“I will die someday,” Callum said. “I’ve come to terms with it. People are free to choose me if they wish.” He permitted half a smile as he raised his glass to his lips, glancing at Tristan. “I am equally free to disagree.”
“So it doesn’t bother you that the rest of the group might elect—”
Tristan stopped.
“Elect what? To kill me?” Callum prompted. “If I feared elimination I would not have come.”
“Why did you come?”
Reaction. Tristan would not understand that, of course, even if his reasons were precisely the same. He was a soldier who wanted a principled king, though he seemed unaware what his own principles were.
How pitiful, really.
“You keep asking me that,” commented Callum. “Why should it matter?”
“Doesn’t it? The point of the current subject is intention.”
“So you’re asking my intentions?”
Callum took another sip while he considered his answer, allowing his thoughts to steep.
His life at the Society was not uninteresting. It was methodical, habitual, but that was a consequence of life in any collective. Self-interest was more exciting—sleeping through the afternoon one day, climbing Olympus to threaten the gods the next—but it scared people, upset them. Tending to every whim made others unnecessarily combative, mistrustful. They preferred the reassurance of customs, little traditions, the more inconsequential the better. Breakfast in the morning, supper at the sound of the gong. It soothed them, normality. Everyone wanted most desperately to be unafraid and numb.
Humans were mostly sensible animals. They knew the dangers of erratic behavior. It was a chronic condition, survival. “My intentions are the same as anyone’s,” said Callum after a few moments. “Stand taller. Think smarter. Be better.”
“Better than what?”
Callum shrugged. “Anyone. Everyone. Does it matter?”
He glanced at Tristan over his glass and registered a vibration of malcontent.
“Ah,” Callum said. “You’d prefer me to lie to you.”
Tristan bristled. “I don’t want you to lie—”
“No, you want my truths to be different, which you know they won’t be. The more of my true intentions you know, the guiltier you feel. That’s good, you know,” Callum assured him. “You want so terribly to dissociate, but the truth is you feel more than anyone in this house.”
“More?” Tristan echoed doubtfully, recoiling from the prospect.
“More,” Callum confirmed. “At higher volumes. At broader spectrums.”
“I would have guessed you’d say Rhodes.”
“Rhodes hasn’t the faintest idea who she is,” said Callum. “She feels nothing.”
Tristan’s brow furrowed. “A bit harsh, isn’t it?”
“Not in the slightest.” Libby Rhodes was an anxious impending meltdown whose decisions were based entirely on what she allowed the world to shape her into. She was more powerful than all of them except for Nico, and of course she was. Because she would not misuse it. She was too small-minded, too un-hungry for that. Too trapped within the cage of her own fears, her desires to be liked. The day she woke up and realized she could make her own world would be a dangerous one, but it was so unlikely it hardly kept Callum up at night.
“It is for her own safety that she feels nothing,” Callum said. “It is something she does to survive.”
He had not told Tristan the truth, which was that Tristan was asking the wrong questions. For example, Tristan had never asked Callum what books the library gave him access to. It was a grave error, and perhaps even fatal.
“Tell me about your father,” Callum said, and Tristan blinked, taken aback.
“What? Why?”
“Indulge me,” Callum said. “Call it bonding.”
Tristan gave him a hawk-eyed glare. “I hate it when you do that.”
“What?”
“Act like everything is some sort of performance. Like you’re a machine replicating human behaviors. ‘Call it bonding,’ honestly.” Tristan glanced moodily at his glass. “Sometimes I wonder if you even understand what it means to care about someone else, or if you’re just imitating the motions of whatever it’s meant to look like.”
“You wonder that constantly,” Callum said.
“What?”
“You said you sometimes wonder. You don’t. It’s constant.”
“So?”