by Lynette Noni
When I’m back in my room later that evening, acutely aware that it’s now or never, I still lack the motivation to make my move. Lying on my bed with Schrödinger curled up at my side, I am paralyzed. I know there’s no choice, really. Not if I want to know the truth. But still …
I
don’t
know
what
to
do.
Frustrated by my inability to gather the courage and just go, I’m interrupted by the most unexpected of voices.
“What the hell are you waiting for, princess?”
I bolt upright, only to see Kael standing in front of me — in my bedroom.
I half wonder if I’m hallucinating. But seeing his agitated expression, I know I couldn’t have summoned a face so accurately — and vividly — demanding an explanation for my delay. Even so, I’m frozen in place, because I suddenly hear voices floating through my closed door from farther down the hallway, telling me that Cami has returned. By the sound of it, she has company.
When Kael draws in a breath to speak again, I do the only thing I can think of: I launch myself off the bed and straight at him, intending to slap my hand over his mouth to keep anyone from hearing.
I don’t proceed with caution; I propel my entire weight at his body. But instead of slamming into his torso and silencing him, I keep going, straight through him, until I crash noisily into the wardrobe behind him.
Ow, ow, ow, ow, owwwww, I mentally complain, but then I hear hurried footsteps approaching my room, and I frantically try to untangle myself from the clothes at the base of my closet.
I come unstuck just as my door bursts open. Ward rushes into my room, followed quickly by Enzo and Cami. I know I have approximately one-point-five seconds to come up with a valid reason for Kael’s appearance — not to mention, my current position — but when I notice that all three of the new arrivals are staring only at me, not him, I flick my eyes to where he was standing, only to find that he’s no longer there.
“What happened?” Ward demands, following my gaze with clear suspicion.
Cami pushes past her brother to help me out of the closet and to my feet.
“Are you okay?” she asks, concerned.
“You can talk,” Ward quickly adds. “I’m covering you.”
Something about his assurance prickles me. It’s frustrating that after all the training I’ve endured, including playing skirmish outside the safety of my Karoel room, he still doesn’t trust me to talk without leaking power. What’s the point of him teaching me control if he’s always going to insist on protecting my words, regardless? It’s no wonder I have trouble believing in myself, when it’s clear he doesn’t.
“I’m, uh, not sure what happened,” I answer Cami, rubbing my throbbing shoulder. “I just … tripped.”
Enzo laughs. “Clumsy much? This is what happens when you stop training with me and start training with this brute.” He elbows Ward, whose only response is a slight narrowing of his eyes.
“Thanks for coming to check on me,” I tell them all, feeling embarrassed — and acutely confused. Where is Kael?
“No problem, Jane. Glad you’re okay,” Cami says.
She reaches out to touch my shoulder, taking away the throbbing with a quiet Spoken word and a quick smile, before she ushers Ward and Enzo out of my room.
I follow them to the door and close it behind them, then bang my head softly on the wood. “I’m going mad,” I whisper, making sure to keep a tight hold on my intent since they’re the first words I’ve uttered outside of the Karoel room without proper supervision. But if ever there was a time to express myself freely, it’s now.
“I sure hope not. The last thing we need is to have a mad Creator running around.”
I spin, and there’s Kael again, this time leaning over my bed and teasing my kitten. Schrödinger’s black-and-white paws are batting at the hand Kael waves just above him, his little claws going straight through the noncorporeal flesh. He’s purring up a storm, the traitor.
“Your kitty likes me, princess.”
I don’t know which to address first: the fact that Kael is somehow magically in my room and speaking to me and yet he’s not; or the fact that he, in all his badassery, just used the word “kitty.”
“Dinger’s a bad judge of character,” I say, carefully monitoring each word and keeping my tone low so as to not draw attention from the others again.
“Dinger?” Kael stops teasing my kitten and stands upright. “What kind of a name is that?”
“Short for Schrödinger,” I explain, though I’m not sure why I bother. It’s not like he’ll —
“Schrödinger?”
Kael releases a quiet burst of laughter. I’ve never seen him laugh before. It transforms his whole face.
“Now, that is a great name for a cat. Especially one I’m guessing you created.”
“Would you keep your voice down,” I tell him, stepping toward him and glancing nervously at my door. “The others will come barging in again.”
“Ah, yes.” He nods at the wardrobe. “Not your most graceful moment.”
I wonder if throwing something at him and having it go straight through his body would feel as cathartic as if it actually hit him.
“How are you here, Kael?” I bite out. “And … not?”
“Put up a soundproof wall and I’ll explain everything,” he says. At my questioning look, he adds, “Are you a Creator or not? Just imagine a sound-blocking bubble or something around the room, keeping anyone out there —” he gestures to the door “— from hearing what we say in here.”
“But …” I chew my lip and fidget with a loose thread trailing from the hem of my shirt. “Despite you being here, I’m guessing you’re not actually here, so you can’t destroy my words. I’m being really careful not to throw power around right now, but if I deliberately try to Speak, what happens if I accidentally turn the whole world silent or something?”
