OUT OF MIND² ━━ Bellamy Blake

𝐗𝐗𝐗𝐈𝐈: Day 46

Still. Lyra decides not to mention this.

"OK."

Noah crosses the chamber to retrieve her backpack, and Lyra's heart drops.

"Don't touch that!"

Noah halts in his tracks, utterly baffled. In the meanwhile, all sadness dissolves from Lyra's eyes and the trembling girl practically throws herself across the room. Sweeping one very nervous hand through her sweat-soaked strands of lanky hair, the other rifles through the contents of the backpack, shaking violently. It's not until her fingertips brush against cool cut-glass vials that noisily jangle against one another that she breathes a sigh of relief. Sweeping her disheveled bronze ponytail back, she hefts the backpack over her shoulders and find Noah staring at her with a little bit of a frown.

"What's in there?"

"Nothing," says Lyra, all too quickly.

He studies her a moment longer, and then his expression softens, his worry lines sinking into his features. "Is it the Mount Weather textbooks that Bellamy brought from Arkadia?"

"Yeah." Lyra's eyes are black oily pools in the dim and she fights to keep the misery confined to memory. "Yeah, that's what it is."

     "Lyra!"

      "Ah, fuck," Lyra mumbles as Octavia lets herself into the room. "Have any of you heard of knocking?"

     "I basically own this place. I don't need to knock." Octavia informs her with just the barest hints of a rueful smile. Then any amusement fades as her dark brows narrow. "You weren't about to skip the delegates assembly, were you?"

     Lyra shakes her head adamantly. "Never."

Side by side, the pair of Skaikru girls stride into the hallway. Clothed in the blood red cloak of the Commander's, the mark of the Flame impressed between her brows, Octavia should be every bit as imposing as the Commander before her. And yet something about her appearance is. . . lackluster. This is the girl that fought in a conclave; she had bared her blood-coated teeth and, as the sun had bled red at dawn, had the grounds bleeding black with Luna's blood. Everyone should be terrified of Octavia. She was the Skairipa, Death from Above. She became the Osleya and now she wears the crown of blood and ash; she is the Commander.

And yet there is no prowess in her walk, no calculation in her eyes, no power in her voice. She does not act like the Commander that she is.

Indra is waiting for them in the hallway. Her expression is unreadable in the dim, but Lyra thinks that she might be. . . unsatisfied with Octavia's performance. Perhaps she is. Indra had been the one to turn Octavia into the warrior that she is, and yet even she cannot force Octavia to lead.

"Have fun, girls!" Noah calls after them.

"Why can't Kane be the Skaikru delegate?" Lyra all but whines. "I'm not a politician, O. I'm an engineer, a scientist."

Indra's mouth thins. "Osleya chose you for this role. You should be honored."

Octavia clears her throat. "Plus, misery loves company."