“I wasn’t,” I protested again. “Since when is it improper to just stand close to someone?”
My mother held my gaze before turning away to my father with a sniff. My father turned back to me, and his gaze softened as he smiled affectionately.
“Darling, I’m sure nothing was going on.”
I’d never before given him a reason to think anything different. I shifted guiltily in my seat.
“Sometimes it’s about appearances, and you are only a year away from handfasting. The year between graduation and handfasting is there for you to enjoy yourself and try different things before you settle down. I know some of your friends may even experiment a little, but I’d hate to see you do something you’ll regret later when you are with your true partner.”
He put his hand over my mother’s, ever the peacemaker in the family, soothing her with his touch as he delivered an admonishment that would be far too light in her eyes.
I smiled gratefully, aware that timing was on my side here. Thank goodness for ships coming in: I had been right, the pineapple in the market was a sign that whatever had been disrupting the flow of goods into the city was now over and trade was good again. And so, therefore, was my father’s mood. “Of course, Papa, I’ll be more careful in future.”
In that moment I truly meant it. I had no idea how I had managed to stray so far from my normal life. What was it about Devyn Agrestis? Whenever he was close, I felt like I was magnetised. I was playing with fire and was in grave danger of third-degree burns, the type that give lasting scars. If they didn’t actually kill you. I was in possession of unauthorised tech that I was withholding from a potential criminal because I was flirting with him. Flirting with someone who wasn’t my intended partner.
I knew what happened to people who infringed on the Code. The entire city got a weekly reminder, yet here I was dancing all over it and lying to my parents to boot. I needed to give Devyn Agrestis back his damn tech as soon as possible – and hopefully return to blissful unawareness of his existence immediately after.
Back at the forum on Monday, I realised my intentions were never going to stay the course. My eyes, of their own volition, were scanning the faces going by, seeking back and forth until they found their target.
He was loitering, almost invisibly, just down the passage from my locker. Even though I was looking for him, my eyes had slid past and had to track back when my brain insisted something wasn’t quite right. He never seemed to take up too much space, blending into the background, staggeringly unremarkable.
His eyes flicked to me but didn’t linger. Taking his cue, I continued to my locker and, after grabbing what I needed, started to move down the hallway. My breath quickened as I walked past the spot where Devyn leaned against the wall.
As I made my way to class, he didn’t catch up with me, but I knew he was behind me, his presence – even seven or eight feet behind – a tangible thing. I paused outside the door to check my tablet. Was I even going to the right class?
He passed me with no acknowledgement but a feather-light touch on my hand… that I might easily have missed had it not blazed up through me. I lifted my hand to find a small slip of paper in my palm.
PARK 5pm
I blinked at the words, and they were gone. Looking up, I realised so was he. Our misadventure at the party meant I had failed to do the promised handover. So now I had to cross the city with the damn device burning a hole in my pocket for a second time. It had been bad enough bringing it to the party, my recent visit to the arena and the flinching body of that hacker adding weight to every step I took. Carrying it back to the forum and hiding it again after also receiving admonishment from my parents had almost broken me. Each step had felt like it was one closer to a dreaded fate in the arena.
My renewed promise to myself that I was backing out of whatever it was I had embroiled myself in had raised my fear levels to the extent that I didn’t think I could ever touch the thing again without having heart palpitations. I leaned back against the wall outside my class for a moment, my mind swirling. Could I risk going back to the library so soon? Would this attract attention? Unease fizzed through me. Gathering myself, I crushed the paper as I dismissed all thoughts of Devyn. Focus. Just get through the day. Figure it out later.
“Did you bring it?” Devyn’s cool voice from behind the bench we had shared the previous week startled me, even though I had been waiting for it.
“No,” I returned, more sharply than I had intended, startled at his sudden appearance. “You think I walk around with it in my pocket all the time, on the off chance the opportunity to give it to you finally arrives? Are you crazy? “
A glint lit his dark eyes.
“I don’t know. You’ve had plenty of chances. I’m starting to think Papa’s little princess doesn’t want to give it back.”
“Don’t call me that,” I snapped. “What does that even mean? Of course I want rid of it.”
“Do you?” he smiled. “You could have given it back to me straight away. Your life would have gone on with only that tiny mark to blemish your perfect record in your perfect life. But you didn’t. You held on to it. You’re interested in what lies behind the curtains.”
I looked away. Was that it? Was it something more than Devyn himself that intrigued me? Was I interested in understanding the device as well as the boy, why he had it, and what he intended to do with it? Why he was risking his life for it? I was. Or at least I was also curious about that, I admitted to myself. I had originally held on to the irregular tech because in some way it was the concrete evidence I needed that Devyn Agrestis was more than he appeared to be. As long as I had it I could be sure Devyn wouldn’t disappear again. He would have to show his true colours. The insignificant boy who lived in the shadows of my life would be forced to step into the light every time we discussed the device. The more it happened, the harder it would be for him to hide from me. I reminded myself that I was handing the gold tech back. I just needed to make sure that he was permanently in the open first.
