The Essence (10 page)

Zafir jumped a little each time she appeared, as if startled by her enthusiasm. I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen him so unnerved.

“I don’t trust her,” he warned between clenched teeth when she scurried away through the lunchtime crowd to get me an apple I’d never actually requested. I’d simply commented that hers looked delicious. I was certain she would have offered it to me if she hadn’t already taken a bite.

“She’s harmless, Zafir. Just trying to be helpful. It’s sweet, really.”

“Don’t confuse sweet with cloying. The latter can be difficult to swallow.”

Brook sat down beside me, carrying a tray overfilled with two bowls of stew and a plate of steamed potatoes. Since Zafir and I already had our food, I assumed it was all for her. She skewered one of the potatoes with her fork and dunked it into the stew. “The girl?” she asked. When Zafir nodded, she said, “I don’t trust her,” she announced, right before stuffing the entire potato in her mouth.

Sydney joined us then, her own plate filled with fresh vegetables and a strip of herbed whitefish. That was another thing different about the Academy; they served food here, prepared to order.

Brook curled her lip at Sydney’s light fare but held her comments, probably because her mouth was too full.

“So? How do you think it’s going?” Sydney breathed in a hopeful tone. I almost hated to answer her question . . . especially in front of Brook and Zafir.

I was grateful to see the new system working. To see kids who’d once been divided, schooled under the same roof, and those born to parents of the Serving class attending school at all.

To hear Englaise spoken everywhere.

But I wondered how long the protesters would remain out front. I wondered how long they’d remain peaceful.

I shrugged. “It’s fine,” I answered. “It’ll be . . . an adjustment.”

“What’s it like?” Sydney asked, smiling reticently. “Living in the palace, I mean. Being the queen.”

It was an interesting question, and I thought about it as I pushed my fork through my bowl. “It’s . . . an adjustment,” I said again, smiling self-consciously.

Brook nudged me, winking conspiratorially. “Yeah, an adjustment,” she repeated, as if it were some sort of inside joke. It wasn’t, and she was the only one at the table grinning.

Sydney frowned at her, and I wondered if she thought Brook was somehow unhinged. I was starting to wonder myself.

“It’s weird,” I went on. “There are parts I like, things that are easier . . . especially for my family. Others . . .” I lifted a piece of seasoned beef from my stew and thought of my riding lessons. “Others I can do without. But I like what I’m able to do, the changes I can make.” I tasted the meat, savoring the flavor, simpler than the foods we had at the palace, closer to those my parents had prepared in their restaurant. “What are people saying? About me? About the way things have changed?”

Brook leaned closer now, and the color in Sydney’s cheeks bloomed. Her shoulders lifted as I held my breath, worried about what she had to say. “Mostly, it’s good,” she finally replied. “Mostly, they’re relieved not to have to carry their Passports wherever they go, or to live in fear of lifting their eyes at the wrong moment. The gallows were torn down during the last lunar cycle, and the Central Square is now a place of music and dance, where street performers gather.” Her gaze dropped to her plate then. “Surely you know that others aren’t as pleased with the new order of things. My mother says their reach is marginal. But she says that even marginal can be damaging when strategically placed.”

I thought about that, about Brook’s father, and his small band of followers. Marginal was probably a good way to describe them.

Strategic was probably better.

Delta came back, carrying a crisp, red apple in both of her hands, holding it out to me as if bearing a gift. Her smile was so infectious, I nearly giggled as I took it.

“Please, Your Majesty, if there’s anything else I can get you, anything at all . . .” Her offer dangled between us.

“You really don’t have to” was all I said, not wanting to be waited on here, of all places. “And, please,” I insisted. “Call me Charlie.”

“Pssh,” she scoffed, waving her hand at me. “I could never.” And then she skipped away, a satisfied smiled on her face.

Inwardly, I sighed. I would be glad to get back to the palace, to the life I was becoming familiar with. To my routine and my family.

Zafir reached down and snatched the apple that I held halfway to my mouth. I turned in time to see him chucking it into the trash. “Sorry, Your Majesty. You can’t be too careful.”

I hadn’t meant to slip away from Zafir and the others.

Or maybe I had. Probably, I had.

All I’d really wanted was to have a few moments of peace before leaving for Capitol Hall. . . . A few moments during which I could collect myself and gather my thoughts. It didn’t really matter, though, I supposed as I stood in front of the washroom mirror examining my reflection: my silvered hair, my wide blue eyes, my skin—so pale and luminous, casting a light of its own. I doubted I’d have long before they realized where I’d gone to.

I could remember, when I was little, staring at my reflection for hours and wishing I looked like Brooklynn. Wishing I had her dark hair and dark eyes. Wishing that
my
skin was the color of baked honey rather than colorless milk.

She could never be you,
I heard a dusky voice whisper.
She could never contain the kind of power you contain.

My fingers gripped the edge of the sink “Not now, not now, not now . . .” I dropped my head, repeating the words as I willed Sabara away.

Closing my eyes, I counted.

One. I took a breath and held it, trying to find the strength to crush her.

Two. I imagined shoving her, pushing until she was buried deep inside of me once more.

Three. I let the air out slowly and opened my eyes again, blinking against the harsh overhead light.

But the face staring back at me from the mirror was no longer my own. It belonged to a woman with wild red hair and red-hot eyes. Her skin was the only likeness between us: white as alabaster.

I startled, my hands—and hers—flying to cover my face.

But before I could breathe, or even blink, she was gone. It was me again, staring back from the other side of the glass.

Only me.

I trembled, no longer sure I could trust myself. No longer certain my eyes hadn’t deceived me.

And then I heard her voice again.
Trust me.
Trust . . . us.

