Page 56 of A Grave Not Made For Mourning
Xander was convulsing.
I lunged forward, reaching for him. My fingers were inches from his wrist, a breath from pulling him back.
Then he twitched, slipping away like water.
Xander rolled off the cliff.
I watched as his body disappeared over the edge. Then I fell to the ground, and my head started bleeding. It felt as if I hit rock after rock.
As ifI’dtumbled down a cliff.
When my parents found me, I was crying and nearly unconscious.
I said,There’s so much blood.
Little Thorn, Pa said,you aren’t bleeding.
The pain subsided in that moment, replaced by worry. It was later that I put it together; it was Ma and Pa’s worry I felt. It stopped me from reliving the pain of Xander’s death.
A few days after, his body washed up on the shore, his skull cracked open.
They said the tide ran him into a rock.
But the green of his eyes was gone, replaced by nothing but white. No one had an explanation. And no one knew what I’d done.
At least, no one said it.
I always suspected Ma knew. She’d seen the look in my eyes, the way I flinched whenever anyone mentioned Xander. She never said a word, but I think that’s why she pushed so hard to get me into Visnatus Academy. Maybe she thought they could fix me, that they could stop what happened to Xander from happening again.
Calista rolls her eyes, and her secondhand smoke stings as I take a deep breath.
“Maybe then it’d be a boy,” she says, responding to my concerns about her loving the next person who comes close.
“Calista—”
“Father tells me it’s because I am to marry Lucian,” Calista says hastily. “But I know that if Lilac weren’t a girl, he’d have no problem with the fling. Gods, even if I were married, I could probably have male consorts.”
My homeworld, Eunaris, never had any qualms with sexuality. It was a question of what you like, never a fuss, as simple as whether you preferred sweet or salty. As a Eunoia at Visnatus, I’m familiar with her worlds’ customs. We’re here to serve Ilyria and Folkara.
“When you’re queen, couldn’t you do it anyway?” I ask.
Calista scoffs, an emotionless laugh. “The crown is an invisible cage,” she remarks. “I am held in place by public scrutiny.”
“Couldn’t you change it?”
“The only people who believe in change are those without power.”
Chapter 12
The Burden of
Unspoken Truths
Now
“W
endy? Wendy!” a voice calls from the distance.