Kael sends me a “Seriously?” look. “Have a little faith in yourself, Lyss. You’ll be fine.”
I’m surprised by his quick response, by how different he is compared with Ward. Surprised but flattered.
Taking a deep, fortifying breath, I decide to trust his confidence in me and whisper, “Block.” Perhaps I concentrate a little too hard on my imagery, because when the flash of light bursts out of me, so, too, does an actual multicolored, bubble-like sphere. It circles the boundary of my room, with us in the middle.
Kael looks a touch too amused for my liking. “Let no one say you’re unimaginative.”
He uses a normal volume, and making sure not to power my words again, I say, “Keep it down — what if it didn’t work?”
Sending me a pointed look, in a voice so loud that it could raise the dead, he bellows, “HELP! HELP ME! HELLLLLLPPPPP!”
I jump a foot in surprise and spin around, waiting for Ward, Enzo and Cami to come running. But they don’t.
“Convinced?” Kael asks smugly. “Told you you’d pull it off.” I’m on edge despite his belief in my control. But so far nothing catastrophic has happened. I feel strong. I feel powerful. I also feel contained — like my ability is … waiting. Like I could use it if I wanted, but it would only happen because I made the deliberate choice to do so, rather than it being an accidental slip with disastrous consequences. And because of that, I decide to trust — or at least hope — that I’m not making a mistake by engaging Kael in conversation; my first completely unprotected exchange since awakening my ability.
Taking a deep breath, I carefully ask him what he’s doing in my room — and how he’s actually here.
“One of the Remnants, a guy named Smith, he can project an image — or, say, a person and their consciousness — to another place,” Kael answers. “I needed to talk to you, and this was the easiest way to make that happen.”
“That’s incredible,” I murmur, forgetting that I should hold some kind of negative emotion toward him for showing up out of the blue and scarin
g the living daylights out of me.
“It is,” Kael agrees. “What’s not incredible is that you only have a couple of hours left until Pandora’s infusions won’t work anymore, and you still haven’t gone to check out the lab.”
There’s a question in his tone, and my immediate response is to form some kind of defense, to claim that he arrived just as I was about to leave. But instead, I trudge over to my bed and collapse across it, not caring about my lack of grace as I admit the truth: “I don’t want to go.”
“Of course you don’t,” Kael replies instantly, to my surprise. “No one normal wants to see what you might find there. But the question is, can you live with yourself if you decide not to go? Regret’s a fickle mistress, especially when it comes from fear. And don’t forget, princess, ‘the truth will out,’ regardless of your involvement.”
“Ugh. Shakespeare.”
Kael laughs. “I take it you’re not a fan.”
“I can hardly judge someone so highly regarded.”
“You’re entitled to an opinion,” he points out. “Everyone is.”
“Okay then, my opinion is that I don’t want to go to the lab.” I force myself to slide back off the bed and to my feet again. “But I also know you’re right. I won’t be able to handle the regret of not going just because I’m dreading what I might find.”
Kael’s look is approving — almost proud. “I have it on good authority that Falon will be away from his office in ten minutes, so I suggest you go then.”
“Good authority?” I repeat, skeptical.
“The kind of authority responsible for causing a diversion to call him away and distract him, just for you.”
“Your people on the inside?” I guess.
Feigning innocence, he says, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
My lips quirk into a smile without my permission, and something in Kael’s eyes shifts as he looks at me.
“There she is.”
I raise my eyebrows in question.
“You want to know why I call you ‘princess’?” he asks.
“Uh — sure. I mean, I thought you were just trying to annoy me. But, yes, of course I want to know.”
“One of my earliest memories of seeing the world outside Lengard was on my seventh birthday,” he says.
I have no idea where he is going with this.
“My parents took me to the aquarium. I thought it was just to celebrate, but it was also so they could meet up with some old friends. Some old Speaker friends.”
I brace myself in preparation for what I think he’s about to tell me.
“You wouldn’t remember me,” he says quietly. “You were with a group of people at a different party, so even though your parents were able to duck out for a few minutes to speak with my family, you never saw me. But I saw you.”
My breath stutters in my chest because I remember the day he’s talking about. I remember the aquarium party, since it was my friend’s sixth birthday. She insisted on a fairy-tale theme, requiring that we all had to dress up.
“I was a princess,” I whisper, vividly recalling the sparkly gown that my mum made for me and the diamanté tiara that I refused to take off even to sleep.
“I only saw you for a moment,” Kael goes on, “but in that moment, you were twirling around with your hair flying out behind you, laughing like you didn’t have a care in the world. To my seven-year-old mind, you looked like you were born to be a princess. And a moment ago, when you smiled, you looked just like that again.”
I honestly don’t know what to say. But Kael must read something on my face, because he laughs suddenly.
“Don’t get too excited. I’m stating a fact, not hitting on you.”
I smile again — fully this time. “I didn’t think you were,” I tell him truthfully. “But you did surprise me. I was just caught up in the memory.”
