Giftless

Chapter Twelve

A sickly, yellow hue fanned up from the horizon as dawn approached. The elite were stationed around the entrance to the training room, where Gene was being kept. It had been late afternoon when I'd left California and, due to the time difference, early morning when I was trialled by the Council. It was odd to be this tired while the sun was coming up. I waited outside on a grassy knoll, watching the mine's tower turn gold. No one had enforced the curfew against me when I'd returned. I'd been left alone. Erin's lackeys had bigger problems to worry about now.

"They did the same to my mother," said Jeffrey, coming to sit beside me a little while after the sun had risen. "She told me about it." We weren't friends, Jeffrey and I. He kept to his own devices, choosing isolation, rather than being forced into it, as I was. A low level elemental, he was in his early twenties, with copper-coloured hair.

"But she was welcomed amongst the Light Wielders, in the end, wasn't she?"

Jeffrey gave me a look that told me I was ignorant. Of course, he was hardly welcome here, why would his mother have been? That didn't have any bearing on now, on what would happen with Gene. Did it? Everything would be okay, because he was here now, with the Light Wielders. With me. It would get better from this point, we would make it better. And yet all I had been told circled my mind with vulturous intent. I had always been taught that we were the good guys, the ones who held the beacon, who acted as all wielders should.

But this, here, right now, was not good.

I wasn't stupid, I knew Gene was getting hurt in there. I knew it was wrong.

"I don't know how she died," continued Jeffrey, his voice dropping lower. I could barely hear him over the nearby ocean. "Natural causes, I was told. At times, I catch myself looking at everyone's wrists, wondering if it is possible to hide a mark or if there's a loophole, a way for a wielder to hide what they've done."

"Do you think there is?"

"Yes," he said, getting to his feet. "One day, I'm going to find out what it is."

I did not ask him what he would do once he did.

"I feel like I don't belong here anymore," I confessed.

If ever I did.

"It doesn't matter, for you won't be allowed to leave." Jeffrey gave me a pitying look, one I was used to receiving, as a giftless girl. "As much as Erin hates you, she hates the idea that the Dark Wielders would have a vanquisher in their possession. While you are with us, you are a better deterrent than all their other weapons."

I didn't ask what other weapons, for at last the door to the training room opened. I saw Ian, caught in the morning light, blond hair mussed with tiredness. I didn't waste a second, as I pushed up from my resting place, backside numb, legs stiff.

"I want to see him," I called out to him. "I need to see him."

Ian's mouth grew tight as I ran to him. "Can we get breakfast first?" He caught me, stopped me, turned with me until I was facing him, not the entrance. "I'll make us something."

"You don't have to come in there with me."

"I won't let you go in there alone," he said, reaching for my hand, lacing his fingers clumsily in mine. "I don't trust him."

"He saved my life."

"Why?"

I knew better than to challenge the unvoiced accusation in his tone.