by May Dawson
“You always have a bodyguard.” His lips tilt up. “Keeping riff-raff like me away.”
“I thought you were noble.”
“Noble, riff-raff. They aren’t mutually exclusive.”
“Well, next time you should say hello.” He smells really good. It was totally unfair of Airren to leave me aroused in the arms of random strangers, even for the sake of our mission. “Those bodyguards are at my service. I decide how I feel about riff-raff.”
“Maybe I’m uglier than dog-face.”
“Maybe you should let me see your face.” I don’t care for the masks much; they make me feel unsettled.
“The rules are rules tonight for a reason,” he tells me. “Masks on, it’s easier to make new friends.”
I glance up toward the boxes hanging above us before I catch myself. My gaze lingers there anyway, drawn by the sight of two men twined together before they sink down out of sight.
“Not necessarily those kinds of friends,” he tells me, following my gaze. There’s humor in his voice.
“That’s good. I’d hate to think your interest was depraved.”
“Well.” His lips quirk up a bit more.
I glance to one side, looking for Airren, and see he’s stopped a dozen feet away. He has a champagne flute in either hand, but he’s found someone to talk to.
The man in the mask follows my gaze. “Your bodyguard is popular with the ladies.”
“He has a charming side.” I don’t feel like I get the benefit of that charming side very often, but he certainly has one. From a distance, it’s impossible not to admire Airren, with his gorgeous body, his cool competence, and his endless charm.
It’s impossible not to admire him close-up, too, but it’s also a lot more complicated.
A man looms in at our elbows, setting my heart racing. “May I have this dance?”
I look up at a brass mask so ornately worked with leaves and berries that even the man’s lips and eyes are obscured. A shiver runs up my spine.
But when I’m terrified, I’m probably exactly where I need to be.
The nameless noble is trying to say something about how he had me first, but I reach up and pat his cheek. He’s nice, but he isn’t my target tonight.
He catches my hand with his, holding my palm against his metal mask. “You’ve got to stop doing that.”
“We can catch up later. In class, if you’re brave enough.” I wink at him, hoping he can see the quick flicker of my lashes against the mask.
“You’ve got to stop doing that too,” he mutters, clearly put-out that I’m abandoning him again.
“I have a short attention span.” When I slide out of his arms, he steps back, watching me go, and I can feel his disappointment.
“I don’t mind if you don’t want to dance with me,” he says to my back, as I take the gloved hand of my new friend. “I mind the dangerous men you choose to dance with.”
I’d rather dance with him, but I have a job to do, and dangerous men are the only kind I have time for tonight.
The man in the bronze mask tows me across the dance floor, and I try to follow. His movements are quick and agile as he spins with me; he dances well, but without any sympathy for how I stumble in his wake. I shuffle quickly as I try to keep up. When I danced with Airren, he covered for my rusty dancing skills. I didn’t realize just how much until now, when I take the steps wrong. The toe of this man’s shoe comes down hard and crushes my toes.
“Sorry.” I’m the one wincing, so I don’t know why I’m apologizing. My toes throb.
“You haven’t been in Avalon long.” His voice is low and gravelly. He’s shorter, broader, than my guys, and suddenly I don’t think he’s a student. He seems older.
“No, I haven’t.”
“How do you like it?”
“It’s good to be home.” I smile winsomely at the mask, even though it feels like I’m trying to charm a toaster. It’s hard to believe there’s a human in there.
“Have you been home?” he asks me.
I cock my head to one side, looking up at him. Home? Home where I grew up, in a southern coastal town, as far as can be from this northern mountain campus? It’s been so long that it doesn’t feel like home anymore. “Does my home even still stand?”
“Oh, it does,” he promises me. “It more than stands. It will have a second time of glory.”
“The first time around wasn’t that glorious.” Sure, it’s where I learned to read and where I chased butterflies through the garden, but it’s also where I walked into a torture chamber for the first time and heard the screams of those my father had damned.
His lips brush close to my ear, and I stiffen in his arms. “Are you saying what they want you to say, or what you believe?”
“Why would I tell you that?”
“You should come home again,” he says softly.
“On Primus, they say you can never go home again.” It’s a stupid quip, but it sure feels true some days.
“On Primus, they’re idiots,” he says.
Well, that’s exactly the kind of thing True would say.
“Do you guys communicate with each other at all?” I ask. “I had a visit from someone who was very curious about where my allegiance lies now earlier today. And now you. I’m not an idiot—I know people want to use me.”
“Everyone wants to use you.” His breath against my ear sends a shiver up my spine. “The Crown will use you up and discard the husk. The True will lift you up, higher than even your father dared fly.”
“Well, one does sound better than the other,” I admit.
“I thought it would.”
“But what sounds best is a future I choose,” I say. “Where I’m not a husk blown by the wind and I’m not flung up into the air to be exalted, either. I’d like to walk into the future on my own two feet.”
“Come to your father’s home and you’ll be surprised by what happens next,” he says.
“I don’t care much for surprises. Why don’t you tell me what would happen?”
His mouth opens, but before he can answer, two men grab his arms. “You don’t belong here!”
