Divided

by Rae Brooks

  Claire didn’t share her sentiment though and she had a dreamy look on her face. “Let’s get ready!” she exclaimed. “We’ll spin you two,” she informed Calis and Lee of this as though they had been worried.

  Lee looked uneasy, and Calis let out a laugh. “I’m not entirely sure that I’m ready to meet my soul mate.” Surely, if some of these folks took this ritual seriously, then it could end very awkwardly.

  “Oh, it’s just a game,” Taiya said. This meant that there was no way either of them was getting out of this. But surely if Taiya, with all her silliness, knew that this was just a game—then the rest of the room did too.

  Only Calis found himself a little nervous about the entire ordeal as Taiya brought him onto the floor. He shouldn’t have been, but he was. He didn’t know anyone here, and who was to say that the person he ran into wouldn’t know who he was? Not to mention, what if his “soul mate” ended up being some incredibly large woman missing her front teeth?

  It’s just a game, you twit, Calis reminded himself. Though, glancing over to Lee offered no support, as his friend looked just as unsure about the game as Calis felt. He didn’t want to be told that his soul mate was some heinous wench. With his luck, Lady Avyon had followed him here and she would be the very person he ran into after the spin.

  But the music was building up to the note that Calis was sure would be when everyone would spin, and they would be faced with the person they were proverbially to spend forever with. He didn’t want to do this, but Taiya wasn’t letting him back out now. “Ready?” she asked.

  He noticed that nearly everyone had stopped moving, and absolutely everyone in the room was about to participate in this game. He wasn’t ready, he still didn’t want to, but as the stillness of the room beat down on him he swallowed and offered a wary nod. “You have to close your eyes,” she said when she closed hers.

  He obeyed her command, sure that he would be knocked into some toothless woman at any moment. Then, the note came, a long single run of the strings. Taiya’s force was stronger than his, and he kept his eyes closed until another body slammed up against his. If nothing else, it felt properly sized.

  For some reason, Calis knew that he was supposed to open his eyes when the second note rang out. When he opened his eyes, he actually gasped at the person standing before him. It was not a girl at all. Instead, it was a relatively small male. Firstly, Calis was unable to look at anything but the pure, deep, blue eyes that watched him with subdued curiosity. They were bright with intelligence, and there was a deepness to them that combined the two blues hypnotically and made it nearly impossible to look away.

  His black hair clung to his forehead, though it was too short to do much else. He had tanned skin and a small frame, and somehow the two of them had pulled much closer than they were supposed to. Calis was glancing down at the boy staring up at him, as Calis held one of the boy’s hands. Their lips, too, were frighteningly near to one another. Calis felt himself blushing. The boy—the boy that he’d watched and by watching, had taught himself to dance. “Hi,” Calis said awkwardly.

  “Hi,” the boy returned.

  “So, am I supposed to ask you to marry me now?” Calis asked. The words hadn’t been checked, and at once, he was horrified that he’d ever said them. This person was going to kick him in the shins and run as fast as he could. That was not proper in any way.

  Surprisingly, the boy didn’t seem at all put off by his statement. In fact, suddenly, the boy’s face transformed. He smiled. Both sides of his face had dimples that lit up his entire expression and brought an entirely new light to his eyes. The smile was positively fantastic, and Calis couldn’t help but return it. “No,” the young man answered gently, “I think you just have to dance.”

  “Well, that is a relief,” Calis said.

  So, though he’d never danced with another male, and felt ten shades of awkward doing so—he pushed the male from his body and then brought the lithe form against him in an easy motion. His partner handled this differently than Taiya had and moved his feet so that the dance more or less continued after the turn and didn’t just end with the two of them crashing into one another as Taiya had been content to do.

  Because the dance had not been stopped, Calis was able to keep moving in a more suitable rhythm, and he twisted his partner’s body this time. Their feet were synchronized, like some sort of fantastic fusion of noble and peasant dancing. Their fingers intertwined with one another, and Calis moved his charge’s body without pause.

  They were entirely in sync, and Calis had never danced with another person in a way that felt so natural, and so right. In all of his years of tedious practice, and even this moon, nothing had felt quite like this. All at once, the dance was over, and the two of them were standing face to face, with Calis not having the common sense to release the boy’s hands. “Now, you have to ask me to marry you,” the young man informed him politely.

  Calis ducked his head and offered a sheepish smile. “If I had known coming here would require such commitments, I would have thought twice about it.”

  His partner quirked an eyebrow. “You really ought to think about things before you rush into them, in that case. Surely, you didn’t expect to come to a dance and not be forced into a marriage,” he said. His voice made it sound as if this was common sense.

  If Calis hadn’t understood the sense of humor so well, mostly because it mirrored his own—then he might have been foolish enough to worry that his skilled partner was serious. Fortunately, he knew that his fascinating acquaintance wasn’t, and that meant that he could have fun. “Fair enough. I suppose I can deal with it, then. I could think of worse people to be betrothed to,” he answered seriously.

