Tithe

by Claire Vale

  Whatever he hopes becomes a blur inside my head.

  Alderman Marques.

  Alderman.

  I haven’t had that many interactions with Kane, but the one’s that surface through my disbelief are a cold shock.

  I practically bashed him with the lid from a sandwich tray and then I went on to interrogate him.

  What on earth are you doing here?

  I didn’t know you’d joined the guard.

  Is the Mayor’s office involved in the Tithe?

  As if I had some right to demand he explain his presence.

  And oh my God, the pool. Yesterday and this morning. The flippant things we said to get out of jogging. We were messing with him, like he was one of us, a civilian without the authority of the Guard or Alders.

  I look at Jessie to find she’s looking at me, wide–eyed like a startled rabbit.

  “Wow,” Gabe says under his breath on my other side. “I did not see this coming.”

  But we should have. Why on hell’s earth else would he be here? We all knew enough to question, but didn’t bother searching for the answer.

  I sneak a look at Kane.

  He’s looking right at me, a lazy, hooded look of a self-assured, arrogant prince.

  He knew all along.

  He knew we didn’t know.

  Bastard.

  My anger flares into his gray stare, hot and visceral.

  He doesn’t feel the burn. His mouth hitches into the slow, infuriating suggestion of a grin.

  My anger amuses him.

  His deception and betrayal amuses him. That pops out of nowhere. It’s not a thought in my head, it’s the feeling threatening to explode out of my chest. It doesn’t belong.

  Kane is not one of us.

  He never has been.

  He has not betrayed me.

  I don’t care that he’s gone over to the dark side of the Tithe.

  My hands balled into tight fists say otherwise.

  Alderman Brisken, meanwhile, has moved onto the topic of family and our pairings. I’ve missed most of it, but imagine I haven’t missed anything at all. There’s only so many different ways one can hear the same thing.

  He wraps up with, “You may inform Lt. Palmer or Junior Alderman Marques of your intended pairing and they will lodge the entry up until and including the day before the Tithe.”

  As soon as we’re out the room, Gabe takes me by the hand, leading me across the foyer and through a set of swing doors.

  Chris pushes through on the reverse swing, hot on our heels. “Don’t mind me,” he says. “I’m not here.”

  Gabe gives him a droll look. “Where are you?”

  “Wherever Rose isn’t.” Chris glances at me, grins feebly. “Sorry.”

  I shrug, not sure what he’s apologizing to me for.

  “She latched on as soon as she heard ‘lodge’ and ‘pairing’ in the same sentence,” Chris says to Gabe. “What does she even want with me? I didn’t think I was her type.”

  “You’re her type,” I assure him absently, thinking about Rose’s comment at the pool yesterday. And I leave it there. He doesn’t have to know it’s because of his apprenticeship to strategic services.

  Chris pulls a face. “Doesn’t mean I’m going to rush her down this passage any time soon.”

  Right about then, I realize I’m staring down the barrel of the passage that leads to Lt. Palmer’s office. I turn to Gabe, a lump the size of a rock forming in my throat. “You want to lodge our pairing now?”

  “I thought we could be the first.”

  “Gabe… I’m just…” I do, I really do, but not like this. The echo of anger is still thudding inside my chest. My head is wired somewhere else, to a guy who isn’t Gabe. I can’t do it like this. “Not today, okay? There’s no rush, is there?”

  “That’s what I said,” Chris says.

  Gabe sends a scowl his way. “Could you give us a minute?”

  “Yeah, sure, I’ll just be… there.” He points and starts off down the passage.

  Shoving a hand through his hair, Gabe’s eyes return to me. “What’s the problem?”

  I swallow hard. “Kane.”

  “Kane?”

  “Yes, Kane,” I snap, and hear myself. “I’m sorry, Gabe, I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m just…shocked, I guess. He should have told us he was an Alder. The whole thing makes me sick.”