They yank him away from me. They’re wearing dark blue utility trousers and matching jackets--school security uniforms--and they drag him toward the door as I stand there reeling. I turn, looking for who just disrupted this moment, awful as it was. The room swims with a sea of glossy dresses and curious eyes and unfriendly faces. God damn it. I was on the verge of a breakthrough. Even if was probably a series of lies, there might be truth to sift out.
I need to figure out why two different True would approach me in one night. Either their communication system really is broken, or there’s more going on here than we realized.
One of the security guards hooks his fingers under the man’s mask. The music pauses and then starts up again, but all around me, people have stopped and are turning to stare. There are scattered gasps in the crowd as Security tries to yank off his mask.
Then the lights go out.
For a second, the room is gray as the last of the light fades, and then the room is plunged into darkness.
I take a deep breath. I’m ready for someone to try to take me; the True want to get their hands on me, to figure out who I am and if they can really trust me. It’s the question everyone has.
If someone tries to take me, I should let them, for the sake of the mission. I trust Airren will be right behind them. But my spine is stiff as I wait. The idea of not fighting back is so foreign that I’m not sure I can stop myself. My hands knit into fists with tension as I listen to the sounds in the dark around me: the rustle of skirts, a scream.
Someone grabs me around the waist and tows me with them. Whoever it is, their muscular arm is a tight bar across my lower abs. I breathe in a familiar scent, cologne and spice from earlier. The memory of silver eyes and wavy hair above a mask rises. The nameless nobleman.
Again? Really?
“Let go of me,” I hiss, because the last thing
I need is to be rescued by him. I’m trying to be taken here. I want to stay in Avalon, and this sweet buffoon is not helping me.
“You’re in danger.”
Yep, that’s the warm, low voice I remember from earlier.
Where the hell is Airren? I need him to save me, or maybe I need him to save this guy, because I’m about to punch Mr. Nameless Noble across his sculpted jaw.
“I’m always in danger,” I hiss. “Let go of me.”
We’re near one of the doors.
The lights go up.
Dozens of men are posted around the room, wearing black uniforms and shiny black masks, the same as they wore during my father’s time. True. We’re surrounded by armed True.
I gasp. But as they begin to shove through the screaming crowd, searching for me, the nobleman drags me out through the door.
Chapter 10
There’s a True right there, right on the other side of the door, looming with his shining faceless mask. The noble with no name slams into his chest without hesitation. The noble mutters a quick spell, his hand gripping the True’s throat, and the True falls to the floor.
“Come with me. I’ll keep you safe.” He holds his hand out to me. He flips up an eyepiece that covered one eye, and it melds seamlessly back in with his mask, looking like nothing but an ornate silver decoration. That eyeglass must have given him night vision. So that’s why he was so sure-footed in the pitch-black.
I take a step back into the doorway, bumping into the wooden door. “You run. They’re looking for me.”
The True only want me, but they won’t hesitate to kill someone who tries to protect me. I didn’t ask for this fool’s help, but I don’t want to see him hurt either.
“Don’t try to be a hero.” He shakes his hand impatiently.
“Take your own goddamn advice.” I turn on my heel, leaving him there under the low, shaking green trees that line the side of the building. I grab the handle to the door and yank, but the door doesn’t move. I’m locked out.
I’m always locked out. I was locked out of Avalon for five years, and I’m about to end up that way again if I don’t prove my worth. I yank the doorknob frantically, and my shoulders burn. The sharp ache in my muscles reminds me of tonight’s struggle to save the True’s victim from falling onto the dancers below.
“Why are you like this?” he demands, exasperation heavy in his voice.
“I don’t know. I’ve tried being someone else, but it never quite takes. We’re all stuck with ourselves.” My shoulder brushes against his roughly as I stalk past him, intent on the front of the building. God damn it; Airren would have been following me closely, but now he might have lost my trail. The guys said I wouldn’t be alone as long as I had my mask, so hopefully they’re on their way. I just have to shake my noble stalker.
“We have something in common.” He follows me quickly. “Come on. You’re in danger.”
“We all are. That was my exact fucking point. Were you even listening?”
“You can’t go that way! The True will find you!”
When he seizes my wrist, I turn on him in exasperation. The look I give his hand on my arm is cutting, and he pulls away as if I’ve burned him. His eyes meet mine, filled with a mix of hurt and curiosity.
“Maybe I want the True to find me,” I say. “Maybe I’m not just the cute girl who sits two rows down from you. Maybe I want to be True. Have you ever thought about that? That just because I’m pretty doesn’t mean I’m good?”
“I’m keenly aware that pretty and good do not always go hand-in-hand,” he says drily.
“Remarkable. Because you seem pretty naive.”
“And you seem pretty intent on getting yourself killed.”
“I’ll do whatever it takes to stay in Avalon.” Since I don’t know him, I mean to imply I could be True, but maybe not. Too late, I realize there’s nothing truer that I could have said.
“I’m going with you, wherever you go,” he says.
“That would be stupid.”
“I told you I’m a noble. It’s not a meritocracy—quite a lot of us are stupid.”
