Page 158 of A Dose of Agony
Worse than the girl people think tried to enter the games, she will be the girl who did. Her power will protect her, but it won’t help the emotional impact of being hated.
“You have friends,” she whispers. “I’m happy you have friends. But I don’t want any.”
I brush a stray strands of hair behind her ear. I long to pull her into my arms and hold her tightly, but I get the feeling she doesn’t want that.
“Do you want to be my friend still?” I whisper. My heart threatens to crack. “Are we okay?”
Her eyes flash up to mine. “Of course we’re okay,” she says. “You—you saved me. I could never—” she shakes her head.
“I love you, Liz. I will always love you. Just tell me whatever you need. If you need space from me, I’ll give it.”
She sniffs and nods. “Yes, I need some space. My mind is—I don’t want to deal with things. I want to just exist here. I don’t want to think. I don’t want to feel.”
Now, my heart does crack.
“I’ll be okay,” she assures me with a forced smile. “I’ll make it through. This school can’t be worse than what I’ve already endured.”
I nod.
She finishes off her drink. “I’m just going to go sit down for a bit.”
I watch her slip back into the dark room with pulsing red lights and sinks back into the armchair in the corner.
Jarron slips his hands back around my waist. “She’ll be okay,” he tells me. “She’s strong. It’s just going to be hard for a while.”
I nod and lean back against him. “I wish there was more I could do.”
“This is her battle now.”
I sigh, and eventually we retake our place among our friends.
“So Candice,” Elliot the wolf shifter says, “What’s your plan for next year?
“Ruling over an alien world, obviously,” Stassi answers.
I laugh. “No I won’t be queen of Oriziah yet,” I laugh. “We’re—thinking of going to college. We just haven’t decided where yet.”
“And by we,” Jarron says, “She means she will be deciding. I will follow wherever she wants to go.”
We’d talked about this a few times already, but I hadn’t actually considered the idea of going to a human college. Could I drag Jarron to Oxford or Princeton or something? It seems so weird. I feels like an entirely different life. An entirely different me.
“We’re thinking one of the big supernatural colleges in the U.S.”
“Moonstone University is closest to her parents,” Jarron says, squeezing my thigh.
“I haven’t applied anywhere yet though.”
“Like that matters. You’re the future rulers of a powerful world. Any school would make space for you.”
“Yeah, that’s what Jarron keeps saying.”
“You can go anywhere you want,” Manuela says. “Even another planet.”
I shiver. “No other planets for me. Not yet.”
At some I’ll spend a good portion of my life on Oriziah but that still wild to consider. Jarron says we don’t have to take the throne for many, many years. Like fifty years, if we don’t want to. I could live a whole human life first, if that’s what I want. Have a career and a white picket fence. Have children—yes those children will require a little extra care since they’ll be half demon, but we could have a mostly normal life together if we choose it.
We could travel all of Earth.