  The boy flushed for a moment, and Calis grinned wolfishly when he realized that he’d gotten the better of his dance partner. “Well, I’m not going to marry you if you don’t have any sort of gift with which to proposition me, so don’t get too sold on the idea!” he answered seriously, after composing himself.

  Calis couldn’t help the thought that the blush on the tan cheeks had been nothing short of adorable, and he found himself smiling once again. “You are certainly high maintenance!” he countered.

  “Apologies,” the boy said quickly, though he was back to displaying that very attractive smile of his. Calis was a little alarmed at the pace of his heart in his chest and how hot his face felt. His dance partner cast a quick glance to their hands, which were still wrapped around one another. Calis realized that another song had started, and the two of them were simply standing there—talking—looking out of place.

  Once again, the flush of his cheeks worsened and Calis pulled his hands away from the boy in an instant. “Ah, sorry.”

  The smile dimmed a little into a soft, reassuring warmth that had Calis feeling at ease despite the other feelings the look inspired. “No reason to apologize,” the boy answered swiftly. “But I brought someone to this dance, and I’m sure she will throw a tantrum if I don’t attend to her soon.”

  Calis rubbed the back of his neck. If this had been any other circumstance, he would have probably come up with some elaborate lie about how he did too. But he couldn’t say anything now. “Fair enough,” he said with a quick nod. He wasn’t going to keep this young man from any girlfriend. “Though, why would you participate in a… soul mate finding dance… if you already—that seems like a recipe for disaster.”

  The boy laughed, and Calis found another reason for his heart to act like he might be dying soon. He bit down on his lip to keep from twitching too much. “I said I brought her here—not that we were coupled.”

  For some reason, that made Calis happy, and the fact that it made him happy made him instantly worried. “Alright, then, go tend to your friend.” Calis stepped back to make sure that his blue-eyed acquaintance didn’t feel obligated to stay any longer.

  With a quick farewell, his dance partner was lost in the sea of people, and Calis was standing there as if he’d been hit in the back of the h
ead and was about to fall over. Feelings washed over him for several seconds before he was hit with the singularly horrifying thought.

  I didn’t get his name…

  Taiya returned to Calis to save him from looking like a child, and when she asked who he’d danced with, he wasn’t able to give her a reply—though this time he would have loved to. She was amused and they continued to dance, though the dance fell flat after the brief exchange he’d had with the boy-whose-name-he’d-failed-to-get. “You must have liked your partner for the Soul-Finder dance,” Taiya said smartly.

  “Why?” Calis asked.

  “Because you keep staring into the crowd longingly, silly!” she giggled and they continued their dance. The moon dragged on, and Calis ran through things he could say to the boy if he were to return. After excessive thinking, not only did he have nothing to say, he wasn’t even able to locate his former dance partner. Taiya finally left him again, and Lee was at his side in an instant.

  “As your advisor, I feel I must tell you that the moon grows dim, and I am most certain that your absence will be noticed if you stay away for much longer.” The words were informative, though not urgent. Lee never waited until the last moment to inform him of things, which meant that Calis still had a moment.

  Maybe he could find the boy again. “Ah, alright. You head back, I’ll be right behind you. There is someone I wanted to say goodbye to before I go.” Lee stared at him crossly for a time, as if he thought this was an atrocious idea.

  For a few moments, Calis was sure that Lee was going to insist on staying with him, but then his friend sighed. “Do you know how to get back?”

  Calis scoffed at the question, and Lee nodded his head and waved him off. Then, the other noble headed for the door immediately. Lee did things efficiently, and that meant that he hadn’t told Calis too early about the lateness of the evening. Calis certainly didn’t have too much time to dawdle. He searched for a bit for his person of interest, entering the other buildings and scouring the outside crowd. None of them yielded his target, so he finally had to accept that he wasn’t going to get that name. Perhaps he would return the following sun. How would he find the person without a name, though?

  Calis sighed, knowing that he’d already spent too much time loitering about when Lee had told him to head back. Lee would be wondering where he was, so he headed away from the crowd and away from the lights. He worked to keep himself from sighing at his failure. He couldn’t believe that he hadn’t managed to find his dance partner—as he had looked the entire place over, twice.

  Where had the boy gone? Had he left the dance shortly after the two of them had danced? Or maybe he and the girl he’d brought had other matters to attend to. Calis had no way of knowing. He knew nothing about the boy, actually. He informed himself that he ought not spend so much time worrying about a peasant that he’d probably never see again—but that did little to keep his mind from wondering.

  As he got a little further from the festivities, he became aware of a presence. His feet walked a little more slowly, and the sounds were lost so that he could hear his own breathing. After a few more steps, he stopped entirely and turned to face what was plaguing him. There, a person was leaned casually back against one of the dark buildings. Not just any person—the very person Calis had searched for.

  “You’re leaving,” the words were not a question. Calis turned to meet those blue eyes again, which seemed to be glowing in the dark.

