Thank you to Fran for betaing! Any mistakes are mine from adding to this chapter post beta review!
See you at the bottom!
After that phone call with Edward, I can't help but to question if he's right.
Did I finally find my magic? Edward says I am magic. I'm not really sure what that means, so I push those words down into the farthest recess of my being.
Edward's wrong. I am not magic; I have magic.
Over the next few weeks, Alice and I practice on each other. She tries to snap me into clothes, or outside the door. Sometimes, after the cafeteria closes, she tries to snap us food and water when we're hungry.
Her magic only showed once this whole time.
When Alice exhausts herself from her magic, she lets me try mine. At first, I tried what I did with Edward. She sat on her bed, and I sat on mine. With closed eyes, I would shut everything out until I heard the nothingness and then over and over I'd send her the same memory of falling down the stairs in front of Mike.
And over and over, she'd say the same thing, "nothing, Belle."
One day, when we were in the quad, the sun shining down upon us, sitting Indian style with our knees against each other. I sent her that same memory. Within moments, Alice gasps and reels backward.
"Did it work?" I ask quietly.
She nods, wide-eyed. "It was full of static, though. Like watching a movie with bad reception." Alice grabs my hand, palm to palm, and says, "try another."
This time I send her the memory of walking in on her crying when she failed that test in Quarter 1. I let her see herself for who she is, let her feel the empathy I experienced. My body radiates the memory so thoroughly that I can feel myself back in that room. Alice pulls back, and the memory stops.
Chocolate brown eyes, as shiny as polished silver, study my every movement. When she's thoroughly confused, Alice whispers, "this is so cool."
Over the next week, I try sharing memories in different capacities—together, in different rooms, across town from each other, touching knees, holding hands— and in the end, we decide the strongest memories come only when we're skin to skin.
My final test is on Jasper, and I'm nervous. What if it doesn't work, and I look crazy. Or worse—what if it works, and I look crazy?
She instructs Jasper, "give her your hand."
He never questions her.
His golden eyes make it hard to swallow as I press our palms together. With my eyes closed, I send him one simple, sweet memory. A sunny day in the quad a few weeks ago when Alice and I watched him play catch. One of his friends overthrew the ball, and Jasper had to dive for it so I wouldn't get hit. He scratched his entire left side as he leaped into the air and caught the ball, falling against the thorn-filled flower bush to my left. He looked up at me in apology.
When Jasper pulls away, he glances between Alice and me.
"How long?" he asks.
"A few weeks. I was in the shower one day, and somehow Edward of all people got all these memories at once and—"
"Edward?" he asks, glancing to Alice, who doesn't meet his eyes. Jasper swallows before asking, "and does it go the other way?"
"What do you mean?"
"Can you receive memories?"
"I—I didn't even think about that. Should we—should we try?" I ask him, offering up my hand with a smile. The thought excites me. It would be to share memories with Alice of our childhood, our Courts, the people we know.
Jasper looks from Alice to me and then interlaces our fingers on both hands so that our palms press tightly together. This position is closer than we were a moment ago, and it's a little weird. As he breathes in and out, random pictures of strange people flow through my mind.
"Jasper," Alice says so quietly I can barely hear her… or hear her over the memories he hurls at me.
A woman with curly blonde hair, a man, and a little boy, walking near trees, Alice as a teen, Edward playing the piano, the homes of Court 4, Alice's smile, Alice's eyes, Alice's—
"Okay, I get it," I tell him, trying to pull back, but he won't let me. "Jasper—" I laugh nervously, but his fingers grip mine tighter.
Like a catapult, I'm launched into an area of Jasper's memories that feels icky. My mental feet stick to the tar this memory is glued to. Before I can see anything, I feel it. No names, no images, just overwhelming disgust, shock, and betrayal.
And then Jasper assaults my mind with this one memory in particular. I walk with him through the moment he pictures so vividly.
He opens his door to a quiet home. He just picked up dinner for him and his mom and as he dropped the bag on the table, a sound from above caught him off guard. And then a strangled noise. Grief flows into my blood. He lost his dad and couldn't imagine losing his mom. He's not even sure if what he heard was a cry for help, but it doesn't matter. Jasper acts quickly, taking the steps three at time. The fear in his heart eats at him as he sprints down the hall to his mom's room.