“I saw you again a few other times over the years until your family moved away,” he says. “Our mums were best friends, if you can believe it. But once my family left Lengard, it was always yours who came to visit mine, not the other way around.”
I shake my head, marveling at this unknown fact, wondering yet again why my parents never told me about the Speaking world. Why, if Kael’s parents were so close to mine, did I never meet them, never even know they existed? What were my parents keeping me from? Or perhaps … what were they keeping from me?
“You were always smiling, always happy,” Kael goes on, drawing me back to him. “That said, I never saw you in that ridiculous dress again. I still don’t know how you managed to walk in it.”
I laugh at that, and his eyes light with triumph.
“My dad ended up carrying me home,” I share, letting the memory wash over me. Rather than feeling the usual ache and the blinding panic that come with thinking about my parents, all I feel is a wistful melancholy. “It may have been pretty, but all those layers were heavy.”
“I’ll bet,” Kael says, grinning. “I have one at home just like it myself.”
“Sure you do,” I say, laughing again. I wonder how I can be so relaxed around this guy, who only a few days ago kidnapped me and held me captive, who has shown up unannounced and left his body behind. But the truth is, I’m more content right now than I have been for years. And that’s with us reminiscing about my parents, two people who I haven’t been able to think about in all that time without spiraling into an anxiety attack. Somehow Kael has achieved the impossible with me. He’s also given me the confidence to be an active part of our conversation. Nothing bad has happened. I’m speaking — but not Speaking. And it feels wonderful.
“Thank you,” I blurt out.
Fortunately, I don’t have to explain, since Kael seems to know exactly what I’m thanking him for.
“Anytime, princess,” he says meaningfully. Then he glances at his watch. “Our ten minutes are almost up. Are you ready?”
“Nope,” I answer, but I still move to my wardrobe and start digging through the mess that I made when I fell earlier, searching for where I hid the glove and glasses. “But I think we’re beyond me being ready. Turn around, will you?”
When he doesn’t move, I say, “It’s either you turn around to let me change, or you un-project yourself out of here and back to your little cave. No peep show for you tonight.”
“Just tonight?”
He puts his back to me, but not before I catch the smirk on his face.
“Careful, Lyss,” he adds, “or I’ll start to think you’re hitting on me.”
I ball up a pair of socks and throw them at his head. Even though they go sailing through him and hit the wall on the other side, I still feel better afterward.
Ignoring his chuckle, I make sure his back remains facing me while I quickly change into something more appropriate for the mission ahead. When I’m done, I say, “You can turn around now.”
Kael cracks up upon seeing my new outfit. “What, no balaclava?”
I glance down at the jeans-and-black-jacket combo that covers me from head to toe, having finished the look off with Esther’s boots that I’ve yet to return.
“I was going for clandestine,” I respond, gesturing to my dark clothes. “I want to avoid being noticed.”
Still laughing, Kael says, “You failed. Miserably.”
I’m not sure how to take his comment, so I busy myself with tying my hair back.
“Best if you just aim to stay out of sight completely,” he adds, saving me from having to form a response.
“That’s the plan,” I agree.
“Then go get ’em, tiger,” Kael says, shooing me toward the door. “I’ll have Smith project me back here in an hour to find out how it went.”
Something about those words helps loosen the tension knotting my stomach. Knowing that Kael will check in with me later — it’s comforting.
I’m still afraid of what I might discover tonight, but I meant what I said earlier — one way or another, I need to know the truth. I’m determined to
see this through, to seek out the answers that have eluded me, to uncover Lengard’s deepest secrets.
Or, preferably, not. Because part of me still hopes that Kael is wrong and that I will find nothing.
But I’ll never know for sure unless I go and see for myself. So with a farewell wave to Kael, I step through the soundproof bubble and out of my room, ready to face the future and whatever it might reveal.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The good thing I discover while leaving my suite is that Cami, Ward and Enzo aren’t around anymore, so I don’t have to think up some excuse for my late excursion — or my attempt at a stealthy outfit. In fact, when I pass Cami’s room, the door is open, and I can see that it’s empty. I spare a thought to question where she could be, before I realize that I don’t have time to wonder about that right now. Instead, I head out into the hall and, blending in as well as a hippopotamus wearing a bikini, I make my way along the whitewashed walls until I reach Falon’s office.
As Kael’s “good authority” promised, there is no answer when I knock lightly on the door. So, after a less-than-subtle glance over my shoulder, I place my infused glove on the scanner until it opens with a click. With my heart pounding in my ears, I push my way into the room and close the door quickly again behind me, then move straight to the inner touch screen panel.
I pull the gaudy glasses from my jacket and use them along with the infused glove again; it only takes a second before the secret wall exit hisses open and I slide through it.
Feeling distinctly edgy now, and very much just wanting to get back to the safety of my room, I half jog down the declining path, noting again that the walls steadily darken to charcoal by the time I reach the elevator. Now, at least, my outfit blends in better.
