Or so I thought. Vibe told me later that Emery gave her assignments every class; to identify the emotions he was pushing her way—increasingly complicated shit like regret, guilt, and stress—and to separate them from whatever emotions Muse was putting out at the same time. Freddy had his own assignments, although I never learned what they were. Truth is, I wasn’t entirely sure why the Switch had been placed in both P’s, given that his powers seemed based entirely on Projection instead of Perception.
Anyway, those two had assignments and exercises to complete in Perception, but all I had was time to kill. Normally, that would’ve sucked. Most of the time, it did. But with Nikolai’s ultimatum hanging over my head, it meant Perception was the one class other than Control where I was not only free to meditate and beat my head against the wall of my own power… I was actually encouraged to do just that.
And I did. Eyes clothed, breathing steady, mind scratching away at the layers of emotion and hard-earned shell that I’d peeled away so easily in Sally’s presence. None of it did any good. Trying to reach that emptiness meant thinking about the emptiness and thinking about the emptiness made me think about the reason it was there to begin with and that… well, that was just another path to anger and starting the whole fucking cycle all over again.
We still had a half-hour left to go, but my knees were killing me, and my focus was shot. With a sigh, I shifted position and opened my eyes. I wasn’t admitting defeat… not really. I was just acknowledging reality; victory wasn’t happening any time soon.
Kayleigh was across the small circle from me. I watched her breathe—eyes twitching back and forth under closed eyelids like she was dreaming—and wondered for the first time exactly what her empathy was showing her. I knew she could track emotion to its source, but were other people one-sized blobs of sensation or could she perceive more than just distance? Could she see shape or color? And was I an empty hole in the middle of that space or did I not register at all? Was I just background noise, like a tree or a stone?
There’s a saying you may have heard. God knows Emery said it more than a few times during class, because he was exactly the sort of asshole that liked to hear himself talk and didn’t mind if we’d heard it all before.
Perception is reality.
Pretty sure the saying’s got nothing to do with Crows, given that it predates the Break by at least a few decades. But the thing is, as I was thinking about Vibe and how her power didn’t see me, about the possibility that I was nothing to her senses but void and vacuum, I felt the empty space inside of me respond. Instead of digging for that emptiness, I sat outside myself, and the emptiness rose up of its own accord, filling me until nothing, not even the pain in my knees, remained.
It lasted a handful of seconds before the realization of what I’d done hit me, and with it, an elation that promptly swept the emptiness away. For a moment I just knelt there, part of me already questioning what I’d done and felt.
Then I did it again.
And again.
And again and again all the way until class was over.
For the first time in weeks, I had hope.
My breakthrough happened in Perception, sure enough, but that doesn’t mean Emery Goldstein deserves any credit. If you want to credit anyone, credit Vibe.
Credit the power that can’t even see me.
CHAPTER 54
After eight months, the pits were familiar territory. I could even tell them apart by the patterns of stains across their cement floors. This was pit number two, where Silt had splattered Santiago’s nose right after kicking the druid in the balls, and where Prince had vomited up his breakfast for at least the sixth time.
Eight months of bloody history layered on top of all the classes that had come before us… it should have bothered me, I guess. Instead, it felt like home.
The man across the pit from me though? He fucking bothered me.
Alan Jackson was a nightmare even in human shape. Shifted into his animal form, he was far worse; arms dangling to the ground, overly long, multi-jointed fingers ending in claws that could pierce even the Viking’s skin. Instead of a nose and mouth, Alan had a wide snout filled with sharp teeth, and the shaved pate of his skull had been replaced by a thick coat of black fur.
Only the eyes stayed the same… but then, there’d always been something inhuman about Alan Jackson’s golden eyes.
“Just roll over and play dead, Crow.” The words were distorted, forced out through a mouth more suited for carnage than communication. “Sooner this is over, the sooner you can leave this class to those who belong.”
Maybe he was trying to be nice, in his own way. Maybe he was taking pity on the poor little useless Crow.
But you already know how I feel about pity.
I bared my teeth at the monster. “It’s time someone taught you to sit up and beg.”
I stepped outside of myself and waited for the emptiness to come.
Nothing happened.
Alan Jackson was already in motion.
“Fuck.”
•—•—•
I had plenty of time in the med ward to think about what had gone wrong.
First, I’d pissed off Alan Jackson.
Second, I’d failed to call on my power when it mattered. Maybe it was the difference between combat and a quiet classroom. Maybe it was a question of adrenaline or the irritation and fear I’d been dealing with.
Whatever the reason, I was
