18. Ella

Chapter 18

Ella

Under a sky of perfect midnight silk, Ella dreamt about her father, as she did almost every single night since she’d arrived in Cavale.

Tonight’s dream was one of her favorite, and last, memories of him. A five-year-old Ella curled her little legs around Alec’s waist, her arms wound tightly around his neck as he carried her up their building’s fire escape. His long legs and bulk caused the black metal to shudder and squeak under his weight. Ella removed one hand off him, the fingers on her other hand digging into his shoulder so she didn’t slip, and lifted her ponytail away from her neck so the wind could kiss her sweat sodden flesh on the journey up. Their air conditioning had expired last night, forcing them to rely on gawky fans that were unstable and kept sputtering out in the middle of the night.

It was too hot for Ella to sleep, so Alec suggested they head to their building’s roof for some reprieve from the claustrophobic humidity of their apartment. They’d left Rylee and Ella’s mother to their slumber and snuck out the window into the night.

“Almost there, my beauty,” Alec promised, climbing the rungs with an effortless flair that Ella couldn’t help but admire. She nuzzled her face in the crook of his neck, humming softly against his shoulder.

Finally, they reached the top. Alec dipped his head forward so Ella could crawl over his shoulders, clamber above his skull, and jump onto the cement, landing swiftly on her feet. Once she’d alit successfully, he climbed the rest of the way up the ladder, staying on his knees so he could maintain eye level with her. Alec’s gaze shadowed where Ella’s eyes had wandered, pinning over the night sky, the moon hanging low and casting a soft, silver glow onto Ella’s tiny body.

“You looking for stars, little one?” he asked her. When she nodded, he beckoned her over to him. She situated herself in the cocoon of his legs, his arms a more comforting embrace than any blanket would have been.

“Why can’t we see stars here?” Ella asked, leaning back against her father.

“Because we live in New York. The city’s lights conceal the stars.” He kissed the top of her head, descending into the depths of his thoughts. He then said dreamily, his voice sounding faraway, “Where I come from, you can see every single individual star in the sky. Their patterns are fixed and yet ever-changing. We have nights of the richest blues that become the purest black, hugging heaven’s eyes so sweetly. The stars are brilliant pearls of nighttime that sit as if cushioned upon black velvet. They come to greet our eyes and lift our heads and hearts heavenward.”

Ella rested her cheek on her father’s chest, captivated by the vision he’d painted. “I want to go to there,” she whispered through a yawn.

Alec kissed her hair. “You will one day, my beauty. I just wish I could be there when you see it.”

“Where will you be?” she squeaked, clinging harder to him. His arms tightened around her.

“With you,” he answered in a grim, strangled voice, stroking her hair. Ella raised her eyes to find tears besmirching her father’s cheeks. “Even when I’m not, even when my arms can’t hold you, I will always be with you, in here.” He pointed to her chest, to her heart, to where the memory of him would be safe.

“Daddy? Why do you sound like you’re saying goodbye?”

Alec choked on a sob, “Oh, my beautiful Noella. I love you so much. You know that, don’t you?” He cupped her face, golden eyes crashing into her grey irises. “My heart beats for you and you alone. The degree of love I feel for you shouldn’t be physically possible. I have no room left inside me for anything else.”

“You can make room, Daddy.” Ella leaned back in his arms, then started bouncing on her knees.

“What’re you doing?” Alec laughed.

“I’m stacking!” she answered in a squeal. “I’m making more room for my love for you.” Alec’s eyes softened like a cloudless dawn before he choked out an anguished moan and dragged her back into his arms, squeezing her so hard that she coughed up a wheeze. “Daddy, I can’t breathe!”

“One more second, my beauty,” he whispered into a cloud of her hair. “Give me this memory. Give me this moment so I can live inside it forever.” Ella didn’t understand, but she didn’t need to for her to relax in his arms, snuggling closer despite the mugginess. They’d fallen asleep like that, Ella tangled around him, Alec holding her like she was the air he needed to breathe.

When Ella awoke in the morning, her father had vanished: both from the roof and from her life.

She never saw him again.

Ella roused from her slumber with patches of dried tears rubbed over her cheeks, cracking the rough flesh, her pillow damp from crying. Until she came to Cavale, she hardly ever thought about her dad, but since the second she’d arrived here, he’d made an appearance in all her dreams, apart from the one the other night about Kellen. Freya poked her snout through the bars of her crate, keening softly as she tried to reach Ella, rattling the cage. Ella crawled across the floor, unclasping Freya’s crate, and swung the door open. Freya skittered out and climbed into Ella’s lap, assuming position to lick the tears off Ella’s face. Freya’s love removed the sensation of loneliness that had expanded inside Ella’s chest, mending the heart that ached for a man she hadn’t seen in twenty-one years.

With each lick, Freya said, you’re not alone, Mommy. I’m here.

“You’re perfect,” Ella cooed, caressing the fur around Freya’s jaw, the tips of their noses kissing as their heads came together.

