that?
Bitterness coats my tongue. “Is this your way of warning me away from them?”
“No, not at all.” Nikola’s head tips back, and he stares up at the top of the dome. Orange light glows along the rim and filters through white, puffy clouds. “I’m simply providing insight into why Felix might act the way he does right now.”
I scoff. “Sexual frustration?”
He chuckles. “Don’t belittle the power of sex. It’s a strong weapon.”
“One you’ve been trained in.”
“Yes, I have. It’s part of the job. It’s also part of my job to provide information that will help you make informed decisions.” He drops his focus back to the path, and his steps quicken once more. “Declan’s relationship with Felix gives him something he’s not getting right now. Whether that’s sex or simply an outlet that helps him calm down is something only they know. Something you should decide is whether you want to be the same or take a different path.”
I bite my lip, but can’t contain the question. “What other path is available besides walking away?”
“Discovering why Felix became self-destructive to begin with.”
His reply comes so quickly it tugs the next question right off my tongue. “What do you know?”
“If one were to look at school records, they would notice a two-month span of time where the elder Williams brother disappears. It’s a blank space of time, with no record of illness or familial distress.”
We arrive at the dorms, and I pause with one foot on the bottom step. “Did you find that out before or after you discovered my connection with the twins?”
“Long before you ever took up disc-bike racing. I needed to know everything about the ones you would share council seats with.” He skips up a couple steps, then turns back with a sad smile. “You may think I’m your father’s informant, but I’ve kept your secrets. The ones that matter.”
I catch up to him at the door. “How do you decide which ones matter?”
“I’d never reveal the ones that would destroy you.”
After I separate from Nikola, I walk slowly to my room, my thoughts whirling with this new information and the mystery of Felix’s disappearance in middle school.
Whether he intended it to or not, it gave my mind something to focus on besides the impending panic of being caged in on every side by those around me. As if the glass bubble APA locks us into isn’t confining enough.
My fingers itch to run searches on the Williams House, a task I should have done long before now. I had wanted our bonds to grow naturally instead of having the shadow of media coverage coloring our interactions. But if informing myself now will help me handle Felix’s rapidly shifting moods, then it just became my top priority. Because, no matter how much he makes my body tingle, I’m not ready to take him to bed as an alternative, or see him sent to the school provided counselor for rehabilitation. His fear at seeing the halion man earlier in the week resonated at a core level within myself that I can’t forget.
I only spent a short time with a Riellio mind specialist before my grandmother rescued me. Felix was subjected to one repeatedly, over the course of weeks, or even an entire season-cycle. Yet he somehow came out of it with a hold on himself. It amazes me to realize the depth of his tenacity, the mental power and intelligence he possesses to withstand the reprogramming.
In my gut, I know I would have broken if faced with the same treatment.
Sitting at my desk, I pull out my tablet, but my finger pauses on the screen. The school issued device comes with the same kind of safeguards the ports at Lonette Manor do, possibly even stricter. Even if I can access old news channels and school records from my dorm, do I want my search logged in the school database?
My palm-port comes with the same risks. I pull out the slender device and study its sleek, cutting-edge design. The model is a prototype, not even available to the public yet. Who knows what kind of monitoring the school installed on it before distributing them to the new students to test out?
My eyes shift to the shadowed space beneath my bed. I haven’t opened my old folding-port since arriving at APA. Like the robot butler Myrrine and I occasionally listen to, the folding-port is considered contraband and will be taken from me if it’s discovered. I only brought it to school in the first place for fear it would end up in the incinerator with all my other worldly possessions the moment I left Lonette Manor to come here.
A fully realized fear, I discovered, at my brief, unexpected return to the family house. I arrived not even a full season after leaving to find everything of my childhood gone, replaced with my new, adult style, as dictated by my father. What I snuck out to school is all that remains of my childhood.
Heart pounding, I crouch in front of my bed and drag out the duffle bag. It’s really not a good hiding place for my treasures. Myrrine knows about it and is in the room alone often enough to investigate if curiosity gets the better of her. While I don’t think Myrrine would ever purposefully betray me, life has taught me the dangers of trust. It’s so easy to lose everything. A careless moment, a step off course, and everything comes crashing down.
My hand lifts to touch the broken energy core to my old disc-bike. I’d been so careful in sneaking out for my moments of freedom, but someone else’s poor handling of their disc-bike ruined everything. Once the blue guards got involved, Father could no longer fail to notice my absences from the house.
Right now, my dream of escaping to a halion run tech school and learning more about disc-bikes feels like the foolish dreams of a child, narrow-minded and ill-conceived. How could I attend a public school, even a halion one, and expect my family not to find me right away? I would have been dragged back before my first class. Even my plans to flee with Declan when we reach our age of majority feels like smoke, hazy and easily banished.
What would we really do out on our own? What skills do we possess that can see us not starving on the lowest level of the city? Sure, we can enter the racing circuits and live off the winnings, if one of us wins, but is that enough? Does Declan’s proposal even include us staying together past our initial escape?
I shake my head, willing the spiral of doubt to unhook its claws. I can’t give up before I’ve even tried. All these questions tell me we need to plan better, make arrangements in advance so we’re not left starving on the street. Or worse, crawling back to our families when we realize the real struggle of living as regular citizens, without all the privileges we take for granted.
Dragging my duffel up onto my bed, I unzip it and shift the soft, starry blanket aside to reveal the hard edges of my folding-port.
When I check the time, the tension eases from my muscles. I still have at least an hour before Myrrine returns. Plenty of time to run a few searches.
I settle into the chair at my desk and open the slender monitor. The screen lights up with a familiar red glow, and I smile at
the spinning energy rings. It feels like a lifetime since I saw those beauties. In retrospect, splashing the screen of my personal folding-port with my disc-bike was not the smartest move, but the wheels of light bring with them a sense of calm that’s missing from my daily life. They renew my belief I’ll escape the trap of my family.
I press my palm against the screen, waiting for the scanner to recognize me and unlock the device.
For a heartbeat, nothing happens, and I worry I somehow damaged it by leaving it stored under my bed. Then, the wheels of light disappear, and a different image of a disc-bike fills the screen, this one of my favorite professional racer, Purple Strike.
She’s my hero, speeding her way up the circuits for a chance to compete in the All Worlds Races that only happen once every other year. The winner of that race is guaranteed sponsorship to stay on Level 11 with living expenses covered for life.
At the beginning of my racing career, I hoped to someday win the All Worlds Races, but despite my many wins in the Night Pirate races, I don’t think I’m good enough to take on the big circuits. Not without a good crew, better mods, and a slew of other things that go into pro-racing.
A blinking icon in the corner of my screen catches my eye, and I reach out to tap it before good judgment gets the better of me. I’m supposed to be researching the Williams family, fact-checking Nikola’s story. Not scrolling the racing forums for updates.
Messages fill my screen, most of them coded locations for the next Night Pirate races, but a few from fans of Sparks.
It surprised me the first time I found my racing handle called out on one of the forums, but Declan revealed recently that Skittles, the Night Pirate contact who set up all my competitions, actually sold holo-vids of our races on the black market. The woman must have made a lot of credit off of us. It still leaves a bitter taste in my mouth that I was never able to apologize to her and explain my sudden disappearance. She took me on when none of the other organizers would touch me.