Fearless The King Series Book One - By Tawdra Kandle Page 0,83
me. I caught Nell’s name here and there, but I couldn’t comprehend the context. And then I froze, as I heard my own name surrounded by that unfamiliar tongue.
I forced myself not to pull away from Ms. Lacusta’s mind. I realized that I wasn’t going to understand the thoughts I heard from her—obviously, she still thought in her mother tongue, which wasn’t unusual. But if I could pick up an image or two, it might help me in some way.
I concentrated harder, pushing my mind even closer to hers. The foreign words grew louder and clearer, and suddenly something clicked. This language was the same as the chant I had heard from Nell last week. Knowing that the two were connected shouldn’t have surprised me, but feeling the link ran a chill up my spine. Nell must have learned the words from Ms. Lacusta, although I supposed it was possible that she had taught herself in an effort to please her idol. The bigger question was why?
As I considered all of this, suddenly an image from the teacher’s mind appeared in my own head. It was Nell, and she was standing somewhere—it was outside, part of me realized I could see trees—and there were other girls standing apart from her in a loosely grouped cluster. But Nell was not with them. She was looking up, and I saw an eagerness and joy in her expression that was so foreign to me it was startling. Of course, with the picture coming from Ms. Lacusta’s thoughts, it must have been Nell looking at the teacher. And this supported my suspicion that Nell saw Ms. Lacusta as the mother-figure she had been missing.
The image shifted, and Nell’s expression had changed. The eagerness was gone, and in its place was a desperation, a need. I wondered if this represented a different time, or if Nell’s mood changes were this mercurial. The pictures were accompanied by feelings, which from past experience I knew came through Ms. Lacusta. She was annoyed with Nell, almost bored by her. At first Nell’s infatuation had flattered her, and she had used it. Why? That wasn’t clear. But once Nell had moved from simply appreciating her attention to demanding it, Ms. Lacusta had pulled back. And now her feelings toward Nell were… I forced myself to probe deeply. Impatience… anger… perhaps a small bit of fear?
A sudden blast of unintelligible thought assaulted my inner ears. I sucked in a breath and with effort stopped myself from clamping my hands over my ears, as if that would help. The language was the same that I had heard earlier, but the words were whip sharp and so fast they blended together. My mind was being pulled into the storm, and for a terrible, terrifying moment, I wasn’t sure I could escape. With real, painful effort I yanked myself away, and the ensuing mental silence was deafening. There was no baseline buzz of thoughts, no underlying murmur. The relief was palpable but short-lived.
My heart was pounding. I kept my head down and tried to slow my breathing. I was amazed that the whole room hadn’t noticed my distress, but even Liza, sitting next to me, continued to scribble on her worksheet, somehow solving the problems I couldn’t even understand.
I was afraid to look up and meet Ms. Lacusta’s eyes, in case somehow she knew what I’d been doing. And in fact when I was brave enough to shift my hands away from my face and look up, the teacher was gazing at me with interest. She didn’t look angry or suspicious, only curious. When I didn’t immediately look away, her lips curved into a slight smile. I acknowledged her with a small nod, as I would if any of my teachers had caught my eye. And then blessedly, the bell rang, ending the class period.
It took me all of the forty-nine minutes of Speech and Debate to settle down my heart and jumpy mind. Something—either the stress or Ms. Lacusta’s frightening brain—was playing havoc with the volume control on the thoughts I heard, and all during class, they went from a nearly imperceptible murmur to a loud roar. I took deep breaths and tried to pull up my increasingly-hard-to-control mental wall.
Michael’s friend Jim, who sat at lunch with us, was the only person I knew in that class. I saw him looking at me with concern, and when the teacher was occupied elsewhere, he leaned toward me from his desk.