Page 41 of A Grave Not Made For Mourning
I roll my eyes, making sure he can see.“Okay, so perhaps I can be content. But I cannot be satisfied.”
He slows the dance—barely. Enough to draw me in closer.
His lips brush the edge of a smile.
“I do not satisfy you?”the boy asks.
I laugh, thinking it must be a joke. But when I meet his gaze again, I see that I missed the mark.“I don’t see how—”
“Then make me physical.”
My feet stop moving under me. The boy tries to tug us back into the dance, but I am much stronger. We are in my mind, after all. I don’t budge.
“What?”I shudder.
Have I misheard him?
The boy frowns. I don’t see how he could be upset; he must have known this would be my reaction.
“You say I am not real, but I am very real.”He raises a hand, the edges of his fingers blurring like the people dancing around us.“What I am not is tangible.”
I stare at him, open-mouthed. I wish I could close it, but even in my mind, I am the expressive Little Thorn.
“I don’t have the ability to do something like that,”I say.
“You can, my love,”the boy says.“The things they’ve always said about you—prodigal daughter, most powerful—those things are true things. You could bring me to life. I could hold you beyond our confines—”
I don’t give myself a moment to think. I open my eyes, escaping. But even as I watch the real ballroom, the clear people and the true noise, I can feel the boy in my head. I’ve spent years with him as my only companion. Have I taken it too far?
Is it possible for this figment of my imagination to grow attached to me?
I contemplate going back to the boy, asking him these questions myself. But I need to think. Making him tangible would defeat the purpose. If he were real, I wouldn’t be able to handle his companionship.
Would I?
As if I’m lost at sea and he is the lifeline, my eyes drift toward Azaire. He’s back to dancing with his fair share of girls. Or, I suppose, he’s been doing that the entire time. I’m the one who left.
There are girls I’ve never seen, girls I’ve seen a million times, and none I’ve ever spoken to.
I was older than the others when I enrolled at Visnatus—ten years old. Most of the kids already had their cliques, and I had no interest in being in any. I had no interest in company. Company was a burden back then, before I grew up and realized intimacy was something I craved and could never have.
Now I am here, sitting in a corner amongst the rulers of our worlds. No one pays any attention to me. I think I prefer it this way because if they did, then the question would arise: What is wrong with her?
I don’t need anybody answering for me.
Azaire looks at me, looking at him. I shake my head, quickly looking down. Irrationally hoping that he saw nothing. Oddly wondering what the boy in my head is thinking.
I’m staring at the glowing marble floor, at my silver shoes to match my silver dress for the silver ball. The silver chandeliersreflect through the room, and the moonlight reflects in from the wall of windows behind me.
I sit at the very edge of the tables set for the rulers. Entirely alone, suffocated in this room.
Sometimes it feels like someone is holding my head under the water, forcing me to choke in the liquid. Then I realize it’s my own hand keeping me under. That there’s no one to blame.
As soon as I fully dive into that emotion, another crashes over me—fear. The desperate kind.
My eyes flicker, darting nervously, my muscles taut, hands clenching like I’m about to fight.
Someone is looking at another person—recognition edged with panic. They’re clinging to the hope that what they’re seeing isn’t real, that it’s a trick of the light. But beneath that hope is a bitter dread: part of them always knew.