Ella and Freya exited their bedroom for their morning walk and came to an abrupt halt when Ella discovered a wrapped package on her kitchen counter that hadn’t been there at the time she’d went to sleep. She approached it with tentative steps, holding her hand out to communicate to Freya to stay behind her. She extended her leg to block Freya’s path when the cavachon attempted the lunge forward to shield Ella.

“I’m trying to protect you,” Ella rebuked. “That doesn’t work when you’re trying to protect me.”

Ella finally reached the counter. The package looked inconspicuous, small and spherical in shape, the casing composed of wrinkled grey paper that reminded Ella of her eye color, messily taped together.

There was a card beside it, with Rose adorned on the front.

From just the usage of her last name, she knew who’d left the gift. She decided to wait to open the card until after she’d unwrapped the present. She shredded the paper apart with her fingernails, revealing underneath a metal orb with an indent in the center that resembled the shape of a finger. Ella rolled the globe between her fingers, searching for any engravings that could explain what this was, but found nothing etched into the smooth metal surface. She set the globe aside and shimmied the card out of the envelope.

This contraption is called an astral projector. Astral projection is an out-of-body experience that allows your consciousness to function separately, for a short time, from your physical body and travel through the astral plane to wherever you wish to go in the universe. All you have to do is place your finger in the indentation and think about where you want to be projected to. You can stay in that place for up to an hour before the astral projector will bring you back to Cavale.

I’ve imbued it with my power. Use this to visit your sister whenever you want. No one should have to go months without being in their sibling’s presence.

You gave me another day with my brother, so now, I give you your sister.

Ella’s tears dripped onto the card.

She quickly pulled her face away before the beads of water smudged the beautifully scribbled words. Freya leaned against Ella’s leg, licking Ella’s hand to signal her support. Ella scratched the top of Freya’s head in assurance that she was fine, then slid the card back into the envelope, bringing her face down to inhale the paper. The scent of sandalwood and masculinity emanated from the page, streaking across the ether to stain her nose, to saturate the world in his odor. The familiarity of that scent made her wish she could curl herself inside the note and live within these words, within this gift of kindness. Ella dropped the note, then stumbled a step backwards away from the counter.

Was she…starting to like Kellen Kilic?

She placed her hand over her forehead to check her temperature. She felt normal, normal in the sense that no delirium clouded her vision, no fever clambered through her limbs, nothing that could be responsible for such a startling thought. Physically, she felt the same as she always had.

Emotionally …

Ella couldn’t put words to the change. Those words didn’t exist. When she thought about Kellen now, none of the usual surges of vitriol filled her mouth. No upwelling of rage tautened her limbs so her muscles ached with the urge to strangle him. Her body felt lighter at the thought of him, not heavy with rage.

Within her heart, a section had been numbed all this time awoke, a piece of her she didn’t even know she possessed.

Filling her ears, someone sighed, finally, you’re seeing him. The voice that spoke those words in her head was similar, yet different from Noella’s own voice, coarser and yet soprano and sharp at the same time.

Who are you? Ella asked the voice. She received no response. I’m crazy. I’m going crazy.

Ella slapped the side of her head, shaking her hair out of her face, and grabbed Freya’s leash to rush out the door, running away from the strange voice and the strange feelings about Kellen that she didn’t want to understand.

Before the school day began, Ella enlisted Josefyn and Akio’s help with preparing for her first session with Jarion. In order to maintain confidentiality, it wasn’t explained in full what they were helping with. All she told them was that she needed them to meet her at the art department in the academic sector to help her steal balloons and paint. Akio guarded the door as Josefyn and Ella snuck into the building and pilfered six large bottles of paint, a ball of rubber bands, and twelve balloons tinted each color of the rainbow, the three of them bolting back to Ella’s office once they’d acquired the contraband, the wind embraced by their laughter. Now, they were tucked safely in her office, pouring paint inside the balloons to fill them to capacity and using the rubber bands to tie them at the top. Ella was thankful she’d thought ahead to get six extra balloons.

Filling balloons with paint was a lot harder, and messier, than she anticipated.

While they worked, Ella decided to share with her friends the gift Kellen left her. She didn’t anticipate the reaction she’d get.

“He got you a what?” Akio gasped, spilling some blue paint onto her rug.

“Watch it, Kio!” she cried, guiding Akio’s hands to right the bottle so no more paint fell out and blemished her carpet. “If you ruin my rug, you’re paying for a new one.” Maybe we should’ve done this outside, she thought to herself, preparing for an afternoon of scrubbing the paint off the floor.

“He got you an astral projector?” Josefyn repeated, using her forearm to swipe flowing strands of violet hair out of her eyes. “And he told you to use it whenever you wanted?” Ella nodded. “El, that’s huge.”

“Why is that such a big deal?” She felt like she was missing something obvious.