“Maybe,” I admitted. “What is it? What’s it for?”
Devyn laughed. “You don’t really want to know. Once that genie is out, you won’t ever be able to put him back in the bottle.”
I frowned. He might be right.
“I do want to know.”
He looked at me speculatively. “I don’t think so. I’ve been watching you a long time, Cassandra Shelton. You’re a pretty girl with a pretty life, which you dance through matching your steps to whatever tune the piper is playing. You go to school, you do well – but not too well. Your life is neatly mapped out: you’re comfortable, and your match is from one of the oldest families in the city. Why would you rock the boat now?”
His dark, intelligent eyes mocked me, his lips twisted in a curl that dared me to deny the insignificance of my compliant existence. My fists curled at my sides. He was right, I couldn’t deny his words. He had me pegged; from his spot in the shadows he had seen everything. But that didn’t stop it from stinging.
“You’ve been watching me?” I repeated testily. “Why? How bloody creepy, who are you to judge me about anything? Why don’t you go away and live your own life?”
His eyes had narrowed at my accusations, but he laughed, a harsh grating sound, before he responded.
“That’s my plan. Or at least it was until a shallow little rich girl decided she wanted to play at things she doesn’t understand.” His face darkened, slivers of raw emotion leaking through his usually implacable facade. “Live my own life? Nothing would please me more. It’s past time. But I need the device you stole to do that. I’ve wasted years on you, hoping you were someone else. But you’re not. She’s gone. You’re nothing more than the pretty, superficial girl you appear to be. Nothing more.”
He looked desolate as he trailed off, beyond grief, beyond pain. Unable to help myself, I stepped towards him, reaching up and placing my hand gently on his face. His body curved around mine as if we were two halves finally mad
e whole and his heartbeat, thundering with the pain that thudded through him, slowed in response to my own gentle beat. It was the most utterly connected moment I had ever felt in my life.
“Damn it.” He pushed back from me, glaring at me in angry consternation at how much he had revealed, before the blank expression slammed back into place.
“Who? Who did you think I was?” Thrown back to reality, I scrambled to gain a foothold in what he had told me before it too was pulled from under me once more.
His eyes were cold as he contemplated his response.
“That’s not really any of your business now, is it? Princess.”
Fine. I tried another tack.
“Where will you go? Why do you need the tech to get there?”
“Again, nothing for you to concern yourself with.” Even with our short acquaintance – on my side at least – I had come to recognise the particularly implacable look that settled over his saturnine features.
“Fine. Keep your secrets.” I was almost shaking. For someone who supposedly danced unthinking through life, I was wrongfooted now and felt dangerously off balance.
For which I thoroughly blamed the mercurial aggravating cretin in front of me.
The dark shadow of a sentinel on foot was veering across the path towards us, unlikely to be anything to do with us, but conveniently timed for me because I was done with this conversation. I whirled away.
“But two can play at that game,” I threw back over my shoulder. I’d show him. I wasn’t just an insipid girl living her safe little life. I could be more, do more.
I could.
Chapter Six
There was no sign of Devyn at the forum the next day or the one after that. He had tried three times to get the tech from me now. Had he given up?
Maybe he was already gone. I didn’t care. Or rather, I was an addict insisting to myself I didn’t need a fix but I did. Badly. It was like nagging tooth pain – Devyn in the background of my life was a presence of which I had been ignorant until the cavity of his absence became a fact which was impossible to ignore. I turned our last conversation over and over in my mind. What did it mean? Who had he thought I might be?
He had waited years for what? Some sign, some evidence… why? Round and round it went in my brain. He had been watching me for years – this fact alone should have thrown me way more than it did. What was special about me? But then… apparently nothing. He had concluded I was nothing more than the spoiled daughter of an elite merchant. But he had hoped I was someone else; his disappointment that I wasn’t had been a tangible thing.
That connection, his pain… I had never felt that before. It had wholly blindsided me. He was looking for someone. I had never really known who I was – that’s all it was. I had been promised that soon I would have all the connection I would ever need in my partner, not some freak moment with someone I barely knew.
On Saturday, I pulled myself together to go shopping with Ginevra to buy my graduation dress. My mother had made clear that I needed something spectacular, a stipulation that would previously have lit up my world with its underlying licence to consider money no object in satisfying this single criterion.
I had hoped that having Ginevra along would help me focus on my task, but I found her light-hearted chatter impossible to hold on to, so made do with offering up what so far had clearly managed to be the appropriate noises as she had yet to complain at my inattention.
“Maybe if you left your hair down, this one would do?” Ginevra mused as we watched my avatar twirl in front of us in the latest unsatisfactory outfit. Barely had she spoken and the elaborate updo dissolved and my long multi-hued tresses flowed down across my shoulders covering the awkward way the straps lay on my pale bare shoulders.
I stilled. My hair colour was unusual – the gold, red, and caramel strands shouted my adopted status to anyone paying attention. It wasn’t a secret, but it wasn’t public knowledge either. In fact, my mother went to some lengths to ensure it was not questioned, even going so far as to dye her own hair a lighter brown to discourage any potential raised eyebrows. I had never given it much thought before, but was this something I shared with the girl Devyn sought?