What he walks in on, what he shows me, is a devastating surprise. Ruddy brown hair, toned arms, and a sharp jawline stare down at the same blonde from the earlier memory. Her neck exposed; her lips parted in ecstasy. Long fingernails scratch a muscular back leaving red, raised welts in their path. His best friend thrusts on top. The noise of two bodies lying together, and the sound of heartbreak pops like a balloon. It seems to last hours, but it's over before I take another breath. Jasper shows me the pummeling, his mother pulling a sheet around her body, his best friend looking down remorsefully. He shows me the months of distress afterward, let's me feel the ache in his heart, forces onto me the sadness of his mother's shame, and the death of a friendship.
When he lets go of my fingers, panting as fierce as his eyes are yellow, he spits, "remember that the next time he seems so charming. That is what he's capable of." Jasper absolutely seethes at this point. His breaths come in gasps like he walked in on it happening again.
Alice rests her tiny hand against his forearm in silent support. She squeezes softly as his own covers her in unspoken understanding.
I'm too overwhelmed to hear him, too flustered by the live images I just witnessed to argue back. I play through his memory over and over and over until I fall asleep that night. And then it's all I dream about.
The pain, the despair, the agony.
The stench of shame in that dim bedroom.
The betrayal radiating through Jasper's marrow.
The look of remorse on his best friend's face.
~!~
I spend the next few days in solitude. Walled away in stillness so nothing or no one can hear me, see me, feel me. What Jasper showed me sticks to my skin like sweat and dust. It's hard to shake the feeling, and I wonder if this is the pain Jasper feels every day.
No father, a blacklisted mother, and a friendship burned to the bones.
It's hard to erase those emotions that have swallowed me, chewed me up, digested me in their bellies. I'm ash and waste and poison as I try and forget Jasper's memory. It's like he's here in this room, his clammy skin bonded to mine, forcing me to relive it all just as he does every day.
It's three days before Alice brings it up.
"It was hard for everyone," she says one night. "Edward isn't known as someone to lay around with a bunch of girls. He had one girlfriend at sixteen, and he got with two more girls after her. I think that confused Jasper the most. Maybe if Edward were known to sleep around a lot, Jasper wouldn't have been that shocked. It came out of nowhere." Alice clears her throat, and I can hear her body turn in the bed to face me. "Edward and Jasper were very close. Neither of them talks about it or admits it, but they were practically brothers."
"I could feel it," I tell her. "In the memory, I could feel everything. But if they were so close, why would Edward do that?"
It's dark in the room save for the sliver of dull moonlight trickling in between cracks in the curtains.
"I really don't know. And it's like after that happened, Edward changed. He used to be fun and silly. We'd play jokes on our parents, he'd run around and play tag with me, just regular sibling stuff, I guess. But after that incident… he became intense. He started rebelling; his magic got a lot stronger, he questioned everything about the Royals, and he was so confrontational."
"How long ago was this?" I ask, rejecting the shutter her words send through me.
"He got caught the year before we graduated from school."
"How did his magic get more intense?"
"I really don't know. It's like once he started to resist the natural order, his magic intensified. Instead of needing to be in the same room, he could now hear my thoughts from miles away. Instead of snapping somewhere within a few feet, Edward was able to snap to any place he wanted to be within our entire Court. He could always do that stuff, but not with such strength. Now…" she says, trailing off. Alice thinks for a moment before rolling her eyes and saying, "now he could probably snap his fingers and be here in an instant if he wanted to. I had to practice hours a day to hide my thoughts from him. Luckily, now he has much better control over who he listens to and when, so I don't ever need to hide from him. But it was a hard few months until he mellowed out, Belle."
"When did that happen?"
Alice laughs as she thinks I'm joking. "Believe it or not, the Edward you met is the mellow version." She yawns, stretching her body, pulling the covers up past her neck. "I miss the old Edward. He was a lot of fun. I'm just glad he's not so angry anymore."
"Do you ever tell him that?" I whisper.
"Not really," is the last thing she says before falling asleep.
