New World

Chapter Twelve

Savi heaved a sigh. "Come to my room."

Cerulean was feeling angry, hurt, worried, sad, confused and skeptical, emotions she'd wished she'd never feel from him. She brought him up to her bedroom and pushed some of her things aside, hiding her photographs behind a couple of boxes.

"Okay," said Savi. "I told you why I cancelled before, right?"

"Yeah," Cerulean agreed. "But... I wish you'd just told me instead of shutting me out."

"This time," Savi said, "it wasn't planned. I'm not supposed to be telling you this because it's classified for some reason, so I won't tell you the context, but after Inflicting, Bronte and I started talking about something about my parents, and then he demanded I stayed with him so we could work it out, and... yeah."

Cerulean took a long while to process the information.

"So... Councilor Bronte forced you to stay back?"

"Yeah. He forced me." Savi fidgeted with her hair. Cerulean was currently feeling confused, suspicious and a little bit relieved.

He still didn't know she was an Empath.

That... was very good. She wasn't planning on telling him anytime soon.

"You're giving me the face," Cerulean noted.

"What face?" Savi asked wildly, grabbing her mirror from her table to examine her face.

"That look. The, I'm-keeping-secrets-from-you look."

"There's a look for that?"

"Yes, and you're giving it to me right now, along with the, oh-no-he-found-me-out look."

Savi continued examining her face in the mirror, but she couldn't find anything weird about her expression. Maybe Cerulean was just very sharp, or he was making it all up, or she was very blur and she was being super obvious.

"So... what's the secret?"

"I'll tell you next week," Savi promised.

He looked surprised. "Oh, alright."

You think I'd tell you now? Savi wondered. "So. I'm free now, did you want to do your Universe homework with me?"

"Sure, Miss I've-got-all-the-star-maps-memorized."

"Well, I do," Savi said defensively, then realized he was teasing and pulled her worksheets out of her bag. "Oh, I did them already."

His face fell.

"Then... let's do Elementism. I'm supposed to be bottling... water? Huh? Couldn't I just"

"Not water, Sav, mist. Here, read it again."

He grabbed her hand and pointed to the sentence where it did indeed say mist.

She wasn't sure what was making her heart pump more wildly, the fact that he'd called her Sav unlike the usual Savi, or the fact that he was currently holding her hand. Either way, she must have flushed crimson because he jerked his hand away.

"Argh – sorry! No touch rule, right?"

"I... never said there was a no-touch rule, but... sure."