The Severance Game, page 38
“Are you done?” he asked.
I waved my hand acquiescingly. “Yes. Go ahead.”
“Good,” he said. “Because if you would stop overreacting for one second then I could finish what I was going to say. Which is that, yes, most princesses would gladly call for help at the first sign of danger and expect someone else to step in and secure a happy ending for them. But you’re not like most princesses. You’re stubborn, loud, crazy, short-tempered—”
“Daniel, if you’re just going to keep listing insulting adjectives, I’m going to go back to stabbing the ceiling with my spear,” I said, getting ready to stand.
“Knight, you gonna let me complete a sentence?”
I rolled my eyes and sat back down. “Whatever. Say what you’ve gotta say.”
“All right,” he said flatly. “Here it is then. Yeah, you’re all those things, Knight, I’m not going to sugarcoat it. But the fact is that it doesn’t take a genius to see that beyond that surface stuff, you’re a lot more too. For starters, you’re brave. And you’re resourceful. And unique and probably one of the toughest, strongest people I’ve ever met.”
And I thought that after meeting carnivorous actor wolves there were no more great surprises left in life. But of all the things I’d been shocked by recently, this definitely topped them all. Had Daniel just given me a compliment?
“You think I’m strong?” I asked, utterly stunned.
“Well, not so much in the usual sense,” Daniel responded. “I mean, come on, your sword skills suck. You still need a lot more practice with that spear. It wouldn’t kill you to lift more weights with Blue. And you’re not exactly—”
“Daniel.”
“Right, sorry, old habits.” He cleared his throat. “What I mean to say is that no matter what, or who, tries to stop you, you never give up. You keep going. You keep fighting. And you never back down. That’s the very definition of strong. So despite what those other snob idiots at school think, I know that you of all people are not weak, and to say that you’ve got some hero in you would be an understatement.”
I was flabbergasted. Like so truly, completely shocked that I almost slid off the leather couch. I held up my hand.
“Seriously? You, Daniel, think that I, Crisanta Knight—this girl right here,” I gestured overdramatically at myself, “has what it takes to be a hero?”
He shrugged like I was the one being ridiculous.
“If you took a detour from that pride parade of yours and let people in, let people help you from time to time then, yeah. I do think you could be a hero. You have all the makings of a good one. You just need to stop trying to do everything by yourself. Don’t get me wrong; I respect the bravery and self-sacrifice thing you were going for. But what’s the point of having friends if you can’t count on them to have your back when you need them the most?”
I shook my head, my eyes glued to the floor as I wondered just how much more I would tell him. Emotional vulnerability (or any kind of vulnerability) was not my scene. Unfortunately, the defensive walls that kept me from ever being truly honest with anyone—including myself—were coming down. As consequence, I couldn’t stop the pure, unfiltered admissions that followed.
“I understand what you’re saying, Daniel,” I replied steadily. “But you just don’t get it. I’ve spent my whole life believing that I can show the world that I don’t need saving. That I can overcome the stereotypes and become something more than what is expected—something better, or at the very least something that I can be proud of.
“Those beliefs are everything to me. They’re what give me purpose and hope that there’s a point to all this. If I don’t have them, then what’s left? A life that’s worth nothing more than a piece in someone else’s puzzle, a page in someone else’s book?”
“I’m not following,” Daniel said. “What does any of that have to do with you trusting us, letting us help you now and then so you don’t have to carry the weight of the whole dang world on your shoulders?”
“I’ll tell you what it is has to do with that . . .” I started to say.
The air tasted sour in my mouth and my heart hung in suspense. I bit my lip and tried to swallow the declaration burning in my throat. However, I knew it was time to relinquish the truth. And just like that it came out in a whisper; like wind escaping beneath the crack in a steel door that’d spent far too long pretending to be impenetrable.
“I can’t trust you guys that way because . . . because I’m afraid.”
“What?”
My vulnerability abruptly turned to bitterness, and my fragility to sullen fury.
“I said I’m afraid,” I snapped.
I punched the couch resentfully, having finally uttered the words.
“Are you happy? I may not be afraid of things like magic hunters or Therewolves or even antagonists that are trying to kill me. But the lot of you were right. I am still afraid of something. And that something is all those beliefs of mine going up in smoke like one of SJ’s red portable potions. I’m afraid of proving the world right about me, being proven wrong about myself, and, most of all, of having to accept that who I am is the very person I’ve spent my whole life praying that I wasn’t.”
The clenched fist I’d punched into the couch was starting to tingle from within, but I ignored the sensation and continued. My emotional purging was not yet done.
“That’s why I’ve been acting like this, Daniel,” I said more wearily than before, “and keeping everyone I should be able to trust at a distance. If I trust you guys enough to ask for help, then it’s like conceding that everything I believe in is wrong. It’s like affirming that there is no such thing as a princess who can save herself. And that the world was right about me the entire time; I really am nothing more than another damsel.”