Her soft snores fill the quiet room as I will the remaining bits of gold shimmer on my ankle to heat or burn or pulse. But there's nothing. There has been nothing for a while.
The next morning when I awake, it's practically gone.
I run my fingers over the residual edges, and then around the curve of my bone where I know it used to be. The decorative jewelry is no longer there. I'll never feel the burning ache of thoughts skimming below the surface; there's no more link tying us together; the connection to our thoughts has faded.
There's an impulsive sadness that blankets over me as I realize the truth—I'm alone again.
Edward, I whisper in my head, eyes closed. I think you've disappeared. He can hear me, right? That's his magic. He can hear me if he wants, but will he choose to?
What Edward and I had, that little bit of communication, of understanding each other, quelled the loneliness I never knew existed until now. With that gone, it's hard to not let the empty melancholy swallow me.
I stay in bed until the sun rises fully, until light screams us awake; until Alice moans a yawn and throws back the covers.
"You sleep like the dead," she laughs, rolling out of bed to brush her teeth.
I say nothing, keeping my eyes closed and the block down, but I never feel a response.
~!~
Being alone physically trumps being alone mentally any day. I got used to Edward in my head, sharing memories, enjoying some sort of bond. When it disappeared, I was disappointed. But being alone physically? Having the room to myself, reading alone under the sun, quiet moments in the bath with no calling for me on the other side of the door… that's serenity.
That weekend, while Alice stays with Jasper, I enjoy the calm of myself. Maybe because growing up in Court 6, I was never alone. Emmett was home, or Mom and Dad, and if not them, I was with Jessica or Angela, or Jacob.
Even in the wheatfields, even on windy days, even when I wanted to be alone, I was with someone else.
Now, in Court 5, with no one, I'm enjoying the company of myself more and more. I pay attention to my mind and what it can do. Working on my magic is difficult all alone, but I send memories of school and grades and praise from my teachers to Mom and Dad. In case they aren't getting my memories as I know with Alice and Jasper we needed to be touching, I write them letter after letter. Postage is expensive, but U5 covers it for students. In every letter, I pour love and honesty into my words knowing they're not able to write back.
As I finish, I lay myself back against the blanket, separating my body from the blades of grass in the quad. Flower blooms slow down this time of year, but I can still smell the pollen and fragrance of each stem near me.
Closing my eyes, I shut it out as white noise and nothingness consume me. A vivid memory comes to me of the first time I laid in this spot, off to the side, away from the view of others. It's me reading a book, smelling the air, touching flower petals for the first time in my life. I prick my finger against a thorn to see if the writings in the books are true. Turns out they are—thorns really do make you bleed. It's the clatter of birds as they sing, the heat of the sun on my milky skin, the rich loam penetrates as it hosts an entire ecosystem under us.
And then I wonder… I wonder what more might be like. I wonder, as I close my eyes, what bleeding colors in the sky might be like, feel like, smell like as I sit under a twilight sky. I've seen pictures in textbooks, and the softly saturated skies of Court 5 are more than I'm used to in Court 6, but the images I've seen from other Courts… they're exceptional.
Suddenly I'm pulled from the flower garden and walking up a hill full of branches, debris, and large trees. The sound of water sloshing and pounding into something catches my attention. Hands sway at my side, but this isn't my body. I'm taller as I look around. When I reach the top of the hill, a massive body of water comes into view after climbing down a large rock drop. I stare at it forever. Waves sweep up and crash heavily, spraying the jagged mountainside with saltwater. I'm hundreds of feet high, like a speck of dirt on the cliff, and I sit on the edge. As my feet dangle off the cliffside, I can't stop looking at the vibrant colors in the sky from the setting sun.
Gold and pinks hemorrhage together, bouncing off into the ocean. Salty air fills my insides as I breathe deeply, and when I exhale, I know this feeling is real. Edward smiles; I can feel it in his heart, under his skin, inside the twinkle of his emerald eyes. There's contentment. There's honesty. There's pleasure in this moment.
Edward I think softly. Edward, what is this place? He lets me view it for a while longer—the pink skies, the rocky cliff, the ocean—before it disappears like smoke. Before the colors gush together. He cuts off the vision before true magnificence radiates.
