“I’ve been better. Ma, I came back because I wanted to help beat the Blood Casters. I survived and I held my own, but you should know I’m getting medical attention right now.”
The parallels between me and Emil both being treated in Gleam Care when we had to break big specter-related news to Ma isn’t lost on me. Except this is all my fault.
“What happened?” Ma asks. “Were you burnt? Is anything broken?”
“No one hurt me out there. It’s just . . . it’s been hard living in Emil’s shadow, and I decided to take action. My dreams got the best of me.”
She’s quiet for so long that I have to check that the call hasn’t dropped. “Got the best of you how?”
“I drank the Reaper’s Blood, and now I’m really sick. I wanted those ultimate powers and—”
“Brighton Miguel Rey! How . . . ? You . . . You’re smarter than this! The hydra blood ruined your father. What made you think you were the exception to the rule?”
“So many reasons, Ma! For one, your mother was a celestial, so I hoped it would better brace me to welcome other powers into my system.” Everyone’s eyes are on me, and Emil is approaching. He reaches for the phone, and I smack his hand away. “I could’ve saved lives if this had worked. I could’ve been safe from death forever.”
Ma is sobbing, and it immediately transports me back to when I called her to give her the news about Dad. I never thought words could hurt someone so much.
“I can’t lose you too,” she says. “I can’t believe I’m losing you because you were so selfish—”
“Selfish?!”
“Yes, selfish! You are always putting yourself before others, Brighton, and your father and I didn’t raise you to be so high and mighty! You—”
I’m burning hot, like I swallowed a star and I’m milliseconds away from exploding. “This is why Dad was always the better parent! If I told him I was dying, he wouldn’t have been shouting about how little he thinks of me!”
I throw the phone across the room, and the screen shatters against the wall.
Emil is staring at me like I’m a hydra that chewed up a phoenix and spit out its bones. Wesley’s jaw has dropped and frozen in place. Iris is staring at her broken phone and probably dreaming up which arm of mine she’s going to rip out first so I can’t ever destroy her property again.
“Don’t look at me like you know how she was talking to me,” I spit out.
Emil stares me dead in the eyes. “Bright, if you need to swing at someone, I’ll be your punching bag, but don’t go off on our mother like she spoon-fed you the Reaper’s Blood and expect me to take your side. You crossed the line, big-time.”
He storms out of the room.
Iris picks up the phone and examines it before dropping it in the bin. “That was my last phone. Wesley, do you mind getting some new ones?”
“We’re low on funds,” Wesley says.
“Then cash in on favors. Someone somewhere has to have a connection to a bulk buyer,” Iris says on her way out too.
“You got it.”
Wesley comes to the foot of my bed like he’s about to say something, but he gives me this look of pity before taking off. He’s got it so good being born with power. When he was living on the streets, he used his swift-speed for his own selfish means, but no one is ever calling him out on it. But when it comes to me, I’m the bane of my family because no one believes I could be just as good and powerful, if not better and more, than any Spell Walker in this building.
I’m left alone. I squeeze my eyes shut and try to force myself to rest so I don’t have to think about how little my own mother and brother think of me.
Nine
Oblivion’s Edge
MARIBELLE
I slowly wake up, wondering why I don’t feel his chin between my shoulders or his breath on my cheek or his hands locked in mine. I’m not actually in bed with Atlas. I’m alone in his car. I begin shaking as I realize it was only a dream. I scream and punch at the wheel, the horn honking a dozen times. I don’t know how long I was asleep. Minutes, I’m guessing. When I parked the car outside of the Aldebaran Center, reclined the seat, and used my power-proof vest as a pillow, I doubted I wou
ld get any rest. But it seems my body will only take my revenge into account for so long before it shuts down.
I wipe my eyes dry and go inside the hospital. Immediately I see Prudencia, Wesley, and Iris being escorted into a faculty cafeteria. Great. I won’t have to deal with any of them when I get upstairs to check on Brighton. I ride the elevator and go to the room everyone crowded last night before I sought air on the sky deck, and I let myself in.