by M C Ashley
“You might want to get that checked,” I said.
Zoë approached me and placed her finger on the tunic. I felt a stirring inside me. I closed my eyes and willed myself to stop giving into her desires. But I stopped a moment later, her pheromones growing stronger. I opened my eyes to see her moving toward my mouth and we locked lips a second later, but the moment we connected, a bright white flash erupted from the point of contact, sending her flying backward in pain. I stared blankly, wondering just what in the world I’d done. Zea watched me with wide eyes.
“Oh, dear,” Zoë said, spitting on the floor. “How reprehensible.”
“What?” I asked. “Am I not good enough for you?”
“You—have been taken by another,” Zoë said, huffing. “This isn’t fair. I wanted to break you myself. I was supposed to be your first!”
She grabbed her nearest human companion and clutched his chest furiously. She smashed his bleeding heart like a tomato. Her body trembling, Zoë threw the body out of the door as the other servant came to take it away.
“What are you going on about?” I asked.
“You are not a virgin,” Zoë said, glaring at me, as if it were my fault.
“I—I’m not?”
“How could you not know? Was it that bad of an experience? It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
I frowned. I’d never thought about it before. I’d never been with anyone, not since Akemi and I had gone through our ill-fated singular date. I’d been interested in women before, but had never pursued them. I was always too caught up in doing my job to even think about starting a family. Or so I had been at twenty. There was still plenty of lost time in my memory to have allowed for a 180 in my decision-making.
Had I been married? Made a stupid decision? Was the ring a wedding ring? It was on my left hand, after all. I had never worn a ring on my left hand before. But it was wrong. Why would I wear it in the first place? Had I fallen to evil? Was my paramour an apostate I had fallen in with? Was this why I couldn’t remember anything? Had I wanted to forget it all?
None of this made sense.
“That can’t be true,” I said. “I haven’t been with anyone.”
“Not that you remember,” Zea said, her voice cool. “You have a lot of time lost in your memory.”
“Then it is her,” Zoë said, looking at Zea.
“Get the hell away from her!” I yelled, clenching my fists. “You can do whatever you want to me, but leave her out of this! She never would have gotten involved if it weren’t for me. I’m the one responsible for everything. If it means that she goes free, then I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll forget my love for this person I don’t know and give you everything you ever wanted.”
Zoë smacked her lips. “Oh, how noble,” she said. “The hero wants to sacrifice himself for his beautiful companion. It’s cute. I despise cuteness. I’ll do whatever I please to this little girl.” She touched Zea’s lips with her finger. Zea moved back to get away from her. “Ooh, resistance. I do love a little fight at first. Makes the breaking more satisfying.”
“I didn’t know Zea until a couple of days ago. I give you my Word.”
Zoë flinched as Zea looked at me as if I’d punched a child in the face.
“Your Word?” Zoë repeated. “How quaint. But you are close to her, aren’t you? The possibility is there.”
I looked at Zea and shrugged. “Not that she’s not attractive or anything, but I do have better things to worry about right now than that,” I said. “Although if she’s up for it later, I’d be open for the old college try.”
“The old what?” Zea repeated, her jaw agape.
“Okay, after we get out of here I need to see if we can find a reference book on idioms for you. Otherwise we’re never going to get along. Is the Corpus Christi Central Library still open? That reminds me, I don’t think I returned my books the last time I went. Man, a hundred and seven years of late fees are going to ruin my credit.”
Zoë glared at me and I felt a dark pulsation of power coming from her. Cinderella cowered in the corner, trying not to look. I grimaced, knowing that whatever Zoë had done to her had made her this way. I wondered if I would become like that, helpless and infirm, unable to do anything but what my master commanded. But just as suddenly as she had erupted in power, Zoë’s control over it dissipated and she smiled gingerly.
“It hardly matters, though,” Zoë said. “I have a Feast to initiate and after that there will be plenty of time to break you—both of you. Oh, you’ll resist at first, say that you don’t want it, but I know better. No one’s ever escaped me before. I’ll get what I want and you’ll do everything I tell you to.”
Zoë walked over to Cinderella and rubbed her shoulders in mock tenderness. Cinderella loosened up in response, her mind no longer hers to control.
“Now, Cinderella, my sweet, we have a Feast to prepare,” Zoë said, lifting her up. “And a fire to start.
Chapter 19
Zea stared at me coldly as we stood, suspended by the chains in the room, no one even bothering to guard us. I flinched and looked away from her. What had I done to deserve that? Sure the enemy had captured us and the plan had failed, but we were still alive, right? There was still a chance to get out of here and fight.
We couldn’t use invocation. That would be detected, especially since they would have no reason to check for anything but invocation.
“What were you thinking?” Zea asked.
“About what?” I asked.
“Antagonizing Zoë. She’s already going to hurt us. You didn’t have to make it worse.”
“No she won’t. We’re gonna escape.”
“And how do you propose we do that?”
“I’m working on that.”
“Always jumping in without thinking of the consequences and I let myself fall for it.” She sighed. “I thought you could overcome it. I didn’t want you to sacrifice yourself.”
