Change [Book 1 of The Elemental Marks]

Chapter 14

Lina walked cautiously down the stairs, peering around every corner as if she were hiding from demons.

This was a different kind of demon she was afraid of, though.

It had been a little over an hour since Lina rushed into her room after the incident. She had been listening, waiting for the front door to open, for four sets of footsteps to exit, and then for the downstairs to quiet down as it usually did. Then, she waited until her eyes looked less puffy and it wasn't so obvious she had let the Consul and Inquisitor's visit get to her.

Now, she came down as confidently as she could manage while still avoiding Carson and Damian.

She made it as far as the living room.

"Don't worry," a voice called, making her jump, "Carson's not here."

Lina walked the rest of the way into the room and found Wyatt reclined on the couch, a spiral notebook poised on his lap. "I wasn't--" Lina started, but quickly gave up the act with a sigh of relief. "Good."

Wyatt craned his neck so he could get a better look at her. She wished he wouldn't. Her eyes still felt scratchy and she was well aware that her hair was a mess. Wyatt's brown eyes--brown, with unnatural flecks of green, Lina noticed--studied her. "Are you two fighting?"

"Does a fight require two people?" Lina asked rhetorically. "Mostly I'm angry with him."

"Well, he's not happy about it," Wyatt explained.

The entire conversation made Lina's head hurt. Luckily, this time she knew she wasn't about to cry over him. Still, it wasn't a fun topic. "Do you mind if we don't talk about him?" she asked as she took a seat on a plush chair across from him.

Sitting up so they could talk properly, Wyatt agreed, "Not at all. And about what happened with the Consul--Carson told me." Lina must've looked both quizzical and embarrassed, but Wyatt went on, "Don't stress over it."

"How can I not?" she asked defeatedly. Wyatt's advice wasn't the best when Lina had done just that for the last hour. "I'm a mess."

"Believe me, it couldn't have been worse than my evaluation," Wyatt said.

Lina wasn't sure whether he said it just to be nice or whether he really meant it, but it peaked her curiosity. "What happened then?"

Wyatt grinned, but not in the usual way when he laughed at his own joke, more in defeat. "Well, they already hated me. That, along with the fact that I couldn't move a measly boulder gave them a pretty bad impression."

Lina didn't mention that not moving a boulder sounded just as bad as what she made done. Instead, she asked him, "What do you mean they hated you? How could they?"

"Believe it or not, I wasn't always as charming as I am today." Now his real grin was back, making Lina feel better about the weight of the conversation. "I think the root of the problem was that I chose to become a bender. And I got here without their knowledge. I represented a leak in their perfect system."

"I thought Carson did the same thing--made himself a bender. Did they hate him, too?"

Wyatt shook his head. "Far from it. He was a prodigy, giving himself a rune as complicated as this when he was thirteen. It didn't matter that he broke the rules to do it; they loved him."

Lina nodded thoughtfully. It fit with Carson's personality, definitely. Without her permission, her brain started to sympathize with what that must have been like. All of these members of the Clave thinking you're amazing from the start. There was only room to fall short of their expectations.