“Because in order for an astral projector to work, it needs to be imbued with a shitload of power,” Akio answered, the rubber band he was trying to tie around the end of the balloon flicking his fingers. Josefyn giggled when Akio’s hand flinched, then gathered his fingers and kissed the tips of each digit, washing away the sting.

“Astral projectors typically can only be used once, given the amount of power that’s required to make them work,” Josefyn explained, reaching for a rubber band to tie the end of the full yellow balloon in her lap. “Kellen told you to use it whenever you wanted, which means he knows there’s enough power in the object to fuel it for everyday usage. He’s linked the object to his entire volume of power, which is the biggest fucking deal I can think of. No Primordial would ever do something like that.”

Ella frowned. “Why not?”

“Because if he can power an astral projector whenever he wants, that man is more powerful than he lets people realize.” Josefyn set the yellow balloon aside in the basket on Ella’s desk after she knotted the end. “That is God- level power, El. The kind of power the Gods would take notice of if it was regularly displayed. It’s safest for someone like him not to use grand sweeping gestures to show how much power he has, but he did so. For you. So yeah, it’s a big fucking deal that he did that.”

Ella fiddled with the end of the red balloon in her lap.

“I’m not sure what to make of that,” she muttered. Ella peeked at Akio. “Will it hurt him for me to use the astral projector?”

“With the amount of power I suspect he has, I doubt you using the projector will leave a dent. Depends on how frequently you use it, but I doubt it.” Akio smirked wickedly at her. “You sound worried about hurting Kilic, Rosie. One might be mistaken into thinking you care about our Varmin department head.”

“Hey, Kio? I have a present for you.” Ella raised her middle finger and shoved it in his face.

“Gods, I’ve never received a prettier present!” He wrapped his fingers around her middle finger and pretended to yank it off her hand, cradling his balled up fist to his chest. “I’ll cherish it for all my days.”

Ella rolled her eyes.

A knock on the door fractured their jovial bubble and launched them back to reality. Ella gestured for the remaining balloons to be placed in the basket as Josefyn and Akio gathered the paint bottles.

“Lunch today?” she asked them.

“Always,” Josefyn replied, blowing her a kiss before pulling on Akio’s arm to drag him to the door.

Ella used her water bottle to wash away the smears of color on her paint-soaked hands, wiping the water droplets off on the skirt of her navy blue dress before she scampered to the door to meet Jarion.

Her smile faded, however, when she found Eyal waiting in the hallway instead of the dragon-shifter.

“What do you want?” she snapped without a care in the world for repercussions. “I have a session in five minutes.”

“I’ve been assigned to shadow you from here on out,” Eyal spoke through the opaque titanium helmet.

“ Shadow me?” she spluttered. “Who ordered you to do that?”

“Who do you think?” Ella groaned, bumping her head against the doorframe when she rocked to the side.

“Tell your king that I don’t need a babysitter.”

“After what happened yesterday with the dragon boy, Aros is concerned that a lack of protection detail will invite other Primordials to bring harm to you, whether that harm be intentional or not. I’m not inclined to disagree with him.”

Ella’s annoyance didn’t stem from the fact that she found this order pointless. A part of her recognized that it was actually a very kind gesture on the King of the Gods’ part to provide her personal protection.

What she didn’t understand, what pissed her off, was why Aros Cavalian was providing this protection now, after leaving her vulnerable for the past six weeks. He’d suddenly awoken from his daze to take an interest in her safety, yet not enough to deliver the message himself, sending this poor imbecile in his place to face her wrath. She shouldn’t have been special enough to attract the attention of the Cavalian Gods in the first place, but since she’d already gotten it, why wasn’t she being given the respect of direct communication, if Aros Cavalian was taking it upon himself to force a bodyguard on her?

“Your presence will hinder any therapeutic alliances I try to form with students. No one will feel safe opening up to me if you’re standing two feet away. When I’m in a session, you keep your distance. When the school day is over, you do not bother me at home. That is the only way I will agree to having a shadow stalk my every breath.” Ella arched a brow. “Do you accept these terms?”

“Not sure I have a choice,” Eyal quipped. She wished she knew what his face looked like, so she could envision his frown.

Jarion emerged around the corner of the hall.

He halted when he saw Eyal, then asked, “Should I come back?” ready to bolt if given the opportunity.

“No. He was just going.” Ella jerked her head to the right to signal the envoy to take his leave.

Eyal shook his head at her, grumbling, “Aros, spare me,” then marched down the hall, disappearing around the bend. Once Eyal was gone, she turned to Jarion and proffered a sunny smile that was met with a morose frown in response.

“How’re you feeling today?” Jarion swayed his head from side to side, then shrugged his shoulders.

“I don’t know how I feel.” She nodded in understanding.

“Well, what I have planned for us to do today is going to help with that.” She asked Jarion to hold the door open for her so she could scurry back into her office, gathering the basket with all the balloons.

