“Your laugh is not the worst sound I’ve ever heard,” he says.
“Is that supposed to be a compliment?”
“It’s a fact.”
“How did you discover your powers?” I ask.
This is the most time I’ve spent with Ender since the party. It’s a good chance for me to learn all that I can about him.
“I built a fake world for myself,” he says. “I’d spend hours there.”
He pauses. “Do you want to see it?”
“Yes.”
He grabs my hand. Even though he doesn’t need to touch me to show me an illusion.
A beautiful countryside unfurls before us. There is a white cottage in the distance, and the sun shines like a pot of gold. A boy races around with a golden pup. His hair flops in the wind, and his chubby cheeks are ruddy as he laughs.
“Is that…”
“Me,” Ender says. “My parents used to sit there and watch me.”
He points to a swing set on the porch where his father and mother sit. They look nothing like the stiff, cold figures from the engagement party. His father’s mouth is pulled in a wide smile, and his mother’s eyes are warm with love.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen your father genuinely smile,” I say. “It’s eerie.”
His father only ever did his politician smile. The one meant to gain the adoration of the public.
“Yeah,” he says. “Nothing here was real.”
His face is unreadable. His fingers tighten around mine, but I don’t pull away. My heart stutters when I realize that this is not a place he has ever shown anyone before.
“It’s beautiful,” I whisper. “Did you come here often?”
“I lived here part-time and I…” He hesitates.
“You can tell me,” I say softly.
“I used it as an escape when things were less than ideal. My father, of course, didn’t approve. He saw this place as a weakness, a lie, but it was the truest thing I ever knew,” He finishes. “I got the Bind, and my powers were destabilized until I could prove that I wouldn’t hide from the real world anymore.”
I blink, and the illusion is gone. We’re back in the service room with the fake sky.
“Go to sleep, Warrick,” Ender says. “You’ll need your energy for tomorrow.”
“Vale,” I say.
He is silent.
“I would hide too,” I say. “Finding a sliver of joy in a world full of violence is not cowardly. It is brave.”
Ender doesn’t respond, and I don’t expect him to. I’m grateful that he shared that with me. Even if it seems like he regrets it, it gives me hope that maybe Ender can be convinced to fight with us. He once dreamed of a world that was kind. A less brutal, mechanical place untainted by his father’s corruption.
This is an opening, a thread, that I can use to draw him to our side.
To fightwithus and not against us.
chapter
