Velli

My body aches like I’ve done a couple of days straight of full-body workouts. I lie on the sidewalk and try to sit up only for my right shoulder to let me know this isn’t a good idea. I ignore it and sit up anyway to take a look around. The auditorium burns. A few mourners in front of it are on their knees, and they wail for its loss.

Dream sits beside me on my left. She’s unharmed for the most part. She’s covered in ash, and so am I. Her dress is a little torn on the side, and her hair’s a mess, but she’s looked worse. So the plan worked, overall.

“Good riddance, right?” I playfully elbow her.

She’s not amused. She holds herself, knees to her chest, and doesn’t look at me. I scoot beside her and put my arm around her.

She pushes me away. Playfully? We’ve done this before, so I reach out to give her side a little tickle pinch, as I always do when she’s fake mad. She can never resist laughing. Before I can touch her, she smacks my hand away.

“Don’t touch me.”

“I’m sorry. What happened?”

“Velli?” Her eyes are red, and one side is swollen with a painful-looking dark purple. Her cheeks are not dry. She’s done a lot of crying. “You knew I wouldn’t like that place. Didn’t you?”

“Well, yeah. That’s not something hard to guess…”

“But you brought me here, for a…” She wants to say the word “date.” She doesn’t. Something bitter holds her back. Resentment? She opens her mouth to speak then closes it twice. “And you knew I’d do something to destroy it…”

“Yeah.” I don’t like this line of questioning. Something stands between us now. I can’t reach her.

“Everything’s a plan to you. Everything’s a scheme. Nothing’s just nice? Nothing’s just out of love?” She cuts herself off. “I don’t want to see you again.”

No. No way. The words are too final, and nothing should be final between us, except us. The gap between us now is solid, impenetrable.

“Wait, wait, wait, what do you mean? I still did nice things for you. I do nice things for you.”

“I could have died tonight. You could have died tonight!”

“That’s every night for us.”

“Yes, we make that choice that we could die. We work as a team. We.” She smacks her bruised cheek and winces in pain. “I didn’t have a choice about tonight. When you fell, I didn’t know what happened. I was angry and confused, and I just leaped after you. Your head was bleeding, and I kept screaming for help, and no one heard or maybe no one cared, and I got mad. I tried to hurt Lilith, Lot’s Wife, or LWLL, whatever they are. For you! I was upset that they hurt you! I got absolutely stomped, stepped on, spit on, then—” Now she looks me straight in my eyes, with zero love, only accusatory malice. “You got what you planned, didn’t you? I called Rose. She killed them, though that’s not what I wanted. I helped kill people. That hurts me, Velli. You got what you wanted.” Dream points to the burning building.

“Dream, I’m sorry. I didn’t think—”

“No, no, you thought long and hard. That’s all you do. You think, and you scheme. You don’t care if I get hurt.”

“No, I would never…” I have to stop her because it’s not true. Oh, Division, it’s not true.

“I was stomped on, spit on, and beaten!” she repeats.

“I made a mistake. One time, I wasn’t clever enough.”

“You don’t care about me. You don’t fill me in on your little schemes, your little plans. All you think about is you.”

It’s my turn to be accusatory. “That’s not true. That’s never been true. All I think about is you.”

“Oh, please, get out of my face.” She gets up and walks away.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

“You know this is all for you and my mom, right? Everything, all of this, and neither of you are ever satisfied.”

She waves her hand, shooing me away without even looking back.

“I don’t think about you,” I mock. “You’re all I think about.”

She looks back, lips in a tight line, and her eyes drill into me, a loveless glare.

“Dream!” I yell and try to reach her. “This is what I have to do. If I want my mom to live, if I want you… I heard that call with Rose.” I slam my hand against my chest with every word, imploring her to hear.

“What call?”

“The one after the first night we became friends. Where you and Rose laughed at me just because of what I am. How’s that supposed to make me feel? What am I supposed to do after hearing that?”

“That’s not…” She searches for the words. “Velli, that’s…” She can’t find them.

“I did this for you because I don’t want to lose you.”

She takes in the scene, the burning building, the dead bodies, the wailing, and she walks away.

“Dream! I’m sorry! I didn’t have a choice. It’s do this or die, Dream. Dream!”

I call out to her and receive no answer. She walks through a black portal and disappears from my life.