“Knight—”
“No, Daniel. Don’t you see?” I interrupted. “I’m a girl who wants to be strong in a world where everyone thinks I’m weak. No matter where I go, people are so sure of who I am—never leaving room for the slightest possibility that they might be mistaken. I’ve been able to fight against it all these years because those people don’t know me well enough to make that kind of call. But there are people who can. My friends. They’re the only people whose opinions do truly matter because they’re the only people who do truly know me.
“So you have to understand why all those times I knew I was in trouble and needed help, I could never ask for it. Because if I ever completely lowered my guard—asked for help, or worse, admitted that I needed it—then your impressions of me would become the same as everyone else’s.
“Why do you think I get so mad whenever you’ve tried to save me in front of the others? It’s not because I’m stupid or stubborn. It’s because I’ve been desperately trying to protect my image in the eyes of the last few people in the realm who might still think of me differently. And every time you swoop in and try to pull me out of danger, it only further drives home the opposite. It validates those awful things people think about me, those awful things people are so sure that I am. And if it keeps up—me needing to be helped and saved all the time—then sooner or later . . . there’ll be nothing and no one left to prove them wrong.”
I hung my head low under the weight of the truth. My body was shaking. I felt like I was going to cry, but I resisted the urge. This may have been the ideal time and place to do it, but my will to retain whatever composure I had left was strong.
Exhaling a long sigh instead, I looked down at my hand. It had been prickling icily throughout my rant, and only now was the sensation beginning to calm down. Traces of metal evaporated back into my skin. Temporarily drained in terms of speech, I took a moment to unclench my balled-up fist and take a peek at the marking inside.
If this is it—if this is the actual time the tattoo has chosen to reveal its true meaning—I swear . . .
I opened my hand fully.
Thank goodness. It’s still blurry.
If the word “afraid” or something similar had appeared there—announcing itself as my defining quality—that would’ve totally driven me off the edge.
I was beginning to feel a bit less shell-shocked, and this caused me to notice that too much silence had passed since I’d finished talking. I looked up at Daniel. It felt pretty weird having exposed my soul to someone I really didn’t know, or like for that matter. And the subsequent insecurity made my stomach knot.
I half expected him to burst out laughing. Much to my surprise, he didn’t. He just held my gaze for a minute before coming to sit down next to me.
I scooched away from him slightly—taken aback by the proximity.
Is this a trap?
This feels like a trap.
“Knight,” Daniel said firmly. “You need to get a grip.”
“Gee, thanks, Daniel.” I rolled my eyes. “Do they teach psychology at Lord Channing’s? Because your approach to dealing with fragile mental health is just textbook.”
“Oh, settle down. I don’t mean it like that,” he said. “Look, in my opinion you don’t have anything to worry about when it comes to what the others think of you. I mean, I just told you how I see you and it was nothing like you were expecting, right?”
“Right,” I replied hesitantly.
“But for the sake of argument,” he continued, “let’s say I’m wrong. Let’s say Jason, Blue, every one of us agrees with the greater world’s consensus about who you are—that you’re just a weak princess and a terrible hero. Even if that were true, so what?”
“So what?” I repeated. “So everything. If not even my closest friends see me as being different, then who’s to say or prove that I am?”
“Well, off the top of my head, how about you?”
I blinked. “What?”
“You heard me,” Daniel said. “You keep going on about how worried you are about people defining who you are but, Knight, none of them really can. Despite what you might think, the only person who gets to decide that is you.”
“But Daniel, I don’t—”
“No buts,” Daniel interrupted. “No excuses, no doubts, no second-guessing. I know you hate to listen to me, Knight. But even if you tune me out for the rest of your life, I want you to hear me now. You wanna choose who you are for yourself? Well, the bottom line is that it’s that simple. All you have to do is choose. Everything and everyone else don’t matter. They don’t get a vote; they don’t get a say. The only person who does is you because you and you alone can define who you are.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” I responded. “You’re a hero. Your archetype doesn’t have half as many stereotypes working against it as mine does.”
“Maybe not,” he said. “But people still expect things from me. I’m not trying to compare my problems to yours, but they exist either way. I didn’t ask to be a hero any more than you asked to be a princess. That’s just the lot I was given. But that’s my character archetype, not my character. I define my character, just like you define yours.
“And as to the whole ‘saving you’ thing,” he went on. “I’m sorry if that’s been getting on your nerves, but I wasn’t doing it to show you up or because I thought you were weak. Neither were the others when they’ve tried to help you. We just didn’t want you to die.
“With everything your archetype has going against it—the damsel stigma and all—I get why it would bother you. But I think you’re overcorrecting. No one ever became a hero by going it completely alone. No one ever achieved anything of value completely alone. I may not have been a student at Lord Channing’s for very long, but even I know that relying on others doesn’t make you weak. If anything it makes you stronger because it forces your pride to take a back seat so you can achieve more than you would alone.” He shook his head and let out a frustrated sigh. “At the end of the day sometimes people just need help, Knight. And letting a person help you doesn’t mean you’re helpless; it just means you trust someone else.”
