Unpredictable

Chapter 32--- Meraki

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Meraki (Noun)
Meaning: The soul, creativity or love put into something: the essence of yourself that is put into your work 

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Jezebel's final sentence sends a shock through my system that washes away everything else, even that look on Lloyd's face. 

...The Enlightened are doing... what? 

"That's right," Jezebel sneers. "You didn't stop a genocide. You started one."

My face flushes. I... I didn't mean to. 

I didn't want anyone to die. That was the whole point. 

"I wish I could say they're picking us off, one by one, but that would be too merciful for them." 

The Enlightened— they wouldn't... but I know they would.

After finding out about the Black King's "perfect solution?" They would. 

They would. How could I be so stupid as to...?

"They round us up, tying us with rope with strings of iron weaved in, then they murder us in the most convenient, efficient way available at the time. Drowning. Burning. Being buried alive. Or, you, know, just a good old beheading will do too." 

Jezebel marches up to my face, her shoulder bumping Lloyd's arm as she stalks forward. Lloyd watches with wide eyes, but he doesn't stop her. 

He just looks at me, eyebrows raised to the sky, shoulders dropped, hands open. His lip trembles. I don't register most of it. 

They would. And they did. And they're doing.

Breathing becomes hard for a whole new reason. 

"My entire nesting group was wiped out in the first year. My mother and father went in the next. Katara's Beloved died half a decade ago." 

Nuri? 

When I was a fledgling, Nuri would bring me food from his travels, little dwarfish chocolates and elven danishes. 

I remember watching Nuri and Katara dancing during celebrations, her fire and his light weaving together around them. I wanted to dance like them. 

My entire body feels numb right now. My breath rattles in my ears. 

Nuri's not breathing right now. Are any of the others I loved not breathing either? 

"And the one person who could end it all— my King, your father— is powerless to do so, thanks to your 'heroic' deed." 

Jezzie spits on me. The saliva splats on my nose and slides down my cheek. 

"You saved no one." 

I would spit on me too. She's right. She so right. 

Her cane goes under my chin, forcing my head up to look at her. Her eyes flare at me, burning with the wrath of the dead. 

"You deserve everything and more! Everything I've done, everything I want to do, everything that I'm going to do, until that portal opens and we get you back to fix the King and end the—" 

A roar tears through the air, stopping Jezzie in her tracks.

Jezzie's shoulders drop as her head snaps up. Her hands fist. 

A familiar mind, boiling over with rage, clashes into my head. I stiffen at the contact. 

Jezzie backs away a couple of steps. Her grip twists on her arma. "Call her off, Alaula! Before I do something to the boy!"