Free Hereditary by Jane Washington

like a new colour altogether. The petals no longer drooped and the apples shone and swayed tantalisingly in the slight breeze. I didn’t often open the connection when the sun was setting, but it had always been my favourite change. To see the sunset in those same, intensely clear colours, it was almost magical.
    “I don’t hurt,” I whispered, drawing their eyes back to me. “I help.”
    Hazen blinked. “Your darkness is gone.”
    “The connection helps me, too.”
    “So why not keep it open?”
    I looked down in explanation, not at all surprised at the vines and spindly tree-roots that had sprouted from the ground to wind about my legs, as if hoping to draw me back into the ground with them. One had even reached my waist, and circled with a lazy caress that branched off to cling to my left arm—tiny white flowers sprouted all around me dotting the vines at sporadic intervals, too.
    “Wow,” said Cale, moving to kneel beside me and flick one of the flowers, “now your badass image really is ruined. Little Synfee the gardener.”
    I laughed, feeling much lighter with the connection open, and Hazen even seemed to roll his eyes a little.
    “I’m sorry,” I offered, a little lamely, “that… that whole darkness thing, it only started happening recently.”
    I aimed the apology at Hazen, but flicked my eyes to Cale to include him too.
    “It’s fine,” Cale said, answering for them both, “that’s what these sessions are for, remember?”
    “I suggest we work on one person a day, since we don’t really seem to share many similarities, other than us all being totally abnormal, of course,” Hazen said.
    I agreed, and even offered to go first, seeing as I was already covered in vines and feeling pretty bad about my recent outburst. We spent the next half an hour talking about my ‘abnormal’ power, by which I mean that I spent half an hour answering rapid-fire questions from them both, which seemed to help them much more than it helped me. As the last of the sun’s rays finally began straining to stay in the sky, I ordered the vines back into the ground, and closed the connection, something which they both immediately noticed, as the world seemed suddenly very dull. Dull, and dark.
    “It’s getting late, sorry,” I said, “I really need to get home.” 
    Cale jumped up. “I’ll walk you.”
    For a second, I actually thought that Hazen would argue, though I wasn’t sure exactly what he would argue about , and then he got up, and offered to escort us both back to the entrance chamber. As soon as we were outside, Cale dropped his arm around my shoulder and began to whistle some unrecognisable song, as if my whole outburst hadn’t happened, yet again.
    “Why are you and Hazen being nice to me? Nobody answered me back there.”
    He raised both brows, brushing an errant curl from his face.
    “Nobody answered you because you looked like the angel of death, about to rip up the earth and us along with it.”
    At my horrified look, he quickly amended, “a very beautiful angel of death, of course. Not the sickly, pale kind.”
    “I’m serious, Cale.”
    He stopped walking then, and took a step closer to me, the arm around my shoulder falling away. We were on a side path away from the main buildings of the Academy, leading toward the Black Guards’ barracks, and I looked up at him in the last filtering rays of sunlight, curious at the atypically earnest expression on his face.
    “It’s not that complicated really. I like you, and since Hazen spends most of his time in my head, I guess some of it has rubbed off on him too.”
    I took a faltering step back, which he matched with another step forward.
    “What do you mean by him spending most of his time in your head?”
    “When we were young, Hazen saved my life, kind of like how he helped you out the other day. I used too much of my power and it pushed me over the edge. He jumped into my mind when he realised what was happening, and drew most of it