I don’t know how long I stand there, waiting for some miracle, for her to come back or something. It’s dumb. She’s not coming. I know that, but I have to wait here. My plan isn’t done. I’m numb.

Large wings bat beside me, and Carreon lands. “Kid, Velli, ah, man, ah, man.”

I don’t look at him.

“You’ve got me in trouble now. Everyone wants to know how Dream got a ticket. The girls’ managers—two people you don’t want to meet—their fans, everybody! You won’t tell, will you, man? They won’t go after you because your Dream’s main man, but me, oh, what they’ll do to me.”

I don’t respond. I don’t have the energy.

He leaps in front of me and shakes me, demanding answers. “Hey, man, hey, man. Are you there?”

My body rattles, but it’s empty.

Carreon’s eyes glow bright yellow in the dark, and he stands with his mouth open, waiting with a pseudosmile for an answer. All I have left is the plan, so I let it come from my mouth. It’s like putting water on a building burnt to ashes.

“What would they do to you, Carreon?” I ask. “Describe it to me in vivid detail.”

He does. I don’t listen. Don’t care. Doesn’t matter. I don’t respond to him, either, when he pauses to signify his story’s finished. He keeps talking, restating possibilities and stressing the awful things they could do to him.

I wait exactly ten minutes, telling time by the position of the stars. The first step is to find the Big Dipper then the North Star. Let the Big Dipper serve as an hour hand and mentally draw out a twenty-four-hour clock.

At ten minutes, I wait for his next pause and say my lines. “Carreon, Dream knows you gave her the ticket.” He’s finally speechless. “She won’t tell if I tell her not to.”

“You’d do that for me?”

“I said ‘if,’ Carreon. The only way any of those horrors won’t happen to you is if you swear by your name to obey me for one year.”

He whines about the unfairness of it all, how he was set up. I wait. Still not listening, still looking to the stars as time passes. Dream would have loved them. The plan is perfect, so this can only end one way. Carreon agrees. He swears a Cognomen Oath, and he leaves me too.

As I stand alone, a piece of glass rises in front of me and stops at my neck. Fate appears, holding the glass. His hand shakes, and his face—my skeletal face—is humorless. He’s as naked as a human can be—strips of flesh are gone, bone and meat exposed.

You have to ask me to do it.

“What are you? What are you really?”

The last one who cares about you. The last one left who truly understands you.

I don’t move from the knife’s point. I let it graze me, nicking my skin.

“Why can’t you just kill me?”

I can’t. That’s not how I work. I can never kill you directly.

“Why?”

Why is the night black?

“I get where you’re going, but there are actual logical reasons for that—”

And I’m sure there are logical reasons for me that neither of us can understand. None of that changes the absolute misery you feel right now. Fate’s voice is high and emotional with cracks. The shaking of his hand escalates. The glass carves more bloodless scratches across my Adam’s apple. And the fact is, this misery will not end. I’m right. This ends with us wishing we had died sooner.

“Maybe, but if I choose to die, I’m a hypocrite, and I will owe Anne Graves an apology. I have an unofficial gamble with life that makes it worth living. I believe someone like me—Cursed, an idiot, and with the world against him—can make something of himself. I will see this through and learn how it plays out.”

Fate breaks down and cries one horrible, pitying howl. I realize he either knows me well or he really is part of me. That level of mourning is too heavy to fake.

“Good news for you, Fate. I will gamble that tonight.”

He doesn’t have the strength to speak. He only looks up at me.

“Fate. If I command you… if I command you to go to the Old Soul—so you do it by my will and not yours—could you do it now?”

He nods.

“Then go. I’m tired, and I need an answer. Is the Old Soul right? Does this end with me dying alone and full of regrets? Give her every advantage she wants. Be clear that it’s a fight.”

Of course, of course. Where should we meet?

“Tell her to meet me in the Fairy-Tale Forest.”

Fate rolls his eyes.

“At midnight.”

He drools, thick blankets of slobber falling over his dropped jaw. Do you know—He slaps a hand over his mouth to stop saying what he was thinking.

“Yes, Fate. I’m fully aware of what goes on in the Fairy-Tale Forest at night. My plan is for creatures that attack her to weaken her so much I can defeat her, or we’ll both die there, eaten by the forest nightmares.”

Fate’s body slowly evaporates into mist. Then he stops halfway through. Tragedy or majesty, Velli.

Tragedy or majesty, Fate.