I don't question why he cuts off the memory because what he shows me is more than anything I've ever experienced in real life or on paper. Better than the textbooks, art paintings, or the sunsets I've seen when visiting Emmett in Court 4. This memory's splendor will stick to me forever.
Paradise his thoughts whisper back.
His words dump over me like water, and I sit up, gasping for air. Immediately, my fingers lock onto the gold band of ankle. There's nothing. No heat, no tickle, no shimmer.
Was that the last of it? Had he known it was disappearing? Could he feel the connection fizzling out and decided to show me one last thing? Perhaps that is why the smoke the memory disappeared into smoke—the connection flickered out.
The sadness takes me by surprise again. This time, I can't figure out if it's sadness because the pretty shimmering drips of gold no longer adorn my skin, or because the first true connection I've ever felt with someone, be it accidental or not, has died. No one's ever been able to help me uncover my magic, and I think that gold band around my ankle was the key. I think Edward was the key.
Too scared to try or say anything to Alice, I sadly and hopelessly let the idea of growing my magic go.
For now…
~!~
Over the next few days, our teachers notify us of signups for weeks to choose when we want to do the field observations for Courts 3-7.
"I guess we can't see Courts 1 or 2," Alice pouts.
"Or Court 8," I add curiously.
"Belle, why on this Royals loving planet would anyone want to visit Court 8? It's inhospitable."
"Is it?" I ask, reminding myself of the same thing Edward said to me when I questioned him about Court 8.
She nods. "Duh. And besides, my best friend is not moving to Court 8 when she could choose to live in Court 4 with me!" Her smile shines brilliantly.
"And you think that's where you'll end up?" I ask.
"Definitely," she says smugly.
Alice puts our name down for the middle of September, four weeks from now when it hits me.
"Alice, did you just… did you just call me your best friend?"
"Uh, yeah?" she says dumbly. "Aren't you?"
Her irrelevance soothes me. The fact that it's not a big deal to her makes it a bigger deal to me. My whole life, I craved companionship but found it nowhere. Jake's friendship was different—we were paired for so many things it was almost forced. My friendship with Alice is something I decide.
The freedom to choose who is and isn't my friend makes me smile.
"I think you're my best friend, too," I whisper to her.
She just looks at me like I'm strange before we head to the library.
"Can you believe we get to spend a week in each Court?"
"Five days," I correct.
"Semantics," she jokes.
Alice and I are surprised to hear that we're able to spend that amount of time in each Court, but apparently, it's well worth it. Each Court is to send an agenda a week before we depart. Alice has spent almost all our free time talking about what to expect from Court 4 like I haven't told her a hundred times that's where my brother lives.
"And can you believe they're letting my parents sponsor us?" she asks excitedly.
A person or family from each Court signs up with the Royals to sponsor a group of University students doing fieldwork. This tradition has been done forever. Mom and Dad used to be a sponsor but haven't accepted any students for three years. Their last sponsored student made some disrespectful comments, and Mom's feelings were hurt. The Royals found out immediately. and the student was removed within the hour. They haven't taken any students since then, but all my toes and fingers are crossed that Alice and I are placed with them.
~!~
I see more of Alice during the weekdays and much less of her during the weekends. It's like Jasper and I split custody. After the memory assault a few weeks ago, he avoids me at all costs.
"Does he hate me now?" I ask her one night after the lights go out.
"Of course not," she says, but it's hard to believe her.
I close my eyes and find the stillness. White noise and silence swallow the room. I try my best to send Jasper healing, kind thoughts, and memories of Court 6 at night where the dust swirls in the sky like dull stars.
With closed eyes, I feel contentment and an overwhelming blanket of calm. And then soft memories like snippets of Polaroids. Bright green grass, wildflowers, intense sunsets.
I know this place. I've seen this place. Jasper's serene memories of Court 4 play in my mind until I fall asleep.
The next day when Jasper meets us for lunch in the cafeteria, I thank him for the memories.
"Huh?"
"Last night, I sent you the memory of Court 6 and—"
He looks from me to Alice and shakes his head. "I didn't get that."
"And you didn't send some back? Grass, flowers, sunsets?"
He puts his sandwich down and stares at me like I've grown two foreheads. "No."
