Calder didn’t ask about her past.
He didn’t have to.
He already knew.
El realized this on a cold Thursday afternoon, when she found him waiting outside the library with a look she had never seen on his face before — not curiosity, not determination, but something darker.
Purpose.
“El,” he said quietly, “we need to talk.”
Her stomach tightened. “About what?”
Calder didn’t answer. He simply gestured for her to follow.
She shouldn’t have. She knew she shouldn’t have.
But she did.
The Walk
They walked in silence through the back streets behind the school, where the houses grew older and the fences leaned like tired shoulders. El kept her arms close to her body, her breath steady, her emotions locked down tight.
Calder didn’t speak until they reached the corner of a narrow street she knew too well.
Her pulse spiked.
“No,” she whispered. “Calder, not here.”
He turned to her, eyes steady. “You lived here.”
El’s breath shook. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“You need to.”
She flinched. “Why?”
Calder’s voice softened, but his expression didn’t.
“Because he’s part of this.”
El froze.
The world seemed to tilt beneath her feet.
Calder continued, his tone calm, almost clinical.
“The man who hurt you for twelve years,” he said. “He’s connected to your power. To how it started. To how it grew.”
El shook her head violently. “No. No, Calder, stop.”
But Calder wasn’t listening.
He stepped closer, lowering his voice.
“I’ve been studying the timeline,” he said. “Every incident. Every spike. Every wish. And the earliest ones all trace back to him.”
El’s throat tightened painfully.
She didn’t want to hear this. She didn’t want to remember. She didn’t want to feel the pressure building behind her ribs.
But Calder kept going.
“You didn’t just wish for him to stop,” he said. “You wished for escape. For protection. For power. And the world responded.”
El’s heartbeat thudded like a fist against her chest.
“Calder,” she whispered, “please stop.”
He didn’t.
He pointed down the street — toward the house she had once called home, the house she had escaped, the house she never wanted to see again.
“He still lives there,” Calder said. “Still walks freely. Still breathes.”
El’s breath hitched.
Her emotions surged — fear, anger, memory, pain — all tangled into a single, sharp pulse.
The world leaned.
Calder inhaled sharply.
El snapped her gaze toward him. “Did you feel that?”
He nodded slowly. “Yes.”
Her stomach dropped.
Calder stepped closer, his voice barely above a whisper.
“El… your power didn’t come from nowhere. It came from what he did to you.”
She shook her head. “No. No, that’s not—”
“It’s trauma,” Calder said. “Transformed. Amplified. Weaponized.”
El felt sick.
Calder’s eyes softened — not kindly, but with a strange, unsettling sympathy.
“You survived him,” he said. “And the world gave you a way to never be powerless again.”
El’s breath trembled.
She didn’t know if he was comforting her…
…or manipulating her.
Calder reached out, gently touching her arm.
“El,” he whispered, “you don’t have to be afraid of him anymore.”
Her pulse hammered.
She didn’t speak.
She couldn’t.
Calder leaned closer, his voice dropping to a dangerous softness.
“And you don’t have to be afraid of what you can do.”
El felt the world tighten around her — the familiar pressure, the familiar pull, the familiar danger.
But this time, it wasn’t just her emotions.
It was Calder’s.
He wasn’t just connected to her power.
He was feeding it.
Amplifying it.
And for the first time, El realized something terrifying:
Calder didn’t just want to understand her.
He wanted to use her.
ns216.73.216.176da2
and then Add to home screen.