  Calis was surprised to see him. He had wasted so much time, and the boy had been out here all along. If only he hadn’t been such a desperate fool! He could have found his quarry and been on time, now, as it was, he didn’t have much time to speak to the boy at all. “It seems that you have already left,” Calis pointed out.

  The boy shrugged noncommittally and cast a glance back at the crowd that stood in the distance. “Just getting a little peace and quiet,” he said softly. “Why are you leaving so soon? I was under the impression you were enjoying yourself.”

  Calis stared at the boy curiously. Those eyes were not anything Calis would be able to get out of his mind for many moon phases, and he didn’t need to be able to see the future to know that. “I was, but I have much to do at sun-up, and I don’t want to get too drunk and tired. Lest I make a rather sour companion for any company I find myself making in the sun.”

  The boy seemed amused at this, and offered a quick nod, as if to imply that he understood. Calis thought there might be more to the nod, but nothing that he was able to make out without Lee here to back him. “So, you are a traveler,” once again, this was a statement, not a question, “does that mean you are leaving Telandus?”

  Calis thought about this for a moment. He didn’t want to commit to anything, as always, so he just shrugged his shoulders and pretended to think about it for a moment. “I suppose it all depends on how I feel in the morning.”

  “When did you arrive?” the questions persisted though, and the perpetual curiosity in those blue eyes became more endearing by the second. Calis was having to work not to smile for no particular reason. But he didn’t want the young man to think he was mad.

  These questions required that Calis think carefully about what he said, because he could tell from a glance at the boy that he was not as accepting as Taiya and her friend had been. “This morning,” he said. “I didn’t expect this sort of festival. It was a pleasant surprise.”

  His companion seemed to think about this for a long moment, and then he offered another quick nod. Once again, there was something else lingering within the gesture, but Calis didn’t know what. “You ought to stay, then. This place has plenty of interesting secrets that can keep a traveler busy for a time.”

  Calis was elated to hear this boy mention that he should stay. Surely, in doing so, the young man was expressing interest in seeing Calis again. Right?

  Well, maybe he wasn’t, but Calis was contented to live in his delusion for the time. “Does it?” Calis asked. “Maybe I will. I’d never seen any sort of festival like this.”

  “Oh?” the boy seemed surprised. “From the prowess with which you danced, I was under the impression that you did it often.”

  Calis flushed. He hadn’t thought about that. Then again, the boy had simply paid him a compliment. Surely, this young man wasn’t implying that he was secretly from the Shining District. That would have been a lot to deduce from a dance. “I never said I hadn’t danced before,” Calis said easily.

  “You did not,” the agreement was soft.

  Another quick smile took hold of Calis’s lips, and he didn’t bother trying to hide this one. The boy returned it briefly, but very briefly, and the smile was much less genuine than the ones on the dance floor. In fact, his former dance partner seemed very troubled now. “You’ve clearly had experience dancing as well,” Calis said.

  With a quick nod, his companion set this to the affirmative. Calis didn’t bother asking why his dance patterns seemed so different. This strange individual wasn’t like most of the others in Dark District, so he was most certainly a traveler. Before the boy could respond, Calis spoke again. “But, I certainly don’t think you are from Telandus. You do not dance like most of those in Dark District, from what I saw this evening.”

  This time, it was his new friend’s turn to look a little startled. The young man stared at the ground for a moment before nodding his head. “I’m not originally from Telandus,” he admitted warily.

  “I suppose the sayings I have heard about being able to tell much about a person from a simple dance were not as silly as I thought them to be,” Calis mused allowed. This time, the smile he received was far more genuine.

  “I think that is a very accurate statement,” his companion agreed.

  Finally, the boy stepped off the wall and regarded Calis with measured curiosity. He stared up at the prince thoughtfully. Just as he opened his mouth to speak, though, another voice filled the air. “Kilik!” the voice cried.

  Immediately, the boy’s head turned,
and he stared back into the crowd. There was a young blond woman standing at the edge of the lights, looking frustrated. That must have been the girl he’d mentioned. “It was a pleasure to meet you,” Calis said gently before he continued back along the path to the castle.

  “Yes, you too,” Kilik managed hastily.

  Kilik. Not altogether a unique name, but somehow, it didn’t seem to fit the boy that had stood before him this moon.

  “His perseverance shocked the Magisters, and they found that they were awed at this mere mortal—selfless and valiant.”

  -A Hero’s Peace v.i

  Chapter vii

  Taeru Lassau

  The strange individual Taeru had been conversing with wasted no time in excusing himself once Alyx removed Taeru’s attention. This ordinarily wouldn’t have bothered Taeru, on the contrary, he welcomed people who understood when a conversation was over—but this was different. Not only was this person unique, but there was something about them which had Taeru desperately curious.

  Nothing was to be said for the way he flushed every time the mysterious individual spoke, or how impressed he’d been with the way the blond had danced. Taeru had simply been taken off guard, and he knew it. However, that was over now, for when he glanced back to find the blond he’d been talking to—he realized that his conversation partner had gotten halfway down the street.

  Taeru simply returned the polite farewell and headed back towards Alyx. The traveