Page 45 of Caelum

TWELVE

EVE

“It started before I was eleven.”

Six words, six damning words, but they were the truth, and having learned so much about our people, I knew that this, somehow, would be the most mind-blowing of everything I had to reveal.

If I was looking for a positive, I could say, hand on heart, that this was the last secret I had to share. There was nothing else I was holding back, nothing else I was afraid to reveal.

My final secret, one that was far more terrifying than any of my others, would flay me open for them.

Now they knew this?

I was in more danger than ever, while equally, being safer than ever before.

“How is that even possible?” Stefan demanded, his eyes wide and the crystalline blue irises sparkling a storm as he stared me down.

“You’re asking me? I don’t know,” I retorted, shrugging as I spoke because I wasn’t lying.

If anyone was the most in the dark here, it was technically me!

“That makes no sense,” Samuel stated, his tone cold. Not enough to freeze me, but enough to tell me his brain was ticking away. A thought that was confirmed when I shot him a look over my shoulder and saw he was staring at the wall like it held all the answers—it was kind of creepy.

“Perhaps not,” I told him stiffly, aggravated with him and Dre and how they always questioned me like I was making things up. “But it’s the truth nonetheless. Look, I didn’t ask for any of this, just like none of you did either.”

Stefan raised his hands in apology. “Sorry, Eve. Please, just explain.”

“There isn’t that much to say.” I reached up and rubbed my eyes, tiredness was hitting me hard because I was so exhausted from hiding. From holding back. I looked at Nestor, suddenly needing him to understand something, “Nestor, I have no other secrets.”

His eyes softened, the tension in his jaw fading somewhat as I urged him to believe me. “You promise?”

I nodded. “Promise.” After licking my lips, I whispered, “The second you use the words ‘I wish’ around me, it comes true. I don’t consciously choose to make it happen.”

“That can’t be possible,” Dre argued.

“It is.” My heart began to pound. “It isn’t like how they show it in Aladdin .” They’d made me watch both movies, and I’d flinched every time Will Smith and Robin Williams had granted their wishes.

I’d wanted to scream that it didn’t work that way, but how could I?

I could grant wishes, and I didn’t know how it worked, just knew it wasn’t as easy as they made it look in the movies.

“What is it like, then?” Nestor asked.

“It’s specific, and it isn’t instantaneous.” I licked my lips. “Remember weeks ago, you wished for brigadeiros …”

His eyes widened. “They were in the canteen the next day.”

“Yes. Exactly. They don’t just pop out of nowhere, it’s like when you wish for something around me, the universe wills it into being. It can take days or weeks. It’s never instant. At least, never in all the time I’ve experienced this. Back at the compound, people didn’t wish for much though. It just wasn’t done. Wishing wasn’t something that was accepted. We prayed for things and worked hard when we could to earn the little we wanted.” Not for the first time, I shrugged. “I’ve granted more wishes here than I have in years.”

“What else have you granted?”

My throat closed. “Dre wished to be better. For his knee not to hurt.”

Nestor cut the Were a look. “You told me when I was out of the sickbay that your knee wasn’t hurting…”

“And it isn’t. Because of the shift. You know we heal?—”

I licked my lips. “I’ve been wondering if the wish was behind that.”

Silence fell at my admission, and I ducked my head, shame washing through me. Was this the straw that would break the camel’s back ?

How much did they have to come to terms with before they just walked away from me?

I couldn’t, wouldn’t blame them if they did. I was a disaster waiting to happen.

Nestor whispered, “If you wish for something?—”

“No. It doesn’t work like that. I get nothing. It just happens.”

“Does the wish drain you?” Frazer questioned, stepping closer to Nestor’s bed. When he reached for my hand, I didn’t pull away. If anything, when his fingers enfolded mine, something deep inside me shuddered with relief.

They weren’t pulling away.

“No. Not really. When it happens…” I winced. “There’s a kind of power surge. It hurts. Gives me a little headache, but nothing else.”

“How are you so calm?” Nestor asked, his voice shaky.

“I’m not. But I’ve been waiting for this to happen. When Reed wished for his key ring, I knew it would wash up, and it did. I expected it to take longer, considering it had to be somewhere down at the bottom of the ocean.” I gnawed on my bottom lip. “The wishes… I don’t know if it’s like Aladdin . I don’t know if there’s a finite amount. In fact, there’s so much I don’t know, it’s ridiculous.

“What I do know is that the wishes take time. And the more complicated they are, the more time they take. I can’t grant myself wishes, and… that’s pretty much it.”

“We have to watch our words from now on,” Samuel stated, his remark breaking into the next bout of silence that fell as the boys processed my declaration. “If the wishes aren’t finite, we don’t want to waste them. We have to store them until desperate times call for desperate measures.”

