Page 78 of My Trojan Horse Majesty

“I don’t agree.” She reaches for my hand. “I don’t agree that we should be killinganyonewho’s still light. I think we should be trying to save them.” She threads her fingers through mine.

She thinks I can be saved.

She thinks I’m worth the effort.

I hate it, Ihatedoing it, but I don’t have much choice. While she’s placing her trust in me, I reach out and feel the powers gathering around me—all of their abilities have been reset now, thanks to my regained ability with wind and earth.

So I switch them all off, including the one that shines the brightest.

The one that can manage all the powers, just like me, Gustav, his light winks out just like the others. With one squeeze, I eliminate the risk to me, to Izzy, and to my position here. When I park and exit my car, at least I do it knowing that no one will have any magic except for me.

I’m pretty sure that I have a dark face, though. If I’m being honest, that’s always what I’ve been afraid of, but I hoped that eliminating all the darkness around me might redeem me somehow.

If I’m lucky, Gustav won’t be able to see it.

But I’ll still know the truth.

Izzy’s many things—beautiful, bright, hopeful, and pure. But one thing she’s not is right about me. Sometimes optimism’s misplaced, and this is almost certainly one of those times.

Chapter21

Izzy

Iwas in the ER on the day my father was diagnosed with cancer.

The ER doc came back with a very sad expression on his already serious face. Mom looked worried. Dad held her hand. After they told us he’d need to see an oncologist for further information, Dad searched up his kind of cancer online. The internet prognosis was bad—he probably wouldn’t live more than a year.

I wasn’t there when they saw the oncologist, but Mom told us what he said. He told Dad that he had to choose.

There was an aggressive treatment option. It wasn’t very successful in curing the cancer. Less than one percent of cases survived five years from the diagnosis. But Dad would probably live a little longer with a ‘full court press,’ as they called it. He’d likely live more than a year, maybe even six months more, but whatever time he had would be spent in the hospital.

Mom and Dad were optimists.

Cancer pulls optimists out by their roots and leaves them to die. That’s what it did to my parents, or really to my entire family. We had to watch as the poison they gave Dad killed him every bit as fast as it killed the cancer cells.

He wilted.

Right in front of us.

In the end, he didn’t die at home with his family. He didn’t have some good days and some bad. All his days were bad, and he survived less than a year, all of those days spent lying in a hospital bed in terrible pain.

It made me hate all the people who were on social media or commercials claiming they had beaten cancer. Every time one of them said howstrongthey were, it felt like they were saying my dadwasn’t. When they talked about how their families supported them, and without their love and unfailing strength, they wouldn’t have been able to keep going, it felt like we failed our dad.

In the end, I only knew one thing for sure. When the doctors told us to choose between coming home and spending as much good time with Dad as we got or fighting the cancer to try and get more time with him?

We chose wrong.

I’m not a big fan of life versus quality of life choices.

But it frustrates me when people say that some things are ‘life and death,’ implying that’s a hard decision to make. When something’s black or white, ofcourseyou pick white. Life or death? You always pick life, idiot. It’s life orquality of lifedecisions that are hard, and now I’m facing that very kind of choice.

I can feel it.

I always know when stuff like that’s coming my way. It’s like something’s hanging in the air. A weight. It warns me when hard choices approach. The air’s terribly heavy right now, as I walk beside Leonid toward the stupid limekiln ruins—so heavy that I feel like I could almost cut it with a knife.

Mom and Steve are walking up ahead of me, hand-in-hand as well, and Mom keeps glancing back at Leo’s and my joined hands and glaring, like my support for Leonid is an affront to my love for her. It hurts, honestly. But Leonid needs me, at least, right now he does. I can feel it. I may not be able to see his face, and I don’t know how bright or dark it is.

And my judgment has been really bad lately.

---