Chapter 45: Strange Feelings

Eksu and Elizabeth were dancing.

They looked like a great couple. His awkward shuffling was a weird match for her sharp, confident moves. The spinning lights of the party painted them in shifting colors of blue and red and gold. From here, by the punch bowl, they looked like the main characters in a story. The hero and the heroine, having their perfect moment.

I should have been happy.

Elizabeth was my first real friend at the academy. She showed me where the library was and didn’t run away when my alchemy experiment accidentally turned a desk into a pile of goo. And Eksu… Eksu was special. He was the only person who didn’t get sick from my cooking. He even called my poison creations “cute.” He was kind and quiet and let me talk about molecular gastronomy without his eyes glazing over. They were my two best friends.

This should have been a happy moment. My chest felt tight anyway.

I took another sip of my punch. It was my best batch yet, a perfect balance of fizzy sweetness and that little kick from the Sunburst Berries. But as I watched Eksu put his hand on Elizabeth’s waist, the drink suddenly tasted sour in my mouth. A bitter aftertaste coated my tongue.

It was weird.

My own hands felt cold, so I tucked them into the pockets of my dress. A low hum started in my ears, a deep thrumming sound that wasn’t part of the loud party music. The air around me seemed to get thick and heavy, like right before a big thunderstorm.

Maybe I was just getting tired. It had been a long day.

But my eyes kept snapping back to them. Elizabeth laughed, her head tilted back. Eksu was looking down at her, and even from across the room, I could see the small, shy smile on his face. It was a smile I had never seen before. It wasn’t the polite smile he gave me when I offered him a new cookie recipe. It was different.

I didn’t want him to look at her like that.

The thought appeared in my head so fast it made me dizzy. It was a selfish, ugly thought. I wanted him to look at me like that. I wanted to be the one dancing with him, even though I probably would have stepped on his feet a hundred times. I wanted to be the one making him smile that secret, special smile.

This feeling was awful. It was a hot, prickly thing crawling up my throat. I had started lying. I told Elizabeth I would cheer for her. I told her they were perfect together. But deep down, in a secret, dark part of my brain, I was hoping it would all go wrong. I was wishing they wouldn’t be together.

I didn’t understand. Why? Why would I want my friends to be unhappy?

I was a bad person. A bad friend.

The tightness in my chest got worse. It felt like a knot of dark energy was coiling in my stomach. The pretty party lights seemed to dim, the edges of my vision turning gray and fuzzy. The humming in my ears grew louder, drowning out the music.

A shadow fell over me.

Siegfried stood there, his face pale. His usual carefree vibe was gone, replaced by a look of serious alarm. He must have seen it on my face. The confusion. The wrongness.

“Lilith, is something wrong?”

His voice sounded far away. I tried to answer, to tell him I was fine, but the words got stuck. The knot in my stomach pulsed, sending a wave of cold through my body.

“I don’t know. I…”

Another presence appeared. This one was a hundred times heavier. The air crackled. The temperature dropped so fast I saw my breath mist in front of me. The happy energy of the party just… died. My father stood behind Siegfried, and he was not smiling. His eyes glowed with a faint red light.

His voice was a deep rumble that shook the floor.

“LILITH.”

That was it. That was the final push. Seeing the panic in Siegfried’s face and the raw power radiating from my father broke something inside me. The strange, ugly feeling exploded. My gaze shot back to the dance floor. To Eksu and Elizabeth, frozen in a perfect moment that didn’t include me.

Tears I didn’t know I was holding back streamed down my face, hot and stinging. A sound ripped from my throat, raw and full of a pain I didn’t know I was capable of feeling.

“I… hate you, Elizabeth!”

BOOOM!

White light. Black silence. A feeling of being torn apart and put back together.

◆ ◇ ◆

A crack appeared in the darkness.