The Beginning of the End
Brooklyn Jamison
We don't live in a world of black and white. It's easy to believe that there are only the good and the wicked, and you are on one side or the other. We're all heroes or villains, fighting one fight solely against each other.
This is why ignorance is bliss.
"Brooke, do you have your bag?" he calls for me down the hall.
I take one last look at the quaint bedroom that had been ours for only a year. We only got one year of solace. One damn year of peace.
"Yeah, I'll be there in a minute," I raise my voice slightly to answer him. My eyes burn, and my throat tenses up as I take my suitcase off the white comforter on our bed. My paintings still hang on the wall, as if we're ever coming back here. I take in every single one of them before finally deciding that I can't stay here forever.
He starts to yell for me again when I've just shut the door.
I never dreamed we'd have to leave this cottage. I always thought that this was our safehouse, and that we were from now on, safe.
Ignorance is bliss.
I wasn't crying before I turned the corner and saw him. But I couldn't hold the tears in my eyes as I saw him standing in front of the vast living room window for the last time. He did this often, just staring down our driveway. It was inborn in him to be a protector, especially mine. I try to memorize in the short time I have left what his back looks like as his white t-shirt curves for his taut muscles. My eyes soak in his clean cut blond hair, tanned forearms, and thick legs.
He turns around to face me, having heard myself hiccup. "Brooke, no. Please don't cry. I told you we're coming back in just a few months."
But even I could see the doubt in his eyes. We weren't a duo who didn't live on the edge of danger. We both silently knew this was our last hoorah, whether or not either of us had admitted it even to ourselves, I didn't know.
I try to swallow back the tears, gulping down the lump in my throat as I nod. He knows I don't believe him, and I still can't tell if he believes himself at all. He pulls me into a strong embrace, one where he kisses my head and whispers that he loves me. I say it back to him as he pulls us apart. His soft lips press a kiss to the ring on my left hand before he takes my bag from me, looping it over his own shoulder.
"We're coming back," he says to me again as he leads us to the car.
I don't say anything, for fear I will start to cry again. It's an odd shift we've seen lately: me as the pessimist. But since we received the letter from Ameve Steele, I've been like this.
We had a week. Just a week to prepare ourselves for this cryptic, imperative, political mission Adamas Steele had planned for us. The only thing we knew about this "mission" was that we were not the only two he selected to help him.
Eddison Cognitor and Brooklyn Jamison, the two who were responsible for the win at The Key's Revolution. We are the heroes. We fight the wicked. We win.
And ignorance is bliss.
It was two years ago when I first found out about my powers. I'd grown up with the world's most renowned Neurosorcerer for a brother, and my father had been the President of Magic before his death. Yet I was the ugly duckling of the family, born without magic. Or at least that's what I was told. A conix is the technical term for someone born to a magical family lacking powers, and it's an automatic disgrace to have one in your tree, let alone be the dead leaf. But even though my family was supposed to be ashamed of me, they loved me more than I ever could've imagined, maybe even too much. Because of my father, our family was under public scrutiny within the magical community more times than not. This is why my family didn't speak about me much; they feared the ridicule I'd be faced with if anyone were to find out that a Jamison was a conix. Sadly, I became an orphan when I was nine, and my father was killed, my mother having passed away giving birth to me. This left my brother, Ben, who was ten years older than I was, to be my guardian. He kept me hidden much more than my father ever did.