"Alice, did you—"
She shakes her head and glances from one of us to the other.
"It happened before, too. I was sitting in the quad and thinking of some memories, and suddenly, I got one from Edward."
Alice takes a breath and breaks eye contact with Jasper. "We think when Edward healed you, he might have… Bonded himself to you."
I push back my lunch tray and squint my eyes. "What are you talking about? The only way to Soul Bond, and to truly know, is a kiss," I say crossly. "And we've definitely never kissed."
"The band on your ankle," Jasper says.
"Jasper, don't," Alice warns.
"She should know," he explains.
"But it's gone," I tell them, pulling up my ankle to show nothing but smooth white skin.
The pair glance down at my ankle, studying the area where once shimmered with gold. Both open their mouths, but nothing comes out. Alice clears her throat and tries again. Nothing. Jasper tries next. Nothing.
He sighs in frustration. "That son of bitch," he curses.
"Can someone please tell me what the Royals is going on?" I let the annoyance rile me up, but I know. How could I not know?
"He—" Alice starts but chokes on her words. "Royal's sake," she whispers under her breath in exasperation. "He wants to tell you himself."
"I've spoken to him," I tell her. They both know I've spoken to him. "He hasn't said anything."
"I can't… I can't say anything else."
"Should I be worried?" I whisper to her.
"Yes," Jasper responds.
"No. We don't think it's the Soul Bond exactly," Alice assures me. "Just… a different kind of bond. Like his magic has stuck to you, so the connection between you two…" Alice trails, but I get it.
"Sometimes it feels like I'm chained to him," I tell them softly. "Anytime I want to talk to him, I just… say it. Isn't that weird? But now that the band on my ankle is gone, the bond between us probably is too, so there's really no need to worry," I say dolefully.
No one responds, and we finish our lunch in relative silence. Jasper and Alice talk with their eyes. He says goodbye to us while we walk back to the room.
Alice sighs and turns to me like she's wanted to say this but couldn't with Jasper in the room.
"What Jasper doesn't understand is that Edward is so against the Soul Bond that I doubt he'd purposefully Bond with someone. Like, even the gold thing that was on your ankle, I truly don't believe it was purposeful. He wants to be alone—he wants to be left alone— so much that I'm sure it drove him absolutely mad that you were in his head and vice versa. Actually," she pauses with a laugh, "Jasper and I have laughed quite a bit thinking about you in his head all the time. Maybe next time he pisses me off, you'd be willing to send him some messages from me." Alice smirks at the idea, but I simply shake my head.
"You don't think we're Soul Bonded, right?" I ask her quietly.
She stares up at me. "There's only one way to know," she answers honestly before shrugging. "But if you ask me," she adds, "I don't think he's capable of it."
"Of what?"
"The Soul Bond. He doesn't believe in the whole One True Love crap. He's never believed in that."
"So, what happens when he's twenty-one and gets that letter in the mail. You know, if he doesn't bond before then."
She giggles. "He won't bond before then."
"How can you be so sure?"
Alice smiles. "He's the one that taught me not to kiss if I wasn't ready for the repercussions."
"And what of the letter at twenty-one? What will he do?"
Alice shrugs, throwing her napkin on her tray and standing. "Knowing him, he'll talk his way out of it. Edward can be very persuasive."
"Persuasive enough to convince the Royals to forgo their own process?" I ask skeptically.
Alice shrugs, done with the conversation. I follow her as we throw our trash away and head outside.
"And what about you?" I ask quietly in the bright light of the sun. "Are you going to just accept the name in the letter?"
She thinks about it for a few minutes before smiling. "I might kiss Jasper the night before we're to receive the letters, you know, just in case."
She makes me giggle because it's smart. Alice wants to be her own woman, and I respect that. I trust the process for the Royals, but I respect Alice's determination to find loopholes.
"Don't ever forget, Belle, that you belong to yourself before you are ever anyone else's."
It takes all night for those powerful words to absorb into my soul, but when they do, it's like an avalanche of understanding.
No one can ever own me. Soul Bond or not, I belong to me.
a/n: This was a loooong chapter, so I split it into two! Do you like longer or shorter chapters?
What do you guys think about Jasper's memory? Everything happens for a reason...