I furrowed an eyebrow. “Why wouldn’t I sacrifice myself for you? If it meant you didn’t get hurt, I’d do it for you.”
“Listen, I think it’s noble that you’d rather you got hurt than me, but I won’t stand for it when you’re sacrificing yourself because you want to die.”
I coughed. What was she talking about? Why would I want to die?
“You still don’t get it, do you?” Zea asked. “You’ve blinded yourself from your true intentions. You honestly don’t know what you’re trying to do to yourself.”
“Oh, and you do?” I asked.
“Yes. It’s who I am. I can’t help but know. But…”
“But what?”
“I’ve seen things you see,” Zea said, frowning. “Our link never fully went out. We both never really realized that it hadn’t shut down fully. It’s why we both got hurt so much when Cole attacked us. I saw those people on the other end of the chasm. Were they your family? Friends? Do you want to meet them so badly that you’d try to get yourself killed to meet them?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Listen, I’m tired of these baseless insinuations. We need to focus on getting out of here so—”
“SHUT THE HELL UP, BLAKE!”
I quivered, having never heard Zea raise her voice before to such lengths. She stopped for a moment, realizing what she’d done, but shook her head, unapologetic.
“I’m sorry I said that, but I’m tired of keeping quiet about this,” Zea said, her eyes growing softer. “It hurts me to feel what you feel. You’ve lost so much and you don’t understand why. You’re trying to find answers, but they just lead to more questions. You were married, but you don’t even know who this woman is, for God’s sake! You lost everyone you were ever close to and you don’t know how you survived! It’s okay to feel this way, Blake. You just have to acknowledge it for what it is.”
“I have been,” I protested. “I’ve been dealing with it in my own way. I have to honor their memory. I have to stand by what the Gray Forum meant.”
“Quit hiding behind those defenses, Blake! They won’t work on me. I know what you feel. You’re lost. You’re scared. You can joke as much as you want, but we both know you only do it to hide how broken you are. You just won’t let yourself process that and it’s blinding you to how you’re really feeling. He was so close to holding your hand to bring you to the other side. All you had to do was reach out to him.”
“It was just a daydream. Atanasio and I were close. It’s only natural I’d see him and the others there.”
“Once is understandable. More than that is bad. You must understand that you’ve let yourself fall. You’ve allowed these barriers to crop up so that you can deny that you ever seriously considered getting yourself killed in a blaze of glory, so your conscience can be clean.”
“If that’s the case, then why would I want to endanger you?”
Zea pursed her lips. “Because you haven’t considered it. You’re only thinking about yourself. Not because you don’t care, but because you don’t want to think about what you dying means to us.”
I bit my lip. That made sense. But it couldn’t be true. I had to save everyone.
“When I incinerated the water off of us, why didn’t you attack?” Zea asked.
I froze. Why hadn’t I? There had been plenty of time for me to invoke another attack since my flash flare had activated. Zea’s drought blast had helped me prepare for another attack. Why hadn’t I attacked?
“I wanted us to get out of there alive,” I said. “We knew there were three of them, but he could’ve had more waiting for us in the shadows.”
“It was the middle of the day,” Zea said. “And his men had standing orders not to kill you. You were safe from a fatal reprisal. Even if we were fired at, we could have taken three of them out for sure.”
I hadn’t thought of that. Or had I? Had I wanted to run away, hoping that in the confusion I’d be hit? That didn’t sound like me. None of this did.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I wouldn’t…normally do that. Why did I do it that way?”
Zea blinked twice, her eyes watering. “I’m not done yet,” she said. “There’s more I noticed.”
I looked at her quizzically. Had I telegraphed my intentions to everyone but myself?
“Why didn’t you pay attention to your healing invocation?” Zea asked.
“What do you mean I didn’t?” I asked. “Of course, I did.”
“Really? Then you would’ve known that I would have been fine given a couple of minutes. You’re not the only one who heals fast here.”
“But you were dying! I had to do everything to stop the bleeding.”
“Yes, but you panicked. You saw wounds where there were none. Blake, how many times was I shot?”
“Four times.”
“Twice.”
I flinched. “What?”
“They only hit me two times. I felt both of them. I didn’t feel anymore.”
“How can you be sure?”
Zea glared. “I was the one who got shot.”
I cowered. “I see, but how could that happen?”
“Because you wanted there to be more. You wanted an excuse to use more energy.”
“You presume to know a lot about what I want.”
“I keep telling you that I can’t help it! You broadcast your emotions at a mental radioactive frequency! It takes everything in me to separate your feelings from mine! I was fine! I could have recovered at any moment!”
“I had to save you! I saw what I saw! I didn’t see my death there, so I knew I wouldn’t die healing you!”
“Then why did you use your own life force to heal me?” Zea asked.
“To save your life!”
“You know enough about healing invocation to know that was a bad idea! You never use your own life to heal another!”
“You were dying!”
“Your invocation was working fine! If you’d only waited a couple of moments you would’ve realize that! You thought it wasn’t working and you panicked! You used evocation to try to save me and my body still hurts from what you did! Do you have any idea what it’s like to have a corrupted part of someone’s soul in your body? How exactly was killing yourself to save me going to help anyone? Why didn’t you think about what you were doing?”
