Lightning Kissed

  THE ESCURO MUST NOT BE SPOKEN OF.

  Why was this happening to us? Why was Theo chosen and why in the name of all that was holy couldn’t all this just end in a big, gushy, happily ever after?

  I wanted to throw myself on the ground and beat my fists on the dirt in a dramatic, childish show of ‘this isn’t fair’.

  Because it wasn’t fair. The Synod just got to live their hoity-toity lives, cooped up in that hallway of horrors. Pema got to be set free, and Collin probably wanted to give her his Viking Sasquatch babies. The two of them would live happily ever after, and I would be stuck here without the one person I needed more than air.

  Why us?

  I flashed to all the places I could think of that Theo didn’t particularly like, places that I didn’t particularly like either. I wanted to make myself hate traveling. Place by place, I went, convincing myself that being in hiding for the rest of my life was better than having to travel to all those places.

  Except it backfired on me.

  Even the places he didn’t like—even the places I didn’t like—I would miss.

  The reason I got angry at him was not because his words were hurtful. I mean, they were completely hurtful and they stuck in my chest like a briar that refused to budge.

  I was angry because he was right.

  He was so right, I could barely breathe.

  When I reached Argentina, a place that we neither loved nor disliked, I landed on a roof that ran along a row of houses, perched on the side of the curve of a mountain. There was no care in my conscious about whether or not my lightning could be seen. I just didn’t care.

  For hours, I people-watched from that rooftop.

  But everything reminded me of Theo. A group of children in little tiny blue and white plaid uniforms highlighted that Theo and I would never have the opportunity to pursue twelve children like Eivan and Sevella had. Then again, when they were in hiding, there probably wasn’t much entertainment. Apparently, they wrote incessantly in journals and made babies.

  It just went downhill from there. Everything I saw made me aware of something Theo—or Theo and I—would never get to experience.

  I was fine with giving it all up to go in hiding. I would deal with the impulsion to travel.

  Who was I kidding?

  Traveling was like my heart beating.