Frazer nodded. “You’re right, bro. But that’s going to be hard. Most of us just say it because it’s a throwaway statement…”

“Tough,” Samuel retorted grimly. “We need to make sure we don’t use them up. Fuck knows if we find ourselves in a shitty predicament and we wasted them all…. That would be disastrous. Look at what happened to Nestor. If Eve was there, we could have saved him?—”

“Is that right, Eve?” Dre interrupted, and I turned to look at him. “Is it?” he pressed when I didn’t reply. “If he’d been close to death, could you have spared him?”

“It’s never been wished before, so I don’t know, but I assume so. It just depends on how bad the injury is. As I said, these things aren’t instantaneous. If someone is bleeding out like in the movies we watch, the wish might not work in time,” I told him honestly, and something flickered in his eyes that I wasn’t sure boded well or ill for me. Who the heck knew where Dre was concerned?

“What has been wished?” Reed questioned softly, and he approached me as Frazer had, but he scooted down so he was on the ground next to me. He rested his forearms on his knees, looking up at me like I was more interesting than a movie on the TV.

Mouth dry, I licked my lips again as I thought about the handful of times I’d granted wishes. At first, I hadn’t thought I had anything to do with it, but after a third time, when my brother had commented that I was a good luck charm—a statement that had my father clipping him behind the ear—I’d taken note. Of the words, the phrasing, and the acute pain I experienced in the aftermath.

“Once, someone wished she could get pregnant.” Inside, I froze at the memory. “If wives couldn’t carry children at the compound, they were considered no good.”

“She feared for her life?” Nestor asked, his tone dark.

I nodded. “Yes.” Gulping, I continued, “She wished she’d have a boy to make her husband proud, and a few weeks later, it happened. My mother said it was a miracle because Sister Sarah had never had a proper monthly—” My cheeks burned at that. “Then, it just happened. She never carried again though.”

Nestor sat up, settled higher on his pillow, and, as though he were rapt, asked, “What else?”

Blowing out a gusty breath, I admitted, “There was a little boy who was very ill.” My lips twisted. “They were going to ‘send him to Heaven,’ but his elder sister wished they could play together like the others their age could.” Tears pricked my eyes. “It took a long time for that one to come true, but it worked. He got better, strong enough to play with her, but he did die though. About five years after they were going to deal with him.”

The guys released a collective breath, stunned by my admission. Eren strode across the room and, cupping my shoulder, whispered, “You have the power to save people, Eve.”

I swallowed. “Yes.”

“Jesus.” Dre’s voice was stark, then he bit off, “No one can find out about this. No one.”

A round of nodding moved around the room in a circle.

“She’d be in danger if people knew,” Frazer confirmed. “Christ, this is why—” He shook his head and staggered slightly as he sat down at Nestor’s side. The mattress jerked and Nestor winced at the movement, but I knew Frazer was genuinely bewildered by what he was thinking. “This is why you need all of us, Eve. We have to keep you safe.”

I blinked at that. “We don’t know?—”

“Of course we do,” Dre snapped. “You can barely look after yourself here in Caelum, never mind in the outside world.” He stormed to his feet and began pacing. His steps were a fast clip as he tried to burn off his energy, but something strange happened. My hand began to burn where his mark was, and deep inside, I felt it. Felt him again.

It wasn’t an aberration. Wasn’t something that had happened as a one-off, something that was potentially tied to his wish for his knee to be healed, something linked me to him. Our souls were connected. I half wondered if my soul was linked to the others and knew it was likely, but the truth was, I’d only noticed it with Dre before. Recognizing it with the others would be harder because I was sure I only recognized him because of what I’d done to somehow bring his bear out.

It was instinctive to reach down inside myself and attempt to soothe him, and when he froze in the middle of stalking back and forth across Nestor’s room, I knew my actions had done something.

Whether they were for good or ill, I didn’t know.

“Don’t do that,” he grated out a few seconds later.

I ignored him. Maybe that was stupid, but what was he going to do when there were six other men around who felt it was their duty to keep me safe?

The bear was in charge, and it was the bear with whom I was connected with. The light in me attempted to appease and soothe the darkness in him, and when he turned to face me, glowering all the way, I stated, “Aren’t you mine? Aren’t I supposed to protect you, to care for you as you’re supposed to do the same for me?”

His eyes flashed, but before he could say a word, Nestor snorted out a chuckle. “She has you there, Dre.”

Alexandre tensed and his nostrils flared, so he looked more like a bull than a bear. “I don’t need to be appeased.”

“I’d say you do,” I replied unashamedly. “There’s no point in freaking out over this development. I’ve been dealing with it, hiding it, for a very long time. You wouldn’t have noticed it if you hadn’t known I was strange. It would have just been a happy coincidence.

“That’s how it’s always been. Always. There’s no need to fret?—”

“There’s every need. Madre de Dios , don’t you see, woman? You’re a walking weapon,” he grated out. “You’re exactly what Caelum needs to eradicate all Ghouls, and if you fell into their hands, you’re what they need to annihilate us.”

When he put it like that…

Goodness.