Eternal: Chapter Two, Part 6

For the next week we went out as a group every night—whether it was dancing or walking—and we stayed up late into the day. A few times Drei and I would excuse ourselves and fly off somewhere to be alone. Once, he told me it was possibly the best of my experiments, though that was after he was better at it.

Despite the happier times, I still felt poorly thinking Drei had failed at something. So I decided I would help him succeed at something else he hadn’t finished yet: finding his sisters. Before he had explained that he had turned me, he told me the story of his own turning, abridging the events leading up to where he met me. That story included the death of his younger twin sisters, and the disappearance of their bodies—the location of which he had yet to discover.

In the time before it was suggested I should sleep, I would pull up a map on the laptop that displayed all known cemeteries and burial grounds in his home country, and slowly began making my way through mapping them. What I was looking for was very specific, and since they were all dead, I could tuck the air closer to increase accuracy. I just needed to find two children, girls, buried next to each other or at least close together. They were young girls, too, so that helped cut down the possibilities.

I didn’t tell Drei what I was doing; I didn’t want him to discourage me, or feel badly because of it. When he asked, I’d only tell him I was practicing. Any pair of graves that matched what I was looking for I made note of, not able to visit them yet, but knowing I’d manage to forget a few if I didn’t. There weren’t many that fit into my specific search, but there were still more than I had expected.

At the end of the week, the summons came. All four of us were to face the Council, and we would be picked up the next night for the proceedings.

“It will be okay,” Drei whispered into my hair, holding me tightly. “They cannot keep me from you, no matter how they try.”

“What’s the worst that can happen?” I needed to know; I had a right to know.

Valetta and Mitchell both looked away; Drei seemed to just hold me tighter. That wasn’t comforting; nor was it an answer, for that matter.

Pulling slightly away from him, I hit his chest and demanded, “Tell me.”

Meeting my gaze, he swallowed hard before saying, “The worst ruling is death. But being an elemental, that might not be what they choose. We may be separated.”

May. In that context, it wasn’t my friend; in that context, it sounded more like an enemy that couldn’t be overcome by any means. That wasn’t very reassuring.

Nodding, I changed my mind. I didn’t really want to think about it anymore; I wasn’t sure if I preferred knowing the worst consequence. Being separated was one thing; death was another altogether. Neither were even a semi-pleasant, “I can deal with this” kind of thing.

Naïvely, I thought not thinking about it would make it seem further away. Would make that night and day longer so the hearing wasn’t so close. That hopefully, by some sheer luck, it could all fall away into oblivion never to be seen or heard of again.

Instead, it felt like hardly any time passed between our brief conversation concerning the hearing and when we were climbing into the black town car that would take us to whatever fate was waiting.