Page 56 of Spark of Madness

“I suppose.” She absently runs her hand down her straight, ash-brown hair. “Are you?”

I sigh as I reach her and drag her into a hug, mostly because I need one, though I know she needs one, too. “Of course not.”

I pull back and smile before releasing her, comforted briefly when she returns my smile with a weak one of her own. We walk down the hallway side-by-side toward our bedrooms—hers is the room next to the one I’ve been given.

“I saw you talking to your friends,” she says. “What did they say to you?”

I sigh. “They’re unhappy with me.”

“I’m sorry.” Her regret for me sounds genuine, and her head dips. “I was too afraid to speak with my friends.”

I nod in understanding. Her friends probably feel the same as mine, or maybe they feel worse. Delle wasn’t forced to participate in the trials; instead, shechoseit. She chose to dissent for a practically non-existent chance at a life outside of service. As awful as it is, they probably hate her for it, and it makes my heart hurt for her.

“Well, I suppose we’ll just have each other.” We stop in front of her door and I give her a quick smile.

She grins, but there’s no joy in it—only fear and misery. She glances over her shoulder, then lets her face fall slowly. She exhales fully as her head bows, and she lowers her voice. “I’m worried I’ve made the wrong decision.”

Oh, Delle.

“Come with me.” I take hold of her arm and drag her into her bedroom. I push the door open and pull her through behind me. I motion to the armchairs in the corner which face the foot of her bed, and she moves to take a seat, gradually and with heaviness in her steps.

I move to the bed, lowering to perch at the foot of it, pressing my palms on either side of my hips. “Talk to me.”

“I don’t know what to say. I…I don’t really think I’ve made the wrong decision because I know I can’t live as a servant. Iwon’t. I refuse to. But I don’t understand why…why we have to live this way.”

I hear the heartache in her breaking voice, the sorrow of her soul. I know this deep soul ache that she’s feeling. I felt it for months during my first year of service. Not to say that it ever really went away, but eventually, service felt normal—at least, as normal as it could be.

“I don’t understand it, either. Refusing to understand and believe is why I’m here facing the trials and an almost certain death. It’s why my life is over, Delle. I never would have wanted you to make this choice.”

“I didn’t want to make it either, but what was I supposed to do?” She begins to cry, and it claws at my soul.

I cross the room, quickly dropping to my knees in front of her as she drops her head into her hands and cries. Her pain swirls around me, encapsulates me in heartache so strong that it threatens to tear me in two.

I know how hard the transition to service is when you’re sixteen. Though our training over the years gave us an idea of what our role would be, there is no understanding the depth of it until you’re thrown into your first night of service. And Delle is like me, which makes it all the worse.

She thinks.

She questions.

She wonders.

And all those lead to rebellion.

We’re warned about it, of course. We’re preached to, repeatedly, about the pain that awaits us in the afterlife for rebelling against our servant role. The mere desire for something different is seen as a secret sin—one that will bring you to hell after death, though no one would know about it if you didn’t speak it. We’re taught that the only way to live a godly life is to find joy and pride in our role. It’s perplexing how all the others seem to find a way to do it.

Unless...

Unless they’re all living that secret sin and simply unwilling to speak it. The hand we’ve been dealt is a losing one, and there is no exchanging cards.

The only thing I know is that I would do anything to take this poor child’s pain from her, to spare her the trials, to fight against the impossible and grant her the domestic life free of service that she deserves.

I think my aptitude for self-preservation is entirely lost as ideas for saving Delle run rampant through my mind. I’m meant to die in these trials; I’m the reason they’re holding the trials at all. My fate is sealed.

Butif there was a way to spare Delle the samefate...

I gently tug on her wrists to pull them away from her face. I wait until she lifts her head to look at me, trails of tears streaking down her pinkened cheeks. I reach up to brush my thumb across and swipe the drops away.

“Delle, is a domestic life what you really want? Is that the reason you volunteered to participate?”

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