  “He’s not really an Alder yet. Alderman Harken trained as a junior under his predecessor for years before the man finally stepped down and—”

  “That’s not the point!” I back up against the wall, suck in a lungful of air, breathe it out slowly. “Sorry, I’m sorry. I’m freaked out and I don’t want to be in this state of mind when we do this. This is supposed to be a special day, a day I’ll remember for the rest of my life. I don’t want to drag all these crappy feeling into it with us.”

  “It’s not all that crappy.”

  “It is for me.”

  “Because of…?”

  He doesn’t finish, as if he doesn’t want to say Kane’s name again, but leaving it out there in the dust makes me feel like I’ve somehow let another guy come between us and I haven’t, not like that.

  After a pause I don’t know how to fill, Gabe’s puzzled scowl lifts. His knuckles come under my chin, tilting my face up to him. “I want you to know that I am ready to do it, ready whenever you are.”

  I look into his familiar blue eyes and the weird energy frizzling me subsides a tiny bit. Slipping my arms around his hips, I draw him closer. “I already belong to you, I always will. We’ll lodge tomorrow, okay?”

  13

  WE WAKE UP TO pounding rain the next morning. A storm has blown in during the night, churning angry black clouds into the sky with tropical gusts that pelt the rain sideways. FT isn’t cancelled, though, it’s just moved into the gym, a cavernous hall with polished floorboards and hazardous looking equipment around the edges.

  Kane lines us up on one end for sprints, a flat-out run there, a slow stroll back, as many as we can do in fifteen minutes. He looks right at me with those stone-baked eyes and arrogant tilt of his head when he adds, “For those of you who feel running is undignified, feel free to alternate between a fast and slow walk.”

  The hairs on the back of my neck bristle. Last night I figured out why I feel so betrayed by Kane and his election as an Alder.

  He was my schoolyard crush and most of that wasn’t about his dark beauty and his striking gray eyes. It was his devil-may-care attitude, the dramatic tension that charged the air he passed through, the boredom brooding in his arrogant features, the irreverence scattered on his throwaway remarks.

  The guy I crushed on was an enigma, born wild in my dreams to stride through never-ending moors with no place to come from and everywhere to go. I never really wanted anything from Kane, I didn’t want to tame the dream. I suppose it wasn’t even about Kane at all, he was just an easy translation to my fantasy of someone, somewhere, living unchained and free.

  Now he’s an Alder.

  Ironcross took my flight of childhood fancy and locked it down tight inside these walls.

  Nothing is sacred in this place.

  Nothing is mine to keep forever.

  That makes me sad and mad and the simmering stew is still there, just beneath the surface of my skin.

  A hand shoots up into the air. Chase Bradshaw.

  “We’re not in a school room.” Kane takes a seat on the bench press by the wall as he speaks, draws one leg up, foot planted on the bench, elbow resting on his knee. “You don’t have to raise your hand. What is it, Chase?”

  “I was wondering if we had to walk, or if we could run both ways. Sir. Alderman Marques.”

  “The objective of sprint intervals is to alternate between running and walking, to pulse your heartbeat,” Kane says, looking from Chase over all of us. “And I’m not Alderman Marques. I’m a Junior Alder and my name is Kane, same as it was yesterday, nothing has changed.”

&nb
sp; I should keep my head down and hope Kane forgets all the trouble I’ve probably already made for myself, but I’m feeling too snarky to let his go.

  “Yesterday you jogged with us,” I point out. “Today you’re sitting it out on the bench. That’s one thing that has changed.”

  Those gray eyes drag to me. “I didn’t jog with you yesterday, Miss Rhys,” he drawls. “Yesterday, you didn’t jog with anyone. Okay, everyone, the clock’s ticking. Move.”

  Gabe tugs my hand. “What was that about?”

  “Nothing,” I say, mangling my lip between my teeth. Truth is, I really don’t know. It’s irrational, the way this Alder thing triggers me. Maybe I’m not even mad at him. Maybe I’m just going mad.

  After fifteen minutes of sprints, there’s an hour of dodgeball. It’s been a while since I’ve had such silly, childish fun and I have a fat bruise on my thigh to prove it.

