“No.” Her mother’s look turned hard as she fastened it on me. “Get out of our castle—our kingdom, you thief. You willneverbe suitable for our daughter. You hear me?”
Ripley kicked the air around her father. “No! Don’t send him away. He’s my friend.”
“She took my magic!” I announced. “I want it back!”
A look of horror flashed across their faces as Ripley continued to cry. “Then, I guess she gets to keep it forever.”
“Are you serious?” I screamed, fisting my hands. “That’s not fair!”
“Mel—” her father soothed.
“Shut it, Archer. I will never allow this. We won’t have her wasting her life with low-life scum like him with nothing to offer her.”
“I don’t want her!” Everything about that sentence burned my tongue, but I knew it was something the queen wanted to hear. “I just want my magic!”
Ripley was crying harder than I had ever heard her before. For the first time in my life, I felt her magic wholly encompass me. Normally, I’d have my magic to combat it, but in its absence, I was her puppet just like any magicless human would be to an Elizian princess.
Her skin pulsed blue. And with it, my body relaxed, and my mind floated, tethered by a single string of consciousness. I let myself be fully taken by her. She wanted me to take a step forward, and my body complied. I took a step closer. And then another.
The queen stood between us, halting me and Ripley’s magic with one glowing hand. Her fingers wrapped around my ear and yanked.
“Ow!”
I was dragged out of the room and into the hallway. “If your parents didn’t want you, what makes you think us royals would? Huh? I don’t know what you’ve done to my daughter, but you stay the hell away from her.”
“Let go of me!” I gritted out, clawing at her hand.
“Leave Elizy. Find some other kingdom or town to torture. You are not welcome here. And stay away from Ripley.”
“No!” I yelled and shoved her away with both hands.
She gasped and let go.
My hand flew to my ear just as the back of hers whipped across my face, rings cutting open my cheek. With the momentum, I fell to my side, head hitting a white column.
“You disrespectful animal.” Her hand came down on my forearm and we teleported outside the castle. “Never return.”
The walk back to my hammock was miserable. Tears clouded my sight and caught in my throat. The cool air burned the gash on my cheek as my ear throbbed.
I was heartbroken, and changed. Since the moment my skin had pulsated purple in my hammock, something had changed in me. There was this new, foreign feeling. It ached and moved and shifted in my gut. It was sad. Soverysad. But it wasn’tmysadness, or not completely. It was coated in something familiar. It was airy and bright. It was valuable and mine. It locked into place where something had been missing. And I was insanely protective of it. How I had ever lived without its presence?
This new thing living in my chest was attached to something tangible. Even though I had no family, with this brilliant star in my chest… I somehow did. I was connected to whoever or whatever was on the other end in a way that felt like home, a thought that caused more tears to spring to my eyes. Whoever was on the other side of this bond felt immense sadness, a sadness much like my own but separate.
I mulled over its essence the whole walk to my hill, not being able to place exactly what was on the other end of this instinct that clung to me.
And when I reached my hammock, spotting Ripley’s little frame sitting under it, I knew what that something was. It was Ripley. I could sense her emotions in a significantly more intense way. Man, I wanted out of it. I should not know what she was feeling to this heightened degree.
I came to a stop in front of her. “Go home, Ripley.”
A bolt of despair struck the place in my chest where I sensed her. My comment had hurt her deeply. I shook my head in hopes the pain would go away, but instead, the pain deepened and clawed at me until I thought I would shrivel. I couldn’t bare it any longer. Whatever she needed mending, I would do it.
Slowly, she bent forward at the hips over her folded knees and reached her arms out to bow to me. “I’m sorry! Don’t leave.” Up from the grass at the ends of her fingertips grew a few flowers. Her eyes peered up at the bouquet and grunted in frustration. “No, more. You need more. I-I’m sorry. I wanted to make you a garden.”
The sight hitched my breathing.Shewas bowing tome?
I got on my knees before her and pulled her shoulder up so she was sitting on her heels, blonde hair spreading in tangles around her like a crescent sun. “Never bow to anyone. Do you even know what that means?”
Ripley shook her head, wiping her eyes with the back of her hands.