Who was she and why was he looking for her? I eyed the avatar speculatively. Was she everything I wasn’t? Was she worthy of the years he had spent looking for her?
Not a foolish girl who would never be anything more than an ornament on the arm of a more important male. Not just a pretty bauble to be displayed to best effect before being put back in its box.
“Ginevra, what was the name of that apprentice at the Mete?” I asked.
“What apprentice?” Ginevra was confused at my apparently random question. “We don’t know any apprentices.”
She stopped, her eyes lighting in sudden understanding. “You wouldn’t.”
“I would,” I returned, shaking off the despondency towards which my thoughts had been dragging me. Getting the disgraced apprentice to make my dress would be a stroke of genius. It would indeed be spectacular, as directed, while also annoying my mother because of its less than salubrious origin. It didn’t hurt that it also soothed my conscience, which had niggled at me ever since I had voted him guilty for my own selfish reasons.
We quickly looked up the address of Apprentice Oban, finding it amongst the reams of attention he had received in the feeds following the Mete. His home was buried in the stews, making Ginevra a little less supportive of my plan.
We wound our way out of the shopping district and through the West End. Our destination lay eastwards beyond the plazas and concrete and glass buildings of the financial district. It was a part of the city I didn’t really spend a great deal of time in. The weekend atmosphere was eerie, all those buildings filled with thousands and thousands of empty rooms now that everyone had gone home for a day of rest.
Ginevra and I grew quiet as we continued past streets that were becoming less and less familiar. We were scanned and waved through the old wall at Aldgate. My father would not approve of my being in the outer eastern part of the city. We were quite a distance from the outer walls, but still… I was a little nervous about my plan by this stage but refused to turn around. I was not just a pretty girl in a pretty life. Not two streets from the gate, Ginevra baulked and turned back, unhappy that I couldn’t be talked out of my course of action.
As I wound my way through the warren of narrower, older streets, I looked around, fascinated. It was so different to the western neighbourhood where I lived with its wide spaces between the buildings and unhurried green walkways. The homes here pressed tightly together, a legacy from the era when the Empire had been at its weakest. Londinium had struggled to cope with the numbers cowering inside the walls back when the border had stretched all the way to the gates of the city itself. Before we had the engineering skills to go higher, the poor had squeezed into every space offered between the original inner-city wall and the newer reinforced ones. Nothing but those great outer walls, built deep and high, separated us from the hordes of Britons who waited outside ready to burn us to the ground.
The stews held people of every shape and size, all exotic to my eyes. Grubby little hands grabbed at my skirts as we whisked by.
“Please, donna, spare a copper.”
I snatched my skirts closer, looking nervously around. Even if I had physical currency to give them, begging was strictly forbidden. These children were risking the stocks by approaching me.
I shook my head at the children and they melted away into the warren of streets. I paused every now and then to discreetly peek at my device to check I was still going the right way.
Eventually, a beep outside a peeling doorway indicated I had arrived. I knocked and, finally, an elderly man opened the door. Taking in the quality of my clothes, he winked at me and pointed to a door at the top of the stairs. Apparently I wasn’t the first elite to deign to cross this threshold since Apprentice Oban’s skills had come to light, too impatient to wait until he opened a shop in the in
ner districts.
I hesitated outside the door. This was a crazy idea. My mother would kill me and Devyn wouldn’t even know, much less care, that I had got a tailor from the stews to make my dress. Make my dress. Ha, even my small act of defiance and social conscience was related to the role he had identified as mine: pretty little rich girl.
My shoulders slumped. I felt as if I had lost a battle I didn’t even know had been engaged. I had stepped outside the safe borders of my world momentarily and, having skirted the edge for a while, I was now ready to scuttle back to the safety of my pampered life.
Only Devyn remained as a lure on the border, nagging at me to take another step, even though he had advised me to stay in my sheltered world. The other world, the one he inhabited, was no place for me. He had no place for me. I felt hollow at the thought. He was an insufferable enigma; the mask he put on made my fingers curl into claws in my desire to rip it off and reveal someone else. The man I had glimpsed. Dark curls, sharply defined features, intensity and determination blazing out of him. How did he hide that side of himself, and why? Would I ever know?
He had said he would be moving on, and so must I. Only, what direction to take? My mind went in circles as I stood there in the dimly lit, dirty hallway. Home to my parents and friends, pretty dresses, and inane parties? Or should I push at the boundaries of my world to know something more? Something that tingled at the fringes of my sensibilities.
“Hello.” The door had opened and I looked down to discover a dishevelled girl surveying me through dark, tangled hair. A shimmer of something ran through me, a shiver of something… like a hand held out over a threshold, drawing me in. I couldn’t resist taking another tiny step. Just a little more, maybe.
“Hello,” I responded, smiling slightly so she would know I meant no harm.
Secrets of the Starcrossed Page 6