“What the fuck are those?” Jarion asked, rising onto his tiptoes to see into the basket.

“You’ll find out soon.” Ella locked her door, then beckoned for Jarion to follow her to the elevator.

Ella led Jarion to the Canterna Thicket, purposefully avoiding the scorched earth from yesterday by finding a vacant patch of land within the forest for them to use. She set the basket down, then lined up each of the balloons in their color order, starting with red and ending with purple. Jarion lingered a few paces behind her, shifting on the balls of his feet, his hands stuffed into the wide pockets of his sweatshirt.

“Okay,” Ella pronounced when she was done, staggering back to create a wide berth for Jarion. “Here’s the activity. I’m going to name an emotion, and I want you to pick what color you would associate the emotion with.”

“How is this going to help me accept my dragon?” he grumbled, kicking at the soil.

“You said you didn’t know what you were feeling. This exercise is going to challenge you to describe how different emotions manifest for you, so you can start to put names to the sensations in your body.” Ella took a moment to formulate an explanation that Jarion would be able to understand, working to speak his language. “Think of emotions like your power, like your dragon. Emotions are a form of energy, forever seeking expression. Sharing what we’re feeling helps us to better contain and manage it. By naming emotions, we are effectively taking responsibility for them, which is the same as you releasing your dragon to accept it. Noticing and naming emotions gives us the chance to take a step back and make choices about what to do with them that will best suit us, so those emotions don’t then turn on us and harm us. Does that make sense?” Jarion slowly nodded. “Are you ready to start?”

“Do I have a choice?” Jarion spat. Ella sighed.

“You always have a choice, Jarion. I won’t force you to do or say anything. That’s not what this space is for. Counseling is for you to explore what you’re feeling and what you need, without judgment. Everything you say here stays between us. You are in charge of this process.” His green eyes sparkled with something she couldn’t decipher fast enough before it dissolved into the emerald hue.

“Okay. I’m ready.” He cracked his knuckles in anticipation.

“Pick a color to represent anger.” Jarion surveyed the six colored balloons sprawled out on the loam. He then lurched down to pick up the red balloon, holding it up for Ella to see. “Why did you pick red?”

“Because of the saying, ‘when you’re angry, you see red.’” Jarion shrugged. “I don’t know if that’s right or not.”

“There are no wrong answers here, Jare.” Jarion’s cheeks flushed when she used his nickname. “What does anger feel like for you? In your body?”

“It feels…hot. Like fire. But a kind of fire I’m used to, I guess. It doesn’t hurt me.” Jarion looked to her for confirmation that this was an acceptable answer. She gave him an encouraging nod and a smile.

“Can you think of a time when you felt anger?”

“Gods, there are so many.” He loosed a bitter laugh, then scratched the back of his head. “I don’t know how to choose.”

“Pick the first one that comes to mind.” Jarion nodded, his eyes glassing over as he dove into his subconscious.

“Um…when we were ten,” he began, his eyes closed, holding the memory in the forefront of his mind, “about a month before shit hit the fan and Kellen saved us, my mother bought Laya a dress for a banquet we were supposed to attend. The dress was fucking ugly. It had all these stupid ruffles and sparkles. Laya hated it. She said it made her skin itchy, but Mom didn’t care about that. The dress didn’t fit Laya the way it was supposed to. It never occurred to my mother that perhaps the dress was supposed to be made to fit Laya, not the other way around.” Jarion’s eyes squeezed tighter, his throat bobbing when he swallowed. “My mother made Laya strip, then stand on a dais as she drew circles around all the parts of Laya’s body that she deemed imperfect.” Jarion’s hand not holding the balloon crunched into a taut fist. “Yeah. I was pretty fucking angry.”

Ella took a moment for her own disgust to mitigate in her veins, so when she spoke again, she sounded warm and neutral.

“What did you want to do in that moment?”

“Kill her?” Jarion opened one eye to look at Ella, smirking slightly. “I mean it. I wanted to cut out her tongue so she could never say such horrible things to my sister ever again. I wanted to rip her heart out of her chest and show her what an ugly thing it was, what a flawed, disgusting thing it was, show her that the thing she feared most, us being imperfect, was exactly what she was.”

Ella surprised Jarion and beamed. “That’s good, Jarion.”

“How is that good?” he snorted. “I just said I wanted to kill someone.”

“What’s good is that you’re associating emotions and actions. The point of this exercise is for you to identify what different emotions feel like in your body and what they urge you to do. That will help us design a plan for you to control those urges so they don’t overwhelm you. Does that make sense?”

“Yeah. It does.”

“Good.” Ella then gestured to the trees. “Throw the balloon.” Jarion’s eyes lit up like the sun.

“Is there something inside it?”

“You’ll find out when you throw it.” Jarion raised the balloon over his head, then hurled it across the forest with all his might, watching the crimson sphere trundle through the ether and slam into the tree trunk. A flurry of red paint detonated in a savage explosion of color when the balloon rear-ended with the tree and the latex split apart. Jarion spluttered an astounded laugh, whipping his head back to look at Ella.