  “Ouch,” Jessie commiserates as we head for the door. Her mouth quirks. “You’ll have to get Gabe to kiss it better.”

  I laugh her off. “He’s already offered.”

  “Well aren’t you the lucky girl with all your offers,” she says lightly, but I know Jessie and I hear the sour edge.

  What’s that about? Has Harry not offered for her yet?

  I open my mouth to ask but Kane gets in first. “Miss Rhys, a word before you leave?”

  Me and my open mouth turn on him.

  Jessie pokes a fingernail in the blade of my shoulder. “You’ve been summoned.”

  I glance around for Gabe’s support, but he must have gone ahead with Chris and Daniel. Before, I could have pretended to mishear and walk out after Jessie. Now, every word an Alder utters is practically a command.

  Yeah, nothing has changed, nothing at all.

  “My name is Senna, same as it was yesterday, today and tomorrow,” I mutter as I walk over.

  Kane hears. “I hoped you’d respond to a more formal approach with less belligerence,” he says, then he smirks. “Apparently I was mistaken, Senna.”

  My name rolls off his tongue like golden honey.

  I’m so not in the mood for this.

  “How do you even know my name? When we bumped into each other at the cafeteria, you said you didn’t remember me.”

  “You bumped into me and I didn’t.” His eyes follow as I straddle the bench at the opposite end from him. “I’ve been doing my homework. There are files, with photos attached for our convenience.”

  The only photo I’ve ever had taken was at my annual medical checkup when I turned sixteen. I never guessed it was for the Tithe.

  “That disturbs you?” asks Kane.

  I wipe the scowl from my brow. “Not at all, it’s just a photo and probably every personal female detail of my body you never wanted to know.”

  His jaw reshapes into a grin. “I meant me not remembering.”

  What are we doing here? “Of course not. I was like twelve when we were last at school together. Why would you think that bothers me?”

  “Because you’re angry at me about something.” His head dips a fraction, sweeping long swathes of hair across the blades of his cheekbone. “And I can’t think what I’ve done.”

  “You haven’t done anything,” I mutter. “Seems that’s just my new default mode.”

  He looks at me, a look that starts off cool and disinterested but there’s a subtle shift as it lingers. A depth that eases into the edges and reaches across the length of the bench to wash over me.

  I look at him, confused by the flush warming my cheeks and my inability to blink away. There’s a hammer tapping the sensitive vein at my wrist to a foreign, dangerous beat.

  I don’t know what this is.

  It’s not attraction.

  It can’t be.

  That Kane is a phantom, a dark prince who strides through my childhood fantasies with his billowing cloak and chiseled features and brooding arrogance. On this side of reality, he’s wearing sweats and there’s nothing romantic about brooding arrogance—it’s an irritation that itches beneath my skin and clenches my hands into fists with the urge to punch.

  “Well,” he says at last, his fingers spearing through his hair. “I’m glad we cleared that up because I meant it, nothing has changed, but something will have to change if your attitude doesn’t.”

  I double-blink, rudely flung from that place of warm flushes and tapping veins. My stomach knots, begging me to be meek and compliant, but there’s a cold fire raging over my skin.

  I shoot up from the bench. “Well, thanks for clearing that up, Junior Alderman Marques.”

  “Sit.”

  Such a small word.

  Spoken so quietly.

  That, and the wrath of thunder riding in on his brow, drops me onto the bench again. I’m still mad, but I’m wise enough to hide it.

  “Senna,” he says.

  I breathe in and set a blank look on his dark features.

  He waits for me to say something.

  I purse my lips.

  “You’re free to speak your mind,” he says. “I like that about you. And I sure as hell don’t want anyone to stand on ceremony for me. But this isn’t about what I want.”

  He stands, I’m sure just so that can he stare down on me. “There are ways to make yourself heard without being disrespectful. We all have to bow and scrape to the rules sometimes. Do you understand?”

  Oh, I understand. “Is that all?”

  His gaze spears into me.

  I push to my feet, my eyes locked on his, the cold fire still raging.

