Page 32 of Burn Bright (Cobalt Empire #1)

BEN COBALT

M y little sister can’t catch her breath as she cries into the phone. I’ve been in the bathroom at The Labyrinth Library for only a few minutes—a couple of those were dedicated to me disposing my stomach contents in the toilet.

I’m not that close to figuring out the cause of her distress.

Mostly, I’m trying not to jump to the worst-case scenario since this could be about literally anything.

A failed grade. A fashion emergency. A shitty day at Dalton—especially now that Winona and Vada aren’t there.

Maybe she’s regretting not going to boarding school with them.

What’s strange: Audrey didn’t immediately put me on a video call. Normally, she’d ask to see my face to ensure Eliot and Tom aren’t impersonating me as a prank.

“Audrey, breathe,” I instruct, my frown deepening. “Just take a breath.”

She inhales between sobs.

“What’s wrong? What happened?” I ask.

She mumbles incoherently as her cries intensify.

I press a hand against the porcelain sink and try to concentrate and piece apart her words.

The smell of lavender overwhelms my senses.

The dim lighting gives off a yellow-gold glow so it’s not too harsh on my eyes, but my throat is sandpaper as I swallow. And my ears still ring from the siren.

It’s hard to focus. Especially when all I can picture is Tom rubbing a panicked hand at his windpipe. I should have asked about emergency exits. Guilt craters a wound in my gut, and I’m just trying not to puke again.

“Theo…” Audrey’s voice shoves me out of my head. In between her cries, I hear, “Theodore.”

I go eerily still at the mention of my pet cockatiel—or rather her pet. I gave him to her. “Put me on video, Audrey.”

“I ca-can’t.” She hiccups. “I don’t want you to see him like this.”

I scrub a hand down my face. “What’s wrong with him?” My ribs constrict around my lungs. This can’t be happening. Why is this happening?

“H-he’s just a little slow to move.” She intakes a sharp breath. “ Theodore. Theodore, come on. Please. ”

“Is he in his cage?”

She’s quiet.

“Audrey?”

“He’s lying on the bottom. Possibly, he’s just sleeping.” Her voice fractures and goes high-pitched. “He could be sleeping.”

My heart rate keeps accelerating. Sweat suctions my shirt to my chest. It’s doing everything to suck in oxygen and speak clearly. “Where’s Mom and Dad?”

She doesn’t answer. In the next short pause, I picture her silent tears streaming down her fair cheeks as she nudges the lifeless, gray-feathered bird.

He has an energetic personality, which I attribute to being raised first by Eliot and Tom.

He loves hopping around. Tossing his little head to the beat of music.

I don’t want to imagine him motionless.

The corners of my eyes go wet, and two involuntary tears drip into the perspiration of my skin.

“Did I kill him, Ben?” She’s no longer sobbing or hiccupping and that concerns me even more. “I-I gave him water. I fed him. He ate sliced apple out of my hand. We were learning how to play a fun ring toss game together. We were bonding .”

I lift my shirt and wipe my entire face with the damp fabric. Maybe he ate an apple seed. Which is highly poisonous.

“H-he must be sleeping. He must be.”

“He might be,” I console, exhaling a few times. “Go get Mom or Dad, or I’ll hang up and call them myself.”

I hear the thud of her footsteps, and while I wait, I stare at my reddening eyes in the gold-framed mirror.

I made another mistake. Giving Audrey my bird.

I thought it’d be a good thing for her to have a reminder of me when I’m gone.

Something she could hang on to. The average lifespan of a cockatiel is fifteen to twenty-five years, some living to thirty, so why would I be worried he’d pass away anytime soon?

Let alone two weeks after I gave him to her.

I shake my head slowly to myself.

Life isn’t full of loops and repeats. It’s not cyclical. Audrey wasn’t meant to have Theodore because Eliot and Tom had once gifted him to me. Isn’t this proof enough of that? Fate doesn’t exist.

Life is a swerving, unpredictable line of falling dominos. There are reactions to every action. Consequences.

Some brutal. Some eviscerating.

I’m just hanging on to the slimmest chance that he might be alive. Maybe his breaths are weak. Maybe he’s ill.

“Audrey? What’s wrong, ma petite?” I hear my dad’s calming voice.

They both grow more muffled. I wonder if Audrey is cupping the phone to protect me from the news.

Seconds later, I hear, “Ben?”

“Mom?” I ask. “What’s going on?”

“Hold on, I’m putting you on video call.”

In the background, Audrey wails, “Wait! Please don’t show him!”

“I’m just talking to him,” she assures.

Emerging on the video, my mom pushes glossy brown hair off her shoulder.

Her collarbones are strict, lips pursed, and eyes flamed.