“Have you done this before?” he asked her.

“No, actually,” she laughed. “I came up with this idea for you. I thought you’d enjoy throwing things.”

“I feel so special,” he taunted, but there was some truth in the underbelly of the joke.

“Okay. Now pick a color to represent sadness.” Jarion didn’t hesitate before diving for the blue balloon. “Why blue?”

“It’s the color of tears.” He moved the balloon from one hand to the other, as if the concept of sadness was an uncomfortable burden for him to hold. Ella noted that he seemed far more open to holding something that symbolized his anger than something resembling his sadness. She chose to probe into that further.

“Do you cry when you’re sad?” she inquired. Jarion winced.

“I think I used to cry, when I was younger. Laya was allowed to cry, but my father couldn’t tolerate my tears. He said real men didn’t cry and my sensitivity was a detriment to our family’s power. Sometimes, I feel the corners of my eyes sting, like they want to shed tears, but I haven’t cried in years. Not until this week.” He shuddered. “I don’t want to talk about what happened yesterday.”

“We don’t have to.” Ella took a small step closer to him. “When was the last time you cried? Before this week?”

Jarion exhaled a trembling breath.

“I haven’t cried since the night Kellen saved us.” Jarion refused to look at her, focusing on the blue balloon.

“You don’t have to talk about anything you don’t want to, Jare.”

“I know.” His stance softened. “I want to. I want to tell you.” Jarion hugged the balloon to his chest. “Kellen had suspected for a while that our parents were abusing us. Laya and I have a different father than Kell. Kellen’s father died the same week our mother met my father. Kell’s believed for a long time that my mother was involved somehow in his father’s death, not that he’s ever been able to prove it. My father hated Kellen, from the moment they met. My brother’s…not the easiest person to get along with.” Ella stopped herself from smiling in agreement, though from the way Jarion’s lips twitched, he sensed her concurrence woven into her silence. “Kellen is someone who can’t be controlled, unlike Laya and I.”

“You were so young,” Ella started to say. Jarion waved his hand for her not to finish her sentiment.

“Kellen was sixteen when we were born. He graduated from Delmarth two years later and went straight to Nosrerry University to study teaching. He’d had an offer to join the King of the Gods’ personal cadre and fight for Cavale against Lantari, but he turned it down to become a professor. He did that for us, because he knew how terrible our parents were and wanted to finish his studies by the time we started at Delmarth for Kindergarten, so he could be an extra pair of eyes on us.”

Ella’s heart thundered in her chest. She placed her hand over the pulsing spot to soothe the writhing.

“Kellen spent years trying to gather evidence of our parents hurting us. He begged our teachers to pay attention. He begged law enforcement to look into our family, but no one listened. No one wanted to cross Miya Kilic. Even though he already knew, Laya and I were so scared that we couldn’t outright tell him what was happening. We wanted to, but we’d been so brainwashed by our parents that we didn’t trust Kellen to help us. They kept us isolated from Kellen. In the months leading up to that night, Laya and I were husks of who we once were. They were starving us, giving us just enough to survive but not nearly enough to live. That final night, Laya was so deeply malnourished that she couldn’t move. I begged my mother to take her to the hospital, but she refused, claiming that she couldn’t get Laya help because it would open questions into how she’d gotten like that. She’d made her peace with Laya dying. She’d made her peace with her daughter dying, her only daughter, just to protect the secret of what vile people she and her husband were.” Jarion vibrated with rage. “I will never understand or forgive that.

“Kellen never told me how he knew something was wrong, but somehow, he’d sensed what was happening that night, how close to death Laya was, and flew to Avatia, where the Gods live. He wasn’t allowed entry into the holy city, but according to the story he always tells, he slammed his dragon tail into the gates until the Gods sent an envoy down to speak to him. He claims he threatened the envoy to send aid to us, and they listened. The Gods sent the Avatia militia to our home in Yorkdill and arrested my parents on sight. They found Laya in the basement and healed her enough that they could transport her to the hospital to have nutrients injected into her system. My brother was with them.”

Jarion’s eyes shone with love, love he might not have been aware was so palpable in his gaze.

“I’ll never forget the way he ran to me, the way he gripped me in his arms, the way he sobbed into my hair. Kellen didn’t say anything for several minutes, just holding me. Then, he pulled back, holding my face,” Jarion framed his cheeks with his hands, emulating what Kellen had done, “and said, ‘You’re safe now, Jare. I’ve got you, my love. You’re safe.’” Jarion’s hands slid off his cheeks, falling to his sides. “I fell into his arms and burst into tears.” Ella choked back her own emotion.

