Altered

TWENTY-TWO

I STARE BLANKLY AT THE DOOR. THE only light streams in from the opened curtains, and everything around me is washed out and colorless. It feels false, even though this is reality. This is the real world. My real world, and I don’t want any part of it.

I’m still sitting there when Erik pushes the door open and peeks into my room. “Hey, you.”

I can’t manage a reply.

“I heard,” Erik says, the blue of his eyes deep and concerned, “about Jost.”

“I’m so tired of this,” I say through gritted teeth. “I’m so tired of fighting with him.”

“But he’s gone now.”

I swallow, trying to digest the bitter truth of his words. “Yes. He is.”

“Which means you don’t have to fight anymore.” Erik moves beside me, hovering next to my vanity and waiting for me to speak.

I glance up at him. His expression is hard, but there’s something beneath it. Conflict.

“Erik—” I start to say.

“Don’t,” he says, putting a finger on my lips. I close my eyes and a tear falls, cold against my heated skin.

“You’re crying,” he says, and his hands drop from my face.

“It’s … it’s not you,” I say, because it isn’t.

It isn’t him. I know how he feels. And part of me wants to crash into him and forget. Forget Jost. Forget everything that’s happened since we left Arras. But Erik deserves more than I can give him. He deserves more than I can give anyone.

“For once let yourself feel something, Ad!” Erik yells, losing his composed attitude. “You can’t push everything down and make it disappear.”

“I feel alone,” I mumble.

“You aren’t.” Erik stands over me shaking his head. “You have me.”

“You deserve better,” I say to him, standing so that he can’t peer down at me like he’s looking into my soul.

“You’re the closest thing to a friend I’ve had for a long time.” He fingers the tear in my sleeve, and I pull my arm back. “So you can’t push me away, because I’m not giving up on you.”

“I feel like a lost cause. I’m tired of running and fighting, Erik. I don’t know what I’m doing anymore. They didn’t even take me on the mission because I’m so useless. I guess I’m ready for this to be over,” I admit.

“This isn’t you,” he says. “Adelice Lewys rips the world apart. She attacks Remnants. She’s a little stupid but not helpless.”

“Do you really know me, Erik?” I ask, and the words taste sour. They build in my throat, unleashing themselves with an anger that pushes me forward to stare at my reflection screaming in the vanity mirror. “About him—about anything. I don’t even know why I’m doing this. I don’t know who I am anymore!”

I lash out at the image in front of me, flinging brushes and cosmetics across the room. They clatter to the floor, bottles shattering. The destruction calms me enough for me to break the hold of the mirror.

Erik’s shoulders drop, but his hands curl into fists. “I do.”

I stare at Erik as he bends to gather the scattered glass from the floor, wondering how he can be so certain. Of me. Of what we’re doing here. Isn’t he the boy who was angry for being ripped to Earth? How has he grown so much?

“Look, Ad,” he says, dropping to kneel next to me. “You are extraordinary.”

“I don’t want to be extraordinary,” I say softly, not meeting his eyes.

“I don’t mean your skills. You’re not extraordinary because you can weave, you are extraordinary because you have a good soul. Much better than mine. Or Jost’s. Or pretty much everyone I’ve ever known,” he says.

“A good soul who let her father die, who lets her mom sit in a prison cell. You know why Jost left, because he doesn’t think I can handle Sebrina.”

“Handle Sebrina?”

“Like be her mom or whatever.”

“That’s a lot to ask anyone,” Erik says.

“But if I loved him wouldn’t I have said I could, wouldn’t I have fought for it?” I ask.

I want him to answer me, because this is the question pressing at my chest, bearing down on my lungs. An answer would be my oxygen.

“You mean you can’t fathom how you would respond to someone you’ve never met in a situation you’ve never been in?”

I know the point Erik is trying to make, but it falls flat.

“Ad, he’s scared. Not just of not getting to Sebrina,” he says, “but of losing you.”

“Of losing me?” I repeat.

“You’re in more danger now than Rozenn ever was. People are chasing you. People who want to kill you or use you. He knows that.”

“So he’s protecting me?” I don’t buy it. The pain in Jost’s eyes wasn’t from loss, it was from betrayal. I know that. I betrayed him, and the worst part is that I’m not even sure how.

“He’s protecting himself.”

“I’m not even sure we ever loved each other. I mean, not like my parents,” I say.

“It’s not that simple,” Erik points out. “Your parents loved each other, but your mother also loved Dante.”

“I know. That makes it even harder to understand. I know she loved Benn, my father, but why didn’t she ever mention Dante?”

“She was protecting you, but she was also protecting herself, like Jost. Some things are too painful to bear. Jost can’t stand even thinking about losing you, and he almost has several times. He thinks if he shuts you out he won’t lose you.” Erik pauses and puts his hand on my knee. “But some people have too large an impact on our lives for us to imagine we can forget them. I know if I’d known you a week and lost you, I’d miss you the rest of my life.”

“I’d miss you, too.”

I see something hidden behind his friendly demeanor and the burning force of it frightens me. But he’s slipping back into our safe relationship now. The one where he doesn’t betray his brother. The one where I don’t have to choose.

“You going to be all right?”

“Yes,” I say. And somehow, despite the empty echo in my chest, I know I will be. “I’m going to wake up tomorrow and it will be a new day. Promise me something?”

“Anything,” he says.

“That you’ll drag me out of bed if I don’t get up tomorrow,” I say, stumbling a bit over the sadness creeping into my words.

Erik sighs, but agrees. “I promise. And what are your plans after you manage that?”

“I’m going to have Dante teach me how to alter.”

“You know how to have a good time,” Erik says.

“I’m quite the party girl,” I agree.

“Can I come?” Erik asks.

“Sure,” I say.

“I wasn’t invited on their little hunting trip,” he says. “And I’m getting a bit bored around here.”

“You could swim,” I suggest. “There are about ten pools.”

“No trunks,” Erik says, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively. “I’d have to skinny-dip.”

I know my face is on fire right now, but I grin despite myself and push him out of my room. I have plenty to do today. Like cry away this ache so I can start tomorrow in a new world.