High Voltage (Fever #10)(74)
“But don’t you sort of just know what you can do?” My gift was simple, it slammed me in the face every day. Since the Song was sung, it had grown even more potent, but thanks to time spent with Kasteo, I’d learned how to make and hold walls, Kevlar myself in emotional armor. Before I slept each night, I deliberately and carefully walled the world out, creating a blessed fortress of silence for myself, so I might face the next day rejuvenated, strong.
“Not until I try,” Christian said. “And often I’m not trying to do anything at all. The power manifests without my consent, like the day I strolled into the pub. Shortly after I imprisoned myself here, your Sean joined me. He’s Famine. Wherever he walks, the earth dies, crops wither, the soil goes barren; in time enough, the world would starve. The same thing happened to him that occurred with me: he felt something seeping up from the soil and, as he walked, the earth around him began to die. Unlike me, he hasn’t been able to contain that power.”
I winced. “It was Sean who destroyed this land?”
“Aye. He tests himself, strolls out to a strip of what blanched green remains when he thinks he’s ready to try again. Each time he destroys the earth, he returns angrier, grows more bitter. Anger and bitterness aren’t emotions an Unseelie prince can indulge without catastrophic results.”
“What is that? Who lives there?” I exclaimed. He’d soared us far to the north as we’d talked, and we now glided directly above the line of demarcation where the perimeter of his blackened kingdom met lush green again. I’d seen something like it before, the abrupt transition where the Shades had devoured everything in sight as they’d approached our abbey, but had stopped for reasons unknown.
On the charred land to my right stood a small thatch-roofed crofter’s cottage in the midst of lifeless earth. On the grassy side, directly adjacent to it, was another small crofter’s cottage of stone that was welcoming and warm, surrounded by neatly tended gardens where flowers bloomed.
The cottages were day and night, yin and yang, huddled next to each other. Far below us a couple walked on the grassy side, near the cottage, holding hands.
“That’s Dageus and Chloe. He lives within my wards. She lives just beyond them. I’ve warded the fuck out of her cottage, too, but will not permit her inside my kingdom, lest we inadvertently harm her.”
“You came into our abbey yet killed no one. I felt you, Christian. You have it under control.”
“There is no ward, no charm, no magic solution to harnessing a prince’s deadly powers. What I used to master it is the simplest yet often the most elusive thing of all: love. If I grow angry, if I allow myself any negative emotion at all, I can slip,” he said quietly. “The key to success is never being bitter, never being angry, never coveting, never succumbing to any kind of desire that contains darkness. Your Sean, lass, he’s consumed by it.”
I blinked back a swift burn of tears. I’d wondered, so many nights, in my private garden of silence at the end of each day, where my childhood love had gone. Why he’d never texted or called. He’d simply walked away, without another word. It had pained me almost beyond enduring.
Yet, all this time, Sean had been holed up in isolation, warded away from the world, trying to learn to control the Unseelie monster he’d become. All this time, I’d thought he’d left me because he didn’t want me, didn’t want us. And so, I’d given him his privacy. I’d not texted or called either. Stung, hurt. McLaughlin-stubborn and unyielding.
But that wasn’t why he’d left at all. Sometimes, despite the open window I have into everyone else’s emotions, I can be blind and foolish about my own. “Take me to him, Christian.”
“I hoped you’d say that.”
Crawling in my skin, these wounds they will not heal
I LOST ONE OF MY birds this morning.
His name was Charles James Aubry. He was twenty-three. He hung himself in my flat on Desoto after only nine days off the streets. I just dropped in on him three days ago and even I’d been fooled.
But I’ve seen many come and go and I’ve learned a bit about their ways; sometimes right before they check out, they seem better than ever, well-adjusted. Not giddy or tip-you-off kind of happy, but misleadingly balanced, and I wonder about that borrowed grace. Wonder about the enormous amount of pain they must be suffering to finally feel okay only when they decide to opt out of this crazy, beautiful world. You don’t see it coming, not even me. Although I’ve learned to watch for an unexpected, suspicious peace.
He left a note: I didn’t ask to be born.
I wish I had more time. I have a theory about depression. I think it comes from a shift in the chemicals in our brains because stress, trauma, and grief deplete our happy juice, disrupt the delicate, necessary balance and make the world go flat around us, get scary and monochrome, too heavy to bear. And once you’re there, with depleted brain chemicals and flat colors, you’re too depressed to fight your way out. I think exercise is a way to increase endorphins, rebalance the brain, and I wonder if my extreme velocity and constant motion feed my brain undiluted happy juice, constantly perking me up. I wonder if I figured out, say—the right blend of cortisol, 5HTP, and Bacopa, maybe a few other nootropics, plus lots of fun, physical activity, and loads of kindness and sunshine—then gave those people one happy, stress-free year without any responsibility, maybe I could turn their world around.