She was temporarily brought back to the night Rylee saved her, her history possessing some outlandish parallels to the Ates/Kilic family. Her mother, unsurprisingly wasted, had reached for the belt she kept hanging on her nightstand for Ella and without thought grabbed the broom instead, too inebriated to realize what she was using. Annalise hit Ella so hard in the head that she cracked her skull. Ella suffered internal bleeding and would have died, had Rylee not chosen that night, of all nights, to visit them from college. Rylee and Mason, who was just her boyfriend at the time, had walked into the apartment to discover Annalise folding Ella’s unconscious body into a large cardboard box to toss in the dumpster, having thought she’d killed Ella.

When Ella woke up, she’d been in a hospital bed with Rylee by her side, who promised that she would never have to suffer at the hands of their mother again. What she’d said to Ella was frighteningly similar to what Kellen had said to Jarion, her sister’s voice deluging her ears now with the memory.

“You’re safe now, my honey,” Rylee decreed with tears gleaned on her lashes, her hands cupping Ella’s battered face. “I’ve got you.”

That was the last night Ella ever saw her mother. After Annalise had been sentenced to thirty years in prison for nearly killing Ella, on her first night in custody, she’d taken her own life. What relief Ella might have felt from her mother’s existence no longer tainting the universe was overshadowed by rage at how she’d evaded the justice Ella felt she deserved. Ella spent her life trying to shove that rage down in order for her to keep living, because that was the only justice she could claim now, in living her life and finding happiness while her mother no longer could.

She’d gotten to the point now where most days, she didn’t even think about her mother, not unless she encountered something that triggered the memories to come rushing back to her, like right now with Jarion.

Isn’t that strange? she thought to herself, that hers, Jarion, and Laya’s circumstances were that similar, down to the words their siblings said when they saved them?

“Do you remember what you were thinking in that moment?” Ella asked Jarion, pushing away the memories of her mother and sister, for they had no place here right now. “What you were feeling?”

“I don’t know,” he answered, his voice strangled by the invisible tears yearning to spill down his face. They remained trapped inside him, imprisoned in the box where Jarion’s father had forced him to lock them. “I remember thinking, ‘ Thank the Gods. Thank the Gods .’ But I don’t remember feeling anything. I was so hungry. So tired. I could’ve slept forever. I don’t think I had space to feel anything else beyond my hunger and exhaustion. But I know I must’ve been grateful. I must’ve felt love.”

“Why do you say you must’ve felt love?” Jarion considered the question.

“I don’t know. Because shouldn’t I have felt love? I mean, my brother stormed Avatia and threatened the Gods to save my life. I had to have felt love for him in that moment, right?” Jarion searched for the answer in her eyes, frustrated when he couldn’t find anything. “I know I’m capable of feeing love,” he asserted, as if Ella had expressed she didn’t believe him and he needed to prove it somehow.

“I fully believe that,” she affirmed. Jarion exhaled. “What does love feel like for you? Can you pick a color for it?”

His eyes skimmed the balloons. “Can I throw the blue one first?” Ella smiled.

“Not yet. Go grab a color for love first.” Jarion lay the blue balloon on a pillow of tangled branches, then scuttled forward and collected the yellow balloon in his hands, stepping back. “Why yellow?”

“Because when I feel love, I feel lighter, and when I think of light, I think of yellow.” Jarion concentrated on the yellow balloon, his fingernails scraping across the latex, tracing the rubber casing.

“What does love feel like in your body?”

“Love frees up room in my chest. When I look at someone I love, like Laya, it helps me to breathe.”

“So focusing on love helps you to feel less heavy?” A smile fiddled with Jarion’s lips as he nodded. Ella smiled back. “Throw the balloon.” Jarion reeled his arm back before he launched the balloon, rivulets of yellow paint flecking across the tints of red on the tree bark. When Jarion turned back around, Ella stated, “Love is an anchor for you.”

“Yeah. It is.” He looked bewildered by his own ability to recognize his feelings. “It keeps me from getting lost in my head.”

“It’s a feeling that grounds you rather than overwhelms you,” she rephrased. Jarion’s posture straightened.

“Yeah. Exactly.” He seemed surprised by her ability to give voice to feelings he’d never been able to attach words to.

“What emotions overwhelm you?”

“Anger, for sure.” He deliberated for a moment if there were any others, then added, “Sadness, I guess.”

“Does sadness overwhelm you?” Jarion peeked down at the blue balloon for sadness.

“I don’t feel sadness,” he said, looking at her with uncertainty. “I can recognize anger. I can recognize love. I can recognize fear. But I can’t tell you what sadness feels like, even though I think I’m sad all the time.”

She cocked her head. “What makes you think you’re sad when you say you don’t feel sadness?”

“Because I think about death all the time, so that must mean I’m sad, right?” Ella crossed her arms over her chest.

