I looked toward the ceiling. “I’m determined to help myself. I’ve grown up around people with disabilities, so I know I can still do everything I want to. I’m not angry that I’m in a wheelchair. I’m angry I have to relearn everything in my life. I’m angry at how people treat me. So don’t be one of those people. Just be Charlie. That’s all I ever wanted from you. A sense of normalcy.”
Charlie gave a skeptical noise. “We’re anything but normal.”
“Normal for us. And I mean, look at the positives,” I said. “I get to do wheelies whenever I want, I get to cut in line, my upper body strength is going to beamazing, and I can accidentally roll over people I hate. Those are all huge benefits.”
He laughed through the tears. “Those are pretty good points.”
He swallowed. “I’m just… I’m sorry I put you through this. The surgery, struggling to learn how to live again… all of it. I know how difficult it is to learn how to navigate the world when you don’t have the same tools as everyone else, and I didn’t want that for you.”
“Well, in my mind, there’s nothing to say sorry for. But I forgive you anyway. And I think you should forgive yourself, too.”
Charlie drew a deep breath and promised, “I’ll try.”
He laced his fingers through mine. I called Fire to my skin, just enough to warm his fingers and show him I cared. A light breeze made my hair flutter in front of my face. Charlie was thanking me without having to say a thing.
A cracking sound met my ears, and the bracelets on our wrists shook. I gasped. I lifted the cuff up to my eye level, observing the inferichite trapped within. The stone had several cracks running through it.
“What just happened?” Charlie asked.
“The inferichite broke,” I said in wonder, grabbing his wrist to check his bracelet as well. The crystal within his cuff had turned to powder, leaving an empty slot where it had been.
You severed both, Oberi said in awe, gazing at me.It was your magic.
“I feel so much better,” Charlie said. “How’d we do it?”
“It must’ve been our power of forgiveness,” I explained. “I think we’re always looking for negative feelings to fix things. Rage, desperation… but there are stronger emotions than that, more powerful ones. I realize now that I didn’t break the inferichite in the Underground because I was angry. I broke it because… I loved you. And all that love, the inferichite couldn’t hold.”
Aw. How sentimental, Oberi purred.
“You’re incredible, pidge.” Charlie swung his legs out of bed. “We still have some time before curfew. Let’s sneak out to the fence line and see if we can break that inferichite, too.”
He went to grab my wheelchair, but I grabbed his arm. “We’ll get harassed by the guards if we take the chair. It’s too slow, and we can’t avoid them as easily. Let me ride on Oberi, and you can ride behind me. Then you can make sure I won’t fall off.”
He frowned. “You could get hurt.”
“Please, Charlie. I miss riding.”
His shoulder slackened. “It’s a good compromise. I guess it’s okay.”
Oberi changed into a unicorn. Charlie lifted me onto her back once we were out of our cell and into the hallway. Charlie rode behind me. He wrapped his arms around my middle, because my legs weren’t capable of gripping her sides to keep me on. Once outside, we stuck to the shadows and the trees, avoiding the sight of the guards.
“They’re going to know we snuck out here. The trackers in the cuffs are still active,” I told Charlie.
“It doesn’t mean anything, not as long as we get back to our room before ten. We’re not breaking the rules,” Charlie said.
We approached the fence line. The guards had already fixed the barbed wire that Ez’s Familiar had torn, making it seem like it’d never been disturbed at all.
Ten feet out, a nauseous pit formed in my stomach.
“Stop,” I said, and Oberi halted in her tracks. “I can’t get any closer without getting sick.”
“Can you affect the inferichite from here?” Charlie asked.
I cast out my magic, but now that I was activelytryingto mess with the inferichite, performing spells was harder. I already knew I wasn’t going to be able to break what was underneath that fence line with the energy I had.
“You try. I can’t do it,” I said tiredly.
A couple of moments passed. There was a sharp noise that was muffled by the ground, like a minor explosion had gone off underneath the earth.
