Infinity Son (Infinity Cycle #1)(12)
“Sorry I’m a mess,” Emil says as we get past the enforcers.
“You’re not a mess, and you’re going to be okay,” I say. It’s the best I can think of, though I’m not sure there are any right words to calm down Emil or heal his emotional scarring.
I love my brother, but we need time apart. Once I move to Los Angeles, I’m only focusing on myself. Emil is going to have to up his game to take better care of himself without me around. It’ll be good for us. Brothers shouldn’t get in the way of each other’s lives.
I’m doing my best to keep it together, especially since Prudencia already saw me get down on myself once this week, but the field is packed with attendees on picnic blankets, and we’re so far from the domed stage, and I’ve lost all natural light out here for filming. I set up my camera anyway. The Crowned Dreamer hasn’t cared about me since showing up in the sky, but maybe tonight the constellation will throw me a bone so I can get some halfway decent content.
We’ve already missed my favorite artist Himalia Lim’s first public interview since making it her mission to fly around and paint neighborhoods in the Bronx that get a bad rap, ensuring that people won’t dismiss them so easily. It sucks how I’ll have to watch that on someone else’s YouTube channel and have to sit through Oak’s band right now instead. I unfollowed Oak on Instagram a few months back because he stopped posting clips of his blooming power and was only sharing ultra-bait shirtless pictures and asking followers to answer random questions that had nothing to do with the ripped abs on display. I studied his engagement, and I got to give him credit because people care way more about his muscles than using his gleam in gardens. We all got to do what we got to do to make ourselves known.
I’m positioning my camera for the main event when a celestial begins floating in my line of vision. Her fake glow-in-the-dark tattoo is awesome, but it’s not going to get me views.
“You okay?” Prudencia asks.
“She’s blocking me,” I say.
“Let her live. She probably doesn’t get to use her power in the open,” Prudencia says. She rests her hand on my shoulder and I meet her eyes. “You should put your camera away anyway, Brighton. It’s our last night together.”
Tonight could’ve been so different if it were just me and Pru sitting under the stars. If my power brawl video had gone viral so I could take the night off. But I can’t level up if I don’t put the work in every chance I get. “I’m never going to find myself on that stage if I don’t give it my all.”
“That’s fair,” Prudencia says, but in a way that I hear as “Your loss.”
Maybe.
The crowd erupts into cheers as Lore appears onstage. Lore has the life I want, and they rose to internet fame pretty quickly: they initially went viral when they campaigned to become their school’s first-ever Korean American genderqueer class president, inspiring others to follow in their footsteps; they reached a million subscribers within a year with content that ranges from comedy skits to news about heroic acts from celestials to counter the overwhelming media against them; they even got to sit down with Wesley Young last December on his birthday and chat with him about fat acceptance as he played with puppies; and now they’re getting an interview that makes the rest of us look like amateurs.
“Thanks for the love, New York,” Lore says into a mic. They’re wearing a silver dress that sparkles like stars on the stage. “I can’t even believe that we’re being graced by this inspiring woman’s presence, so let’s get her out here before she changes her mind. Huge round of applause for the candidate I can’t wait to vote for in November—Congresswoman Nicolette Sunstar!”
The roars are thunderous as Nicolette Sunstar appears in a yellow pantsuit and hugs Lore. The two sit down and immediately seem like old friends, when in reality they probably spoke for a few minutes backstage. But the way Congresswoman Sunstar praises Lore for their high school election with the air of it being as significant as her run for president is so genuine.
Lore leads Sunstar into a deeper conversation about what it means to be the first ever Black celestial on the ticket before she reminds us all what she’s fighting for: better job opportunities for gleamcrafters so they don’t have to make money by powering wands, gem-grenades, and shackles with their gifts, only for enforcers to use those weapons against them; protecting pregnant celestials who are being killed, and in other cases, being detained by authorities and locked away underground, far away from the stars that give them power, to suppress their children’s abilities from reaching their true potential; removing the corrupt enforcers from the force so gleamcrafters can live their lives in peace—and not in havens; condemning the alchemists like Luna Marnette, leader of the Blood Casters, who are clearly doing more harm than good, no matter how much money they make for the enforcers.
I’ve given up catching any of this on camera—everyone’s footage and livestreams will have me beat—so I lean forward with everyone else on the field as Sunstar commands our attention.
“Time and time again my opponents—Senator Iron, especially—have put down those with powers as they pursue their own,” Sunstar says with the gentleness of a mother telling a bedtime story. “There is no question that the senator has faced tragedy with the loss of his wife and son. But the faults of some do not represent the lives of all. I truly wish I could lead an ordinary life as a mother who is stressed about parent-teacher conferences instead of global affairs. As a wife keeping my love strong instead of a country intact. But as a celestial who wants to see my community safe and nurtured, I can’t sit still and expect others to do the work I’m unwilling to do myself.”