Page 25

VIOLET

I t took me a while to start feeling like myself again, for things to go back… well, not to normal, but almost.

For the first few days, I barely got out of bed. My body was drained by the surge of magic that had taken Elphias out, my heart bled at the thought of Daisy. My boys didn't leave for even a moment: Kenji made sure I ate and drank, feeding me himself if I even tried to say I wasn't hungry; Quinn read to me in German and Korean, and forgetting every time I didn't understand a word, asked for my thoughts; Nicholas dragged the TV into the bedroom and watched romcoms from the early 2000's with me, throwing popcorn at the screen and aggressively booing when the third act breakup came up.

Not once had they tried to kiss me, touch me, or overstep my current boundaries. They’d shown me nothing but patience and understanding.

After regaining enough strength, I moved back to my room. I wasn't planning on staying long; I'd already made a half-decision to ask the boys if I could go back to their living unit because staying apart didn't make any sense, but I needed a little time to adjust and accept all the new changes that had come into my life.

It was then I saw Daisy through the mirror for the first time.

I constantly kept it close, glancing at it from time to time, but usually, all it showed was thick darkness. Not that day, though. She appeared in the silver frame with a focused expression while I gathered dirty clothes around the room to do the laundry, and she called for me.

“I thought this thing didn’t work” was all I could utter, throat closing up in anticipation for the cry I felt coming. Seeing her reopened a wound that was only starting to close, the pain as sharp as ever. “Are you okay? I miss you so much.”

"I'm so sorry, I—" Her eyes darted to the left, then back to me. "Fuck. Someone's coming. Great timing, really. Talk to you later, I love you!"

Later didn’t happen for another four days, but this time, the conversation was cut short because of me: Nucleus practice was about to start, and even though my status had been upgraded from Team member to girlfriend, I wasn’t allowed to be even a minute late.

We were only exchanging a few words here and there, busy with our new lives and all the responsibilities they brought along, but even just seeing her helped me calm down. She looked fine, really. Clean, well-fed, always wearing a different gown. Not happy, no, but adapting. Just like me.

I started eating lunch with Maggie and Len again, still at our favorite spot in the library. Len insisted I was now popular; therefore, as an unwritten rule, I had to throw a party. Enthusiastic, Maggie suggested a tea party—the only kind worth throwing, in her opinion. They ended up bickering.

Days later, when I felt stable enough to face the topic without bursting into tears, I reached out to Caleb and asked to meet him. I wasn’t supposed to, to be honest. The boys and I had decided to explain our disappearance with an excuse that nobody seemed to question: a mini trip to straighten things out as a Team. It wasn't entirely a lie, anyway. We had agreed to keep what had really happened to ourselves to avoid problems, but I felt Caleb deserved at least a half-truth.

"She moved out of town," I explained to him in front of two hot chocolates. "to stay with her mom's side of the family. I don't know much, her phone's signal is always super spotty, but she's fine."

Caleb nodded. “Good to know. What about her father?”

I hadn't made up an explanation for that, so I told him I didn't know and shifted the subject to the upcoming mission Omicron Team was supposed to participate in the following week. I felt guilty, but a half-truth was better than no truth, right?

There was only one person I couldn’t lie to.

Griffin.

Not about the situation with Daisy—he didn’t even know she was gone—but regarding my relationship with the boys.

One night, I video-called him after a long day of class, and he frowned when he saw me on the phone. “What happened?” he signed. “You look different.”

“I’m just tired” I offered, but before I even finished signing, he smiled from ear to ear.

"About time!" he signed, before clapping his hands and lifting a fist to the sky. "I knew you'd end up with them. It's a good thing, V! Don't make that face. It was pretty obvious. By the way, tell Q his ASL is getting better. N and K still suck, but don’t tell them.”

Then he closed the call quickly, because his new friends were waiting for him to start playing some board game. He barely said goodbye.

To be fair, there was another person I couldn’t hide the truth from. It took Mei only a glance to establish something must’ve happened with the boys while we were gone.

“You definitely fucked” she accused me, closing my bedroom door behind her back with a kick. “How could you not tell me? I like to think we’re friends!”

Standing in front of the mirror, trying to pick a lipstick to put on, I tried not to laugh. “We are friends. Things have just… been hard.”

"Yeah, I can imagine" she snapped. "Three whole men just for you. Of course things are hard, I wouldn't expect anything different."

“Mei!”

“What? I can’t even make a joke, now?”

I placed the lipstick back on the desk and turned to face her, trying hard to suppress a smile at her exaggerated frown. "I would've told you. Things have really been rough. Don't say anything" I quickly added, when I realized I kept giving her material for her dirty jokes. "I—I kind of lost a friend. She isn't dead, but we don't really see each other anymore. Adjusting has been difficult."

Mei kept quiet for a moment, frown still in place. Then she finally puffed and rolled her eyes. “Fine. And I’m sorry about your friend, but you could’ve told me. About her, I mean. Well, about them too, but still.”

“I was planning on it.”

She sharpened her gaze and pointed a finger at me. “Liar. To earn my forgiveness, you can start telling me everything you guys did in detail and…” She trailed off, a frown reappearing on her face. “Wait. How am I only now realizing one of them is my brother ? Ew! No, forget it; keep it to yourself.” She gagged. “Yuk. That’s a mental image I can never unsee.”

I couldn't hold back a laugh. I grabbed the tubes of lipstick again and showed them to her. "This or that?"

She raised an eyebrow the same way Kenji did. “For what?”

“The boys said they have a small surprise for me” I admitted, shifting my weight from foot to foot. “So… yeah.”

Actually, Nicholas had barked something about being ready by eight that night because they were taking me to their room to do something ; Quinn had forced him to ask me again, this time nicely and making it seem like I had the option to say no; Kenji had scoffed and replied ‘yourself’ when I’d asked if I should bring something.

She scoffed. "I doubt the surprise will be that small, but yeah." She nodded toward the one I was holding in my right hand. "Red one. Go get that dick, tiger! Well, those dicks. Multiple." She let out a long sigh. "What a dream. God, I'm up next, try to remember!"

I didn’t hide my smile.

Life was chaotic, unpredictable, filled with changes I was struggling to come to terms with, but I had to admit it: it wasn’t all bad.