“Have you ever heard of depression?” Jarion shook his head. She wasn’t surprised to hear him say no, knowing what she did about how Cavale, as a kingdom, pointedly ignored mental health issues. “Depression is different from sadness. Feeling sad sometimes is a normal reaction. You can feel sad for a short period of time and those feelings will more easily go away. Feeling depressed affects how a person feels, thinks, acts, for a much longer duration of time. It impacts your mood, the way you understand yourself, and the way you understand and relate to things around you. Sadness and depression have similar symptoms. Lack of motivation. Loss of interest in pleasurable activities. A need to isolate from others. Exhaustion. Irritability, restlessness, fretfulness. Hopelessness. But sadness doesn’t take hold the way depression does. It doesn’t embed itself in your bones in the same way depression does.”

Jarion pinched the flab of skin on his forearm, a nervous gesture, she assumed. “So you’re saying I’m depressed?”

“Did anything I just said resonate with how you’ve been feeling?” Jarion sucked on his bottom lip.

“Lack of motivation. Need to isolate from others. Irritability. Hopelessness.” Ella tipped her chin towards the balloon at his feet.

“You can throw the blue balloon now.” Jarion sunk to the ground, grabbed the blue balloon, and chucked it towards the deluge of red and yellow, strips of blue dividing the bright colors.

He spun back to face her. “Why didn’t you let me throw it before?”

“Because you didn’t name the feeling and how it manifests for you. Now, you did.” Jarion’s lips formed an impressed smile.

“Damn. You’re good at this, Ms. Rose.”

“It’s what they pay me for, so I better be.” Jarion spluttered out a surprised chortle, not having expected Ella to have a sense of humor. “You said earlier that you can recognize when you feel fear. Can you pick a color for fear?” Jarion skimmed the remaining three options. He reached for the green balloon. “Why did you pick green?”

“Cause green is the color of vomit.” They both snickered. Jarion’s smile enlarged when he heard Ella laugh too.

“What does fear feel like for you?”

“It feels like someone has their hand around my throat and is strangling me. It feels like my heart is trying to break free from my chest. I get nauseous when I’m scared. I tend to throw up.” Jarion wrinkled his nose at the thought.

“Can you think of a time when you felt afraid?” His cheeks depleted of color.

“I used to have a pet Fueco, a tiny bird with fire for feathers. I named her Jade. Whenever I disobeyed my father, he would pin me down to his workout bench, take Jade out from inside her crate, and use her claws to carve lines across my back.” Jarion cringed, flexing his muscles like he was trying to expel the prickly sensation rippling through his spine. “He knew to only mark my back because Kellen couldn’t see it. It got to a point where I couldn’t take it anymore. Not the abuse of me…of Jade. So I tried to free her one night. I stole her cage and carried her to the edge of our property. I was about to open the cage door when my father found us.” Jarion gulped, sweat percolating on his brow at the memory. “I have never felt fear like that. I could’ve passed out from how dizzy I got. My father took Jade out of the cage, snapped her leg off, and incinerated her right before my eyes. He kept the foot so he could continue to scar me with her claws. To scar me with the reminder of what a failure I was.”

Ella knew there was evil in the universe. She’d tasted it before, at the hands of her mother, but the extent of evil that had beleaguered Jarion and Laya was a degree she’d never been exposed to before. It sickened her to her core, made it difficult for her to maintain her sympathetic expression and not scream her outrage for how the universe could be so cruel to such sweet, innocent children. It could have been so easy to forfeit to the danger of the world, to the monsters that had plagued them, but as Ella worked every day to push past the burden she carried, to seek out goodness where it lingered in the gaps of pain, she would now work to help Jarion do the same.

“Throw away your fear, Jarion,” she directed, resting her chin on her clasped hands.

Jarion’s lashes fluttered at her phrasing, then heaved the green balloon, watching it tumble diagonally through the wind and collide with the variegated timber, dripping dews of green onto the gulley of pigments.

“Now pick a color for happiness.” Jarion’s fingers hovered over the last two options—orange and purple—before he chose orange, plucking the balloon off the soil by pinching the bottom. “Why orange?”

“Orange reminds me of the sun.” The balloon dangled from between his fingers, slapping against his thigh.

“What does happiness feel like for you?” He tensed.

“I really don’t know.” His shoulders sunk.

“What do you think happiness would feel like?” Jarion raised wet eyes to her, but the tears never flowed.

“Like freedom,” he whispered, his voice barely audible.

“Freedom from the pain?” He nodded his head. “Does being with your siblings make you happy?”

“Being with them makes me feel safe. I don’t know if I’d say it makes me feel happy. Especially with Kellen recently.” Jarion frowned, shaking his head. “I don’t know why I’ve been so angry with him. He’s doing the best he can to be here for me, but every time he talks, I want to rip his head off.”

I know the feeling, she thought to herself.

“When you feel yourself getting angry with him, can you identify what causes you to have that urge?”

Jarion pulled at his red beanie, adjusting it on his head.

“It’s usually when he’s telling me what he thinks I should do. He disguises it like it’s my choice, but it’s never my choice. Like coming here. He first tells me I can’t speak to you, then turns around and tells me I have to speak to you. Like, make up your fucking mind and stop dicking me around, for fuck’s sake.”

