Chapter Twenty-One: Handling It | Part 3
Well-fed as he was, Thirtyx didn’t miss the rise of Rhea’s energy. “You alright?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine.” She slapped an overflowing binder onto the table and rummaged through it without meeting his eyes.
Thirtyx didn’t press harder, but he didn’t look away. Her bedraggled demeanor seemed to have worsened. When had those wrinkles appeared at the corners of her eyes? How much did her slumped posture differ from the beginning of the term? Had he not noticed the changes because of their gradual onset or because he’d been too distracted by Seerla?
“For the Twins’ sake, where is it?” Rhea began throwing papers onto the table. “I was just working on it this morning! And Grimm wants to look over it tonight, and I thought of like five things during class I could add to improve it…”
An angry red note on the corner of one paper caught Thirtyx’s eye. He slid it toward himself while Rhea was distracted. It was an assignment for her runic theory class, returned with a failing grade.
And now that Thirtyx was paying attention, it wasn’t the only low grade in the pile.
Thirtyx swallowed a lump in his throat. How long had Rhea shown worsening signs of cracking under the tremendous pressure she’d shouldered? How long had he ignored them? While he traded notes and glances with Seerla, Rhea was battling discriminatory legislation on top of her schoolwork while fearing that, at any moment, she could be handed a tenuous throne while in mourning—that was, if she survived the fallout herself.
She was trained to mask her distress from the public, but Thirtyx should have seen it. As he grappled with the guilt, Rhea spotted the paper he held and pressed her lips into a thin line. “May I have that back, please?”
Thirtyx handed it over. He gnawed on the inside of his lip, knowing he should say something but unsure what that something should be. “Don’t—” she tried to preempt, but Thirtyx ignored her.
“You and Benn shouldn’t feel like you have to keep your stress from me. I want to be there for you, and… and I’m sorry I’ve been wrapped up in my own things.”
Rhea stuffed the red-marked papers into her binder with vigor. “Your own things? You mean the first genuine happiness you’ve had in years? I’m not going to ruin that with my stupid problems.”
“Stupid problems?” Thirtyx gaped at her. “Rhea, you’re fighting global policy changes while fearing for your family and future. Not to mention school—“
“And I can handle it!”
The manic look in her eyes and shrill fervor of her voice drove a trickle of icy fear down Thirtyx’s spine. Her fists were clenched on the table. Her jaw was set in fury. Her posture served as a rare reminder that she could kill him with a single flash of Pfah magic.
It was a fierceness she needed to survive right now.
Thirtyx felt weirdly dissociated facing this unfamiliar side of Rhea. Did he truly have any understanding of her world—of the enormity of her emotional load or the expectation that she bear it without showing a shred of strain. What in the universe could he say to help her?
Nothing?
The moment had passed, and she was thumbing through a packet of papers, pen poised in her opposite hand.
Thirtyx returned to his application, but certainly not with his full attention.
Calley Jones 