I leaned my head back against the wall. “I’ve been pushing people away for so long trying to protect myself. Trusting people like that . . . it’s not so easy, Daniel.”
“It can be if you let it. I’m not saying trust every person that waltzes up to you. But what about the people who’ve proven they can be counted on—the people who are always there for you even when you don’t want them to be, like Jason, and SJ, and Blue, and . . .” he stopped, like something was caught in his throat. “Well, me too, I guess?”
I raised my eyebrows. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“I’m not. Give me one good reason why you can’t trust us?”
“It’s not the whole us I’m talking about; it’s the faction that includes you. In terms of SJ, Blue, and Jason, you’re right; I have no reason not to trust them. Driving them away was a reflection of my own faults and fears, not theirs. And that’s going to stop from here on out. But you’re a different story. You’re not like the others, Daniel. You and I aren’t even really friends. You’re just sort of here. And as sure as I am now that I will learn to trust SJ, Blue, and Jason, I am just as positive that there is no way in the realm I could ever fully trust you.”
“Why would you think you couldn’t trust me?” he asked, seeming genuinely confused.
“Is that an actual question?”
“Yeah, it is. I know I give you a hard time and, granted, I could probably take it down a notch in terms of insults. But I’ve been on your side since day one.”
“Like I believe that.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I,” I replied earnestly. “Daniel, we established our mutual dislike for each other from the get-go, which I’m fine with. And yes, we’ve gone through a lot of stuff together since then. But none of that changes the fact that you’re hiding something.”
“What, I’m not allowed to have things I want to keep to myself?” Daniel countered. “Haven’t you been doing the exact same thing this whole time? We literally just established that.”
“Yes. But we also just established that my keeping stuff to myself was doing way more harm than good. You want to talk about pushing people away? Why don’t you practice what you preach? You keep me and the others at such a distance it’s like you’re allergic to us. And what you do is arguably worse because there’s a difference between keeping secrets that are about you and keeping secrets about other people—secrets that those people have a right to know.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Don’t play dumb; you know exactly what I’m talking about. I asked you about it when we were on the magic train and you dodged it then like you’re dodging it now. That night we broke out of the Therewolves’ lair, when we were backstage I distinctly heard you telling Jason that I ruined your life, that you were only on this quest with the rest of us because of me. That’s a pretty massive thing to accuse me of, Daniel, and I think I have a right to know what you meant by it. How did I ruin your life? What the heck does that have to do with our quest to find the Author? And why . . . why are you really here?”
My questions seemed to strike a sour note with Daniel, because the rather human expression of sympathy he’d had on his face these last few minutes was replaced with a slight glare.
I didn’t let it bother me though. This whole time we’d been talking I’d been the one in the hot seat. Now it was his turn. He could glare a thousand daggers at me for all I cared; I was not backing down. Not this time.
“I can’t tell you that,” Daniel responded.
“Then I can’t trust you,” I replied bluntly. “How can you expect me to when you’re keeping things like this from me? It’s off-putting, Daniel—spending so much time with someone whose motives are so enigmatic. If you truly believe I ruined your life then maybe you’re just waiting for the right time to get rid of me too. Take the magic train for instance. How could I have been sure that if I let go of that railing you wouldn’t just let me fall to my doom?”
“Come on, Knight. Really?”
“Yes, really. What else am I supposed to think?”
“Well, not that I’m secretly plotting to destroy you, that’s for sure.”
“Then what?”
Daniel blinked and started to fidget the way I had just minutes before.
“I don’t know. Think whatever you want,” he said distantly. “But whether you buy it or not, I wouldn’t do anything to hurt you.”
His eyes did not meet mine anymore. We sat there awkwardly as I realized just how uncomfortably conflicted he seemed to be.
And I understood.
For a second I wondered if I should put my hand on his shoulder to show support or sympathy. But when I started to move my arm to do so, I thought better of it. We did not know each other like that. Our relationship could be characterized by a lot of colorful adjectives, but as it stood, there were still far too many walls between us to allow for such closeness. At least there were on his end. A great deal of mine had just been torn down.
Until that point, the tension in our relationship had been just as much my fault as it had been his. But that wasn’t the case anymore. In the confinement of this cursed lamp, I’d let my soul slip to him. I’d allowed myself to be honest, vulnerable, and transparent in a way that made me feel equal parts embarrassed and relieved.
That was a strange thing to wrap my head around, as I’d never been that honest about what was going on inside of me with anyone, myself included. But it happened. Whether I liked it or not, Daniel now knew me—even the parts I preferred not to know myself. And I felt he owed me the same in return.
“Look, Daniel,” I began anew—slowly, sensibly. “No one knows more about wanting to push people away and keep personal things private than I do. But how am I supposed to put my faith in you when you can’t do the same with me?”
He didn’t look up.
Ugh, this is hopeless, I thought. He’s just as stubborn as I am. Getting him to be completely honest is going to be like pulling Therewolf teeth. It might be possible, but only by extreme force. Which, in retrospect, maybe I don’t want to use.