There is no us,
I insisted silently, biting my lip until it bled between my teeth. I felt frustration uncoil, and this time I knew it was my own.

That couldn’t have been her. That couldn’t have been Sabara in the mirror staring back at me.

Sabara was dead.

“You’re dead!” I shouted, my voice determined and angry, daring my reflection to shift once more. Daring my eyes to see her.

I don’t know what I thought would happen in that moment, but what I didn’t expect was for the world around me to disintegrate into utter pandemonium.

It was the blast that came first, rumbling the floor beneath me and splintering the mirror into a million tiny shards until my reflection was unrecognizable, even to myself. Instinctively, my arm shot up to cover my face as I crouched low. My fingertips clawed the edge of the porcelain sink for support. Above me, the electric lights flickered and blinked.

For the briefest moment, as my heart hammered painfully, I thought the worst of it had passed with that single explosion, and I allowed hope to fill me as I breathed again.

But then a second blast ripped the air, and everything around me went black, the power failing at last. From above, I was showered with broken ceiling tiles, sharp and unforgiving. I ducked beneath the lip of the sink, squeezing my eyes closed against the dust that choked me as I tasted my own stomach acid rising in the back of my throat.

Over the ringing in my ears, I heard screams and shouts, cries for help that filled the hallways beyond the closed door, reverberating in frantic discord.

My eyes widened as I was suddenly aware that the bathroom wasn’t completely cloaked in blackness, not in the way it should be.

Pale light sparked from my skin, turning me into a beacon of sorts . . . A living, breathing beacon. I searched the rubble around me, trying to gain my bearings, and realized that there was a second source of light, faint but visible, coming from just beneath the closed door.

Scrambling toward it on my hands and knees, I moved recklessly over fallen debris, razor-edged pieces that nicked and abraded my palms. I dropped onto my stomach as a third explosion shook the ground like an earthquake, and this time I heard something else as well: the unmistakable sounds of gunfire.

I couldn’t stop myself from wondering whose weapons those were. Who was firing upon whom.

The door, when I finally reached it, was warm . . . hot, even. And I worried about what that might mean, about what I would be walking into if I tried to go out there. But I couldn’t stay here, cowering in the washroom. It might end up being my tomb if I didn’t at least try to escape.

More screams found their way to my side of the door, piercing me, and I held my breath, bracing myself as I decided to go for it. I had to.

I used the handle to drag myself up, and I eased the door open. Outside, the hallways were blanketed in gloom, and the acrid taste of smoke choked me and singed the hairs inside my nose. I tugged at the hem of my shirt, lifting it to cover my mouth. But I couldn’t stop moving; I had to get out of there.

Students rushed past, pushing me out of their way, and I heard more shouting and more shots fired. I kept my head low, but I stayed on my feet and kept moving, trying not to trip over the debris in my path. The only thing I could see was myself, my own skin, and even the light that came from within me couldn’t penetrate the thick, black clouds that billowed everywhere. It reflected off the smoke, making the smoke look as if it were coming from me, as if
I
was the source of all this destruction.

“Zafir!” My voice rasped, but it was lost in a tide of shrieks and chaos.

I reached a door and I slid my hands over it as I slowed to peer inside the broken pane where a window had once been. The classroom beyond was choked with the same dense smoke that filled the hallways. But some light filtered in through the third-floor window on the other side of the room.

Beneath the teacher’s desk, I could see three younger students, barely older than Angelina, huddled together. Hiding. I recognized the small black-haired boy who was coughing so hard I worried he’d swallowed too much of the roiling smoke—there seemed no more room in his lungs for real air.

It was the first boy off the bus that morning: Phoenix.

But it was the body of the instructor lying on the floor beside them, her eyes large and unblinking, that made me realize I couldn’t just leave them there. Half of her skull had been caved in from a fallen chunk of ceiling plaster.

Just as I was opening the door between us—or what was left of it—another detonation jarred me, knocking me all the way to my knees. As I fell, my chin clipped the opening left by the broken window, and jagged glass, like teeth, dug into my skin. Something warm dribbled down my throat, into my collar, and I knew it was blood. But none of that mattered. Not now. Not yet.

“What happened?” I heard a girl’s voice shout from somewhere beyond the billowing haze behind me, and instinctively I stilled. “It wasn’t supposed to happen here. Orders were to wait till she reached Capitol Hall—”

“Orders changed,” a male voice interrupted her. “The timeline had to be moved up.”

“So where is she? Who has eyes on her?”

There was a moment of silence, and in that moment I was certain what it was they were saying. Me. They were talking about me. I was the reason for the attack.

I tried to take a step backward, away from them. I needed to find Brook or Zafir, to warn them. To find help.

But my reprieve was brief, and either because I’d moved or because the smoke around me had cleared, I heard the girl again and knew I was no longer cloaked by the thick clouds.

“I see her!” It was the girl again, but now her words were hushed as I tried to place her voice. “Over here!” she whispered again. “She’s here.”

That was when I realized where I’d heard her voice before: It was Delta.

When she reached me, relief swelled inside my chest as I told myself I must have misunderstood the meaning behind her words. Clearly, she couldn’t be responsible for the attack, she was a student here—my liaison for the day. She’d been looking for me because she wanted to help me. I lifted the back of my hand to swipe self-consciously at my oozing chin. She reached down, her fingers gripping my arm as she dragged me to my feet. “Come on,” she said, and she was right, of course—we needed to keep moving.

“The children,” I blurted out. “There are children in there.” I turned back toward the door, but her grip on my arm tightened. Too tight.

The crunch of footsteps drew my attention as an older boy, tall with long legs, came running toward us then—stumbling, really—through the churning mass of fumes. His face was streaked with ash and sweat, and his haunted eyes were filled with unspoken horror.