Chapter 2 What a Stupid, Brave Idiot

Elena's Pov 

The girl who has been holding herself together with nothing but sheer stubbornness finally reaches the end of her rope.

Chloe breaks and runs for the door.

I slide off the desk and follow her like a shadow, through the crowded hallway full of students holding up their phones, up the stairwell, and out onto the roof.

The cold wind hits immediately. The rain comes down in heavy, relentless sheets that soak through everything in seconds.

Chloe walks straight to the edge without hesitating, and I walk ten feet behind her with my book open and my pen ready.

I check her entry one more time. 10:15 AM. Fall. Two minutes remaining on the clock that she doesn't know is running.

"I can't do this anymore," Chloe says to no one in particular. 

I've witnessed this particular kind of pain more times than I can count and from more angles than most people would believe possible. I am not without understanding. I am simply without the luxury of letting that change the outcome.

Then the rooftop door bursts open behind me.

The boy from the classroom staggers out into the rain, already soaked through in seconds, scanning the roof until his eyes find Chloe standing on the ledge. Something shifts in his expression when he sees her, and it isn't the blind panic I usually see when humans encounter something they aren't prepared for. 

It's steadier than that, and more deliberate.

"Chloe." His voice is calm.

She doesn't turn around. "I told you not to follow me."

"I know," he says. "I followed you anyway."

I look down at my book out of habit and check the current page. His name is not written anywhere on it.

I flip to the next page, and the one after that, checking the entries for the next hour, the next day, the next week. His name is not there either.

He shouldn't be on this roof at all.

"Don't come any closer," Chloe says. She still hasn't turned around. Her shoulders are shaking and it has nothing to do with the cold. "Please, Liam. Just don't."

He stops walking. He doesn't argue. He just stands there in the rain with both hands loose at his sides and waits for her to keep talking, because he seems to understand somehow that she needs to.

"She has been doing this my whole life," Chloe says. Her voice doesn't rise. It just gets quieter, which is somehow worse. "Every single thing I have ever wanted, she decides whether I'm allowed to have it. My classes, my friends, what I wear, where I go.

She exhales slowly. "She slapped you. In front of everyone. Because you were nice to me. That's all you did, and she couldn't even let me have that."

"Chloe," Liam says quietly.

"I'm not crazy," she says quickly, like she's been waiting for someone to say she is. "I just don't know how to keep doing this every single day. I wake up and the whole day already belongs to her before I've even gotten out of bed."

"I know," he says. "I know it feels that way."

"It doesn't just feel that way." She finally turns her head slightly, just enough that he can see her face in profile. Her eyes are red and her cheeks are wet. "It is that way."

"You're right," he says, and he doesn't try to fix it or argue with her or tell her it isn't as bad as she thinks. He just agrees with her, and something in her shoulders drops half an inch. 

"Come down, Chloe. Come down and we'll figure it out."

"You can't fix this."

"I'm not trying to fix it," he says. "I just want you to come down."

I watch him move toward her with slow, careful steps, both hands raised slightly, his voice low and even as he talks her back from wherever she's gone inside her own head. 

He's surprisingly good at it, which is not something I expected from a boy who looked like he was about to fall apart in that classroom twenty minutes ago.

"Liam, stop," Chloe says, but her voice has lost some of its edge. "I mean it. Stop walking."

"Okay," he says, and he does stop. "Okay, I stopped. I'm right here."

She turns to look at him properly then, and whatever she sees in his face makes her breath catch. "Why do you even care?" she asks. "We barely know each other."

"That doesn't really matter right now," he says.

She stares at him for a long moment. Then, very slowly, she starts to turn away from the edge.

Chloe's foot slips on the wet concrete of the ledge, and everything accelerates.

The boy doesn't hesitate for even half a second. He throws himself forward and grabs her arm with both hands, pulling her back from the edge with everything he has.

Chloe hits the rooftop hard, rolling away from the ledge and landing safe on the solid concrete. 

But the boy's momentum doesn't stop when hers does. His shoes hit a patch of moss slick with rainwater and his eyes go wide with the sudden understanding of what is about to happen to him. He scrambles for grip and finds nothing.

Then he goes over the edge backward.

My book turns black in my hands so fast it startles me. The ink bleeds across every page in dark spreading stains, seeping into the white paper like something vital has been punctured.

"No." I stare at the ruined pages and feel something cold move through me that has nothing to do with the weather. "No, that's not right. He isn't supposed to be—"

He's falling, and if he hits the ground before I can do something about it, then the balance will break.

I go over the edge after him without stopping to think about whether it's a good idea, because it isn't, but I'm doing it anyway.

"Stop!" I push every piece of power I have into the single word, pouring it into the air around him like I'm trying to fill a room with light.

The world stutters. The rain freezes in midair all around us, suspended in thousands of tiny perfect crystals catching what little light exists in the dark sky. I catch him in the same moment, holding him suspended one foot above the wet pavement.

He's hanging in midair, completely still, staring at me with the widest eyes I have seen on a human face in decades. 

"What—" he starts, then stops. He looks at the frozen rain around him, at the ground one foot below him, and then back at me. "What is happening right now?"

I'm standing directly in front of him, visible now, which is not a situation I generally allow to happen. I look at him and remind myself professionally that I feel absolutely nothing about his continued existence.

"You absolute idiot," I say. "You were not on the list."

The blue lightning strikes directly into the space between my shoulder blades, and my wings shatter like glass dropped on stone. For the first time in several centuries, I experience something I had genuinely forgotten was possible.

Pain moves through my entire body like a sound wave, and then the ground comes up to meet me.