I pale.
“I know you have some cloaking going on with you, but Pierce never let me bring it up. Have you had past trauma? Is that why you hide behind the glasses and awful suits?”
I look away, knowing this day would come. “Pierce told you not to ask?” I glance back at her, intrigued.
That makes no sense.
“Yeah,” she frowns at me, “I always thought that it was weird, but maybe it’s company policy to respect trauma victims. I don’t remember what HR’s policy was back then. You know, you could have always talked to me.”
I take a moment as I ponder what to tell her. So many times I almost told Zoya—but I figured it mattered not. I put myself on the back burner for so many years that I didn’t care. “I—uh, what makes you think I have a cloaking spell?” My voice wavers, sounding pathetic.
Zoya gives me a dry expression. “I have seen you a handful of times without your glasses on and your face alters—your nose and mouth and cheekbones are different for mere moments. At first, I thought I was seeing things, but it happens every time you take off your glasses.”
I roll my eyes. “That’s because I’m Wonder Woman, silly.” I try a cheeky smile. Though, everyone knows glasses are a number-one giveaway for cloaking effects.
“April,” she warns, clearly not in a joking mood. “What happened? Someone from accounting do something to you?!” She’s suddenly pissed, her eyes becoming intense. “You should have told me! I would have kicked their ass! Broke his dick in half!”
I hold up my hand to calm the crazy that’s escalating. “Wait,” I quickly say, “what did Pierce tell you exactly?”
“Until now?”
“Yeah, I’m over it now,” she says forcefully, “so spill the beans before I give you my mean mommy voice.”
I bristle, no thanks.
But Pierce knew?
He couldn’t possibly, unless he just thought like Zoya did—trauma and let her just be.
“April?”
I look at her and take off my glasses, our eyes colliding. She frowns as she searches my face, reaching a hand out to touch my cheek.
“Weird,” she murmurs. “You look like yourself—but then you don’t.” She touches my nose. “It’s almost like my brain can’t interpret what I’m seeing.”
I sigh. “I know. I have had the cloaking spell for as long as I can remember. It’s been so long that I think the spell is forever. Little bits of me try to come out, but I’m stuck this way. I think I’m cursed. Or something…”
“April, you’ve had this since you were little?! Wait, why?” Her eyes search mine, her brows furrowed. “Why?”
I swallow and laugh, looking up at the ceiling with a shrug. “Viveera Vega—I guess, I don’t know. It’s all confusing.”
Even as the words come out, I don’t believe it.
Zoya’s eyes slowly widen, and she smirks, then starts choke-coughing into her hand. “G-good one. But seriously—”
“I’m serious, Zoya,” I say meekly, looking down at my hands. “Honest, even though I don’t look like it—except my eye color, I suppose.”
“Wait, what?” she asks, giving her head a shake. “You’re fucking serious?” Her eyes almost bulge out of her head. “You’re serious?! April?!”
“Yes,” I say again, feeling my cheeks heat.
“What the fuck?!” she says again, “like, what the actual fuck, April?!”
I shrug. “It’s not a big deal.”
“Not a big deal?!” She nearly screams, and someone knocks at the door, making her clamp her mouth shut and twist. Taking a big breath, she gets up fast and runs to the door, schooling her features and fixing her hair. Zoya quickly glances at me before opening the door with her chin raised like a stern schoolmistress.
They watch Zoya like a hawk. Anyone she talks to is always monitored, and she is always followed. Which is why I call her by my rouge Darling necklace that’s not traced. I barely see Zoya in person—too risky with what I’m trying to do.
I want no eyes on me.
“I heard yelling,” says a man in a black suit with computer glasses on, tiny digital displays visible. Vincent’s black suits, we call them. He leans his head to the side to say something into his shoulder. “Copy that.” Then he glances at Zoya expectantly.
“Sorry, but I’ve just been experiencing some female discomfort,” she continues, holding her belly. “Everything is sorted out. The pain is gone.”
His eyes narrow on her, then he looks past her to me, appearing suspicious. “Female discomfort?”
The man instantly holds his hand up, blanching. He screws up his face as if he were in fact picturing the flow of a raging period. “J-just keep it down,” he gets out before leaving without another word, hearing the retreating voice of his radio.
She shuts the door and sighs, “Sorry. What a dumbass.”
“You have a cloaking spell on you, April,” she says and walks back over to me, sitting down right in front of me. She leans in close, and I can smell the expensive perfume she wears. “Your eyes change color. I have always wondered where you were from—what district, but I was always too busy and distracted to ask you.”
My eye color.
It’s the only reason why I still believe that I have Viveera Vega blood. “I have learned to live with it. It’s really not a big deal.”
She snorts, her pale blue gaze searching over my face. “April, this is kinda a big fuckin’ deal. It’s so like you to downplay yourself. What Gate did you get recruited from? How are you here?!”
I stare at her, not knowing much but FGI. “I don’t remember who put it on me or why I grew up here,” I admit, thinking hard. “I sometimes have nightmares and visions of long ago, but they never make sense. Only seeing a woman in my face telling me to hide or they will kill me. Telling me that if anyone noticed me, they would kill me. She was very scared and had pale white hair, bleeding from her eyes. She was telling me if they found me out, they would send me off to very bad people. Or I’d die or something. Or maybe it was some curse.” I look at her with a shrug. “I have always been employed at FGI—I grew up here as an orphan, like a lot of other children born into this. Then when I got old enough, I did a lot of research and found out what happened to the Vega. It was horrible, which I think traumatized me when I was younger.”
“April, that was a long time ago—it’s not like that now. The remaining Vega are protected at the high Celestial court and the Stations—within the fifth and seventh gates.”
The Celestial Gates of Serenity, the GOS.
“Yes, I now know that—”
A beeping sound emits from the waistband of Zoya’s pants, and she pulls out a little black pad. “Shit,” she curses, looking down, reading a message on a small digital screen. “Dammit. I gotta run—must be a problem with the current mission. There’s always fucking problems—android agents do not work! They’re running Dion fucking dry. If we could quit, we would.” She looks at me, knowing the AI metal balls will never replace the quirky TP shifters. “We’re not done with this, by the way. And I’ll get you a meeting with Zoya, but be warned. She is out of her mind.” She stands, taking a breath. “And keep a low profile from the black suits.”
Then she is gone.
It’s horrible how we have to live this way. Walking on eggshells every waking minute.
I also think about what she said. The remaining Vega are being protected within the seven Gates of Serenity. I doubt there are many left after my home planet was destroyed by an evil fae witch who was jealous of the only relatives of the unicorns. She, like so many before her, wanted to be the fairest in the land. A tale as old as time, repeated throughout the universe on a broken record.