“I didn’t,” I said, looking at the stone ground forlornly.
“Oh, just quit it, Blake!” she yelled, fire in her eyes. “Quit lying to yourself and admit you have a problem!”
“I do not have a problem!”
“Yes you do! I can see it in your eyes every time you lie to me about it! You want to die for what happened! ‘Eyes don’t lie.’”
“Eyes don’t lie,” I said, repeating my mother’s words. “Eyes don’t lie.”
It was true. God help me, but it was true. Zea wouldn’t have said those things if she didn’t mean them. She had no reason to lie to me. We were going to die. If anything, it was the most appropriate moment for truth to be addressed. I had really sunk so low in my fear and shame at being the only Gray Forum member left that I had abandoned every part of what it stood for. I had always been reckless, but this was different. I had never intentionally placed myself in harm’s way to kill myself, hoping to make it look good in the process. Zea had picked up on it earlier during our first sparring match, but I had just misinterpreted her words. I’d thought it was just an attempt to see that I was sad. That I could understand. It was okay to be sad. But to want to kill myself? I could never justify that; it went against everything I was. So, I had to divorce myself from the idea—make it look like it hadn’t been intentional. How much had I deluded myself? What else was I capable of? How could I do this to myself?
“No, they don’t lie,” Zea said, as I looked up at her, tears falling from my left eye. “Please, Blake. You need to stop doing this. Your mother wrote a lot about you in her book. She said she could always tell when you were lying, because you could never look her in the eyes. When you met her eyes, she always saw the lie you held behind them.”
“You read my mother’s book?”
“Mara made it required reading. Said it was important to understanding others.”
“That’s my mother, always butting into other people’s business.”
“Except sometimes you need to intervene, because sometimes other people really need your advice.”
“Meddlers,” I mumbled. “I’m attracted to meddlers.”
“What was that?” Zea asked.
“Nothing.” I shook my head, not knowing where the thought had come from.
“This isn’t just nothing, Blake. This is your life we’re talking about. Do you really think it would be better if you weren’t here anymore? Would it bring back anyone that you lost? Can you justify your role as a Sentinel if you didn’t do everything in your power to protect God’s creations?”
I had no response. She’d cornered me. I hadn’t done everything to do my job. I had fallen into a depression that had blindsided me. I had even been able to trick myself into thinking that everything was all right and that the legitimate fears of my friends were them overreacting to nothing.
Nothing comes from nothing, I thought.
Oh yes, I had been trying to save people and my plan was perfectly legitimate, but that wasn’t enough. If I didn’t believe in what I was doing, then it was worthless. If I didn’t believe in my own life, how could I save others?
Nothing comes from nothing.
It was my attitude that was the real problem. Sentinels couldn’t operate without belief in their faith and their powers. If they didn’t, then the invocations would never be as strong as they could be and were more likely to fail. I should have noticed when I’d saved Nathan, but I hadn’t. Zea had caught onto it, but I hadn’t. I was never going to get anything done if I didn’t face who I was.
Nothing comes from nothing.
I closed my eyes and saw my friends and family looking back at me. They were holding out their hands to me, begging me to come wit
h them. I eyed them with intense passion, wishing that it didn’t have to be this way. I held out my hand to them and then threw it down, shaking my head. I wanted to live.
“I have better places to be,” I said. “I love you all, but I can’t be with you yet. I have a job to do.”
They stared at me for a moment as if I were mad, but then, to my surprise, they all started clapping for me and disappeared as I opened my eyes.
Nothing comes from nothing, Nathan-Prime sent. You have nowhere to go but ever upward.
I looked up and smiled. Zea watched me, trying to make sure I was okay.
“I am Magnus Blake Macbeth Azarel and nothing comes from nothing,” I said.
Zea smiled. I met her eyes and we saw the truth.
I felt a stirring in my chest, like my heart was beating properly for the first time in many years. I wanted to clutch it, but the chains stopped me. I didn’t care. It had been so simple. I was amazed at how quickly it had taken me to recover from this unknown mental malady.
“You aren’t,” Zea said. “This is only a temporary relief, but it’s a start. You haven’t dealt with it fully yet, but you will. I know you will.”
I smiled. “You’re very blunt, you know that, right?”
Zea shrugged. “People waste too much time on niceties.”
“You definitely would’ve gotten along with my dad. My mom too, if I’m honest.”
Then I paused, reminded of their deaths once more. The stirring in my chest left me behind. I shook my head and summoned the will to resist the pain.
“I know what it’s like to lose your parents,” Zea said. “I never knew mine. Mara’s all I’ve ever had.”
“Does it get any easier?” I asked.
“No, but you learn to accept reality for what it is. It’s what’s asked of us.”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
I stared at the ground for a while, dwelling on my parents. I watched my father crafting balls of light. He flung them into the air, crafting fireworks that lit up the night sky. My mother sat beside me, waving her fingers around in the air to forge a target out of pure darkness for me to practice my invocation with. They both smiled as I smashed it completely when I put too much force into the blast, chiding me on my recklessness. I laughed in the present. I was who I was thanks to them.
