MY MOTHER IS IN TEARS by the end of the session.
This time, it's Ebony she clutches damned hard to her chest, sobbing into his shoulder so much that a damp, shiny patch forms on his plaid flannel. The red and grey matches well with the ashen pallor to his skin beneath the tan, slashed with a sinful crimson where Rebel's nails once were.
He glares at me in the midst of her embrace, though his stormy eyes are less like knives and more like blunt daggers.
I turn away, but not before his whisper―near overwhelmed by the sound of our mother crying―scratches the surface of the distance that spans between us. "You only said what Rebel wanted you to say," he says, a threatening hiss. "Nothing that came out of your mouth was ever yours."
"No." The word slips out of my mouth, startling both him and my mother. They watch me, eyes blank and vacant and expectant. One waits for me to backtrack, while the other just stares. "I have to go to Specials now. See you at home."
I still feel their gazes, searing bullet holes into my back, even as I walk away: head down and fists clenched, ducking my head from the public eye.
And for every nice job, Blue, and you're a true Witch, Blue, I smile and lift my head in acknowledgement, but can't seem to shake off the intensity of their stares boring into me, burdening my shoulders with the weight of their twisted, writhing souls.
I turn the corner into the Art basement. The class is fuller now than it was last time I was here, with people already beginning to fall into hapless reveries, induced by white spirit and turpentine.
My seat remains empty until I'm there to fill it, taking out my canvas from where it has been stowed and setting out an array of paints in rich, sultry hues to suit the dark recesses of my mood. Dipping my brush in a bleeding mess of burgundy paint, I begin to swizzle it across my painting, etching haphazard strokes into grooves and crannies, accentuating dark miserable eyes and staining porcelain features.
I paint where my mind takes me, drizzling the red of garnet into the sun's evening fires, hot and sweltering against the black and blue of bruises and the icy cold of onyx-morphed-obsidian. The penny-brown of my eyes, and the wicked, Stygian black of Archer's―billowing clouds of volcanic ash where celestial bodies reside; his nebulous eyes reflecting the heavens. His are night-dark and endless, rupturing and nocturnal. Pools of ink that will never die, and a gaze that devours all light daring to come near.
When the hour is up, I am almost too involved to even think about tearing my eyes away, even for a moment. Afraid things would shift and change in my absence; become versions of themselves that are prone to absolute destruction.
But eventually, my paintbrush falls and clatters, shattering the trance. A wet canvas is pushed to the side, still glistening beneath the artificial lights, and as I start to stow my paintbrushes in the sink, something else catches my eye.
A piece of paper, crumpled from much use, and fighting to escape its confining folds. Layers of paper reveal smudges of indistinguishable colours underneath, but any contact with the rough-edged sketchbook paper threatens to burn me.
I look around. The last few are packing up: none of them are Witches, none of them are IPs, but one of them is Archer.
His eyes are indiscreet, stare fixed unwaveringly on the piece of paper in my hands.
I don't want to give into his will, but I open it anyway.
It's a sketch of Rebel. Drawn out in full, all dynamic eyes and lips and curves. A sharp scowl etched into her features and hands on her hips. Her eyes rimmed in crimson, the same hue slicked across her lips. But the dress she wears is navy, her heels midnight silver, and the gem at her throat is diamond, carved from my reverence. Two nights, bleeding into one, and her shadow stretching out across a void floor to show for it.
Though it doesn't feature her curves; neither her small height nor her incessant pride. This shadow is taller, slimmer, with two plaits from the crown of her head down to the centre of her back. Expression softer, lips thinner, and her body falling in on itself with surrender.
Me. I chose to be Rebel's shadow, and now Archer Finley will not let me forget.
I challenge his gaze with my own, but his does not flinch, nor waver. He expects me to speak, that much is obvious. Truthfully, a dimension of unspoken words exist between us; some are his and some are mine. Some are truth, some are lie. Some are apology, some are forgiveness, and some are endowed in an area of moral-grey; suspended somewhere in between.
But it is a conversation I can't have, with him, or anyone.
I can't have Archer Finley have the satisfaction of seeing me keep his drawing. It flutters into the bin on my way out, like any remnants of the bond we once shared.
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