  His jaw works, as if he has something more to say. There’s a flicker in his expression, a softening in his eyes, and he closes the space between us in a slow, measured stride.

  “Senna.” My name is a breath on his lips.

  His hand lifts, his knuckles coming beneath my chin.

  I swallow. There’s no trace of mocking arrogance in the way he looks at me, in the command of his touch that somehow keeps me from jutting my chin away and fleeing. His gaze travels to my mouth.

  My heart stills.

  The world condenses into the sensual tingling where his eyes rest.

  I wet my lips, suddenly intensely aware of his dark beauty. The shape of his mouth. The bristled hollows carved into his jaw. What I’m most aware of is the pure and utter maleness he has somehow unleashed into the air between us. It is primal, raw, dangerous.

  There’s a feverish heat in my throat, like my body fighting off an infection. He is a disease, a sickness in my stomach.

  I don’t want this.

  I can’t.

  It doesn’t make any sense.

  His hand falls away abruptly. He takes a step backward and folds his arms across his broad chest.

  The warmth in his gaze fades to a winter landscape.

  “I won’t report this,” he says, as if that’s all he crossed the boundaries of our undefined relationship to say.

  It’s enough.

  My body snaps out of that weird, unwanted grip of awareness and when I turn and walk away, it doesn’t follow.

  I push the incident out of my head.

  My heart and pulse belong to Gabe.

  14

  LATER THAT DAY, we’re in the auditorium again for another session. I hope it’s as short and sweet as the previous ones, because I have plans for me and Gabe and that register in Lt. Palmer’s office directly after.

  We’re snuggled up in the back row, Gabe’s arm around me, my cheek resting in the curve of his shoulder. “I love you,” I whisper to his chest.

  I don’t know if he hears, but his arm tightens around me.

  The usual consort it up front, Lt. Palmer and Kane and all four Alders. It seems they’re all getting a turn and today it’s Alderman Keelan.

  He’s a large framed man, and he stands tall and straight behind the lectern despite the many years he’s obviously carrying. “The Tithe is not only about our treaty to the wall, it’s the transition into adulthood.” His voice is gravel, as strong as his
build, and there’s a quality to it that invites you to lean in and listen closer. “When you leave here, you’ll be responsible for your own household. You’ll assume full responsibility for your duties in the workplace. You will be responsible for our continued prosperity and future generations.”

  He steps out from behind the lectern to pace a slow, steady path before the bottom row of empty seats. “But there is another type of responsibility we don’t often speak of, our responsibility to each other, to Ironcross, to our society and to the laws that hold it all together. No man, or woman, is without sin. We all falter. The important thing is to pick yourself up and start afresh. And we can only do that…” his constant gaze sweeps across us “…once we’re prepared to acknowledge our mistakes and learn from them.”

  I’ve leaned forward while he spoke. Now I slump back in my seat, uncertain with where this going.

  “Which brings us to the final responsibility,” Alderman Keelan continues. “Being responsible for ourselves, taking the responsibility for our own actions and the consequences.”

  Gabe’s hand finds mine, a firm, reassuring squeeze. I’m not the only one feeling suddenly uneasy.

  Alderman Keelan moves to stand behind the lectern again. “Now we’re going to ask you to participate in an exercise of reflection and confession. We’re not looking for some token gesture to fill the silence. Please understand, we expect you to carefully consider and choose one infraction, your worst transgression against the law, against our society. This is your opportunity to wipe the slate of your youth clean and start afresh in adulthood. This is how you take responsibility for yourself and claim your rightful standing in Ironcross.”

  A hand shoots into the air. Grace Panney, a bubbly girl who runs with the social elite pack of our Tithe year. Her father is the Chief Supervisor of the industrial zone.

  Alderman Keelan nods in her direction.

  “Will we be absolved from this ‘mistake’”— actual air quotes—“once we’ve confessed?” she asks sweetly.

  Another hand shoots into the air and gets a nod from Alderman Keelan. “Can we confess to more than one?”