Her black silk robe contrasts the glittering strand of diamonds at her neck.

She is the antithesis of soft, maternal warmth.

She is cold, sharp battlement. And I’ve rarely, in all my life, wanted or needed for anything else, not from her.

Her hugs might be steel, but they’ve always been loving.

It’s a comfort when she appears. I take a breath. “Is he okay?” I ask.

“We don’t know.” Her tone is icy. My mom frames the screen so I can only see her face. Likewise, she only sees mine. Based on her iron-willed expression—like she’s ready to murder my sorrow, so even sadness can’t hurt me—I know he’s dead.

I know he’s gone.

I internally nod to myself, trying to accept this without buckling. Trying. It’s easier to just focus on my little sister. I want her to be okay.

In the background, I hear my dad tell Audrey, “He’s not breathing.”

“Give him CPR,” she insists.

“Rigor mortis is setting in, Audrey. He’s been dead for too long.”

“There must be something we can do,” she cries.

“Outside of pretending he’s alive, there is nothing.”

“ Richard ,” Mom glares over at him.

“Rose,” Dad replies with less heat, a smile almost inside his voice. “It’s the cycle of life. They know the dead can’t be resurrected. And this isn’t the first pet that’s passed.”

My mom accidentally rotates the phone, and I see Audrey on the floor of her room. Her head buried in her black satin pajamas. My dad is on the chaise at the foot of her four-poster bed, and he rubs her back in soothing circles.

“He had so many more years, though,” Audrey sobs. “This is my fault.”

“It’s not your fault,” I tell her. “I don’t blame you.” I really don’t. I only blame myself. This is on me. She shouldn’t have had to take care of him, and I should’ve accounted for this possibility. It was always there.

“We can take him to the vet tomorrow morning,” my mom says to me, her face filling the screen again. “We’ll get a necropsy to learn the cause of death.”

“No,” I say fast. “No, I don’t want that.” I’m most likely in the minority of my family, not wishing for knowledge. Answers. But I believe there’s more peace in not knowing. Especially for Audrey. If he really died from an apple seed she accidentally fed him, it’d wreck her.

“We’ll bury him,” Mom assures me. “It’ll be a proper burial too. A ceremony under your favorite oak tree. May his feathery little ass rest in bird heaven.”

“ Mother ,” Audrey cries. “It’s been mere minutes. Can we not joke?”

“I was being serious,” she says sharply, but I sense her studying my reaction, wondering if she upset me.

I’m fine. My chest hurts and my throat is scorched, but I’m fine.

“Ben?” Dad asks.

“I’m fine,” I mention out loud.

“You’ll come back for the burial?” he asks off-screen.

My mom’s eyes ping over to him, then back to me. “You’re coming.” It’s a demand, but she won’t force me there if I can’t make it.

“Yeah, I’ll try.” My voice goes soft. “Just make sure Audrey’s okay. I don’t want her to take this too hard.”

Her lips flatline, and bottomless pools of concern fill her eyes.

She struts out of the bedroom, taking the phone on her march to a home office downstairs.

For privacy, probably. Once she’s sitting pin straight at a mahogany desk, she says, “We’re all more concerned about your feelings.

Audrey cares about the bird, but she cares about you more. ”

I nod a couple times, my jaw locking.

“ Ben .” The aggressive way she says my name—the way her fierce yellow-green eyes drill into me—I wonder if she’s worried about something else.

“What?” I ask.

She blinks and shakes her head like she’s shooing a thought away. “I just…it’s not like you to not even cry over Theodore. He was yours for years.”

“I did cry before you got on the phone.” Barely. Definitely not typical, and I think she can tell it couldn’t have been a lot. So I add, “You rarely cry over anything.”

“You’re not an ice-cold bitch. You’re my sweet-natured, fearless son?—”

“I’m just in shock,” I say fast. “Believe me, the waterworks are going to come during the burial.” I haven’t changed, Mom .

She pushes more hair off her shoulder. “You’ve been happy out there with your brothers?” she asks. “Because if you need me or your dad, you can come home.”

“No, I want to stay. It hasn’t been terrible in New York. I eat breakfast with Beckett every morning, and I’m out with all of them now. We’re at an escape room together.”

Her lips twitch in a smile. “What’s the damage?”

I laugh. “Eliot and Tom definitely incurred a bill, let’s just say that.”

She makes a throaty noise of disapproval. “Ugh, I swear they are unrestrained little shits.”

“Eliot thinks he’s the big shit, actually.”

“His ego is rivaling your father’s by the day.”

“By the hour,” I banter with a smile, which brings hers out too.

“And Charlie…?” She hesitates to ask. “How are you handling living with him?”