“They could kill you,” I whisper.
“They could.” Silver-gray eyes meet mine confidently. “Come with me, if you don’t care for the idea.”
“I don’t care if you live or die.”
He grins, as if he’s already figured out my tell. I don’t mean that, and he knows it. He’s still holding his hand out to me.
I glance toward the front of the building, just as two True round the corner.
“Hey!” One of them yells at me.
“If they can’t find you, they’ll have no reason to hurt anyone in that building,” he says. “They’ll move on.”
I slap my hand into his. The two of us break into a run, slipping in the wet dew soaking the emerald green grass of the gardens.
The world is a blur. With a sudden jolt, I realize we’re headed around the library. The ruins rise in front of us. In the night air they reflect silver moonlight from every gray wall and tower and broken-down archway. Green ivy clings to the walls, wasting away to brown at the edges.
The last time I was in this garden, Luca’s outstretched, gray-purple hands were turned up toward the sun, almost as if he were sunbathing, across the sundial.
There’s only one reason I can imagine someone would bring me here. This time when I imagine a corpse flung across the dial, that corpse has my face.
I yank my arm away from him so hard that I slide back and almost fall on my ass. I stumble, trying to catch myself. He turns, surprise written across his face, and grabs for my hands as my arms windmill.
But as soon as I catch myself, I turn and run.
“Hey!” He can’t yell, because we’re afraid of being heard, but he runs beside me. His eyes are wide and frantic now. “The ruins. I didn’t think…they’re a good place to hide, that’s all.”
There’s a shout around the front of the building. The True are coming.
I push him against the stone wall, hiding in the shadows with him. His chest is hard and his heart pounds a quickly-hammering beat against my palm. He’s trying to be calm, but deep down, he’s scared too.
Why is so intent on protecting me if he’s scared too? He chose all of this. He chose me. The very fact that he has that little enchanted night-goggle attached to his mask tells me that he was always looking for trouble.
The two of us hide there as the True passes. I don’t think he brought me here to murder me. That was just the quick, suspicious impulse that I’m never going to stop heeding; it might make me look foolish, but I’d rather be stupid and alive than stupid and dead.
The panting of my breath seems too loud when the True are rattling through the garden so nearby. I turn my face into the fine, slick material of his vest. Is it silk, maybe? This close, I breathe in the scent of his body: the hint of menthol from his aftershave and then the deeper scent of his fresh sweat, which is nice, too.
He slides his arm around my waist, holding me against his body loosely. When he holds me just tightly enough to be comforting but easily enough that I could break away, it seems like he’s being thoughtful. Despite his foolishness, he’s no fool—he understands why I ran from him. He wants me to feel safe, from the True and with him.
When the True’s boots and the rattle of their swords and wands has faded, he puts his lips very close to my ear and whispers, “There’s an entrance in the ruins to the winter tunnels. I was hoping to get you back home safely.”
“I need to let my friends know I’m all right,” I whispered back. “They’re going to be frantic.”
He nodded.
God, he’s cute, and I don’t want him to know just how weak I am. I wet my lips with the tip of my tongue. He looks at me steadily, until I blurt out the words. “I need you to form the bubble for me.”
His face stays blessedly neutral as he casts. When he turns his fist over and opens his hand, the bubble sits on his palm. If I’d had magic of my own, I wo
uldn’t have needed to use new blood, but instead, I put my little finger between my teeth. I wince and bite down hard, forcing myself not to stop when pain swells between the pad of my finger and my incisor, until I taste the salty iron of my own blood.
“I would’ve—” he whispers.
“You don’t know my friends.” I squeeze the blood over the bubble. “I’m all right. I made it out and I’m headed back to Rawl. I’m not alone—I met a man with a gold-and-silver mask and a silver rose in his lapel who helped me.” I glance at him. I want to give them details in case he’s actually the one here to kidnap me, even though I don’t read him that way. “What’s your name?”
He shakes his head.
“That’s fine, I’ll just trust my life to you and you feel free to keep your name to yourself.” I tell him, my voice acerbic, before I realize all that will be captured in the bubble.
Quickly, before things go awry in new and different ways, I blow the bubble off his palm. It floats into the air. Up, up, into the night. As it goes, I whisper, “Find Mycroft, Cax or Airren.”
He pulls back, as if he knows those names.
I glance at him sharply, but he’s turning, drawing me with him toward a gray stone doorway. It looks like nothing but a stone-framed door left standing when the wood beams around it crumpled; it tilts somewhat inward, precariously. Some drunken college kid is going to trip into it and find themselves pinned beneath it sooner or later.
He pulls a key out of his pocket and fumbles with the oxidized-green lock on the door. “Not many people know this is here. I don’t think they’re likely to look for us in the tunnels.”
Or not many people are delusional. I step to one side, looking around the door to the other side, where the grass looks black in the darkness of the night. Walking through that door does not seem particularly productive. But this is Avalon, so I reserve judgment.
He puts his shoulder into the door and shoves it open; it sticks a bit, making a shrill sound, and then the door swings inward, and he steps into the darkness.