“Damn. Tell me how you really feel, Jare.” Jarion laughed, a beautiful, free, youthful sound. “How does it make you feel when Kellen tells you what to do?”

Jarion hesitated. “Can I be super honest here?”

“As honest as you want. Everything you say here is completely confidential and stays between us.”

Kilic, if you’re in my head right now, get the fuck out of here, she threatened, just in case Kellen was watching their session— if he was, they would be having words, and not so kind words at that.

Is Jarion okay? Kellen answered immediately, which didn’t diminish her worry that he’d been listening this whole time.

He’s fine. I just want to make sure he has privacy to share freely with me.

I haven’t been watching your session. I’m about to head into a meeting with Headmistress Dyer.

Ella sagged with relief. Promise me you won’t ever watch our sessions.

I wouldn’t do that to Jare. Silence swelled down the line before she heard him say, You never thanked me for my present.

If you gave me a present just for the hope that you’d be thanked for it, it kind of cheapens the present. Now, go away. I need to focus. The sound of husky laughter scuffed the walls of her brain, sending shivers down her spine. A second passed before she added, Thank you for the astral projector, Kellen.

She held her breath waiting for a reply.

It took a minute before she received a soft, You’re welcome, Noella. Her breath stuttered when he called her Noella.

She returned her focus to Jarion just as he declared, “It feels like he’s trying to control me. Like I traded one evil for another. I know Kellen’s not evil, nowhere close to my parents, but I feel like I have no space to breathe or figure out what it is that I want separate from someone else’s desires for me.”

“Is that something you’d want to express to him?” Jarion winced, then shook his head. “Why not?”

“I don’t want him to be mad at me.”

“If you don’t tell him how you feel, then he won’t know what he’s doing is hurting you.” Ella leaned against a neighboring tree. “There’s a quote I learned during grad school that’s stuck with me ever since I heard it. If you’re silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.”

“Oof.” Jarion pounded his fist against his chest. “That hit hard, Ms. Rose. Who said that?”

“A human from the Earthly Plane named Zora Neale Hurston. She was a writer and anthropologist.”

“You should have that quote framed in your office.” Ella grinned at the idea.

“You know what? I might just do that.” She took three steps closer to Jarion, now standing right next to him. “You’ve spent a large portion of your life suffering in silence because you had to in order to survive. It’s only been two years since you’ve been removed from your parents. It may take your body and mind a while to recognize that you’re no longer in that place, so you don’t have to rely on those old coping strategies anymore. The only person who can break that cycle is you. It’s in your power to make that change, Jarion, and that can be through starting small, like telling your brother how he makes you feel. That’s a great first step towards gaining agency over yourself and your needs.” Jarion flashed a small, but genuine smile, laced with indebtedness that the young Primordial didn’t yet have the vocabulary to articulate. “You can throw the orange balloon.”

“Why? I didn’t identify how happiness makes me feel.”

“That’s okay. You’ll be able to answer that question eventually.” Jarion glanced at the balloon, then handed it to Ella.

“You throw it,” he said, sliding his hands into his pockets.

Ella cradled the bottom of the orange balloon, then lobbed it with all her might. The balloon stuttered before it descended to the ground a few feet away from the tree, bowling in the opposite direction.

Jarion snorted as Ella burst out, “I’m not as strong as you Primordials are!”

“That was pathetic, Ms. Rose,” he chuckled. She was so grateful to hear such a joyous sound leave him that she didn’t reprimand him for making fun of her. She grumbled on her way to the balloon, picking it up from where it had ceased movement, and too aggressively shoved the sphere at the tree trunk. The orange paint exploded onto her face, hair, and dress, lodging itself in the snarled wisps of her blonde hair. Jarion’s laughter escalated into a strident cackle, the forest echoing the merriment and joining the chorus with its own rendition of the jubilant melody, the world laughing with him. “Fuck, I wish I’d filmed that,” he roared, wiping laughter-induced tears from the corners of his eyes.

“Alright. Let’s finish the last balloon so I can go clean this off.” Ella’s inability to tolerate being dirty was in overdrive, threatening to overtake her senses, her legs close to crumbling to the ground. She wiped her orange-stained hands on her dress, accepting the fact that it would need to be cleaned anyway, and pointed to the purple balloon. “Pick up that balloon.” Jarion heeded the order.

“What emotion will this one be?” he asked, the question making Ella smile.

“Hope,” she answered. Jarion’s eyes glistened. “Tell me what you’re hoping for, for your future.”

“Um…I hope…” He struggled with his answer. Eventually, after taking the time to thoughtfully consider, he declared, “I hope I can come to a place where I accept who I am, so living in my body doesn’t hurt so much. So I don’t hurt other people.” Ella squeezed his shoulder.

“I hope so too, Jare,” she said, then took a step back so Jarion could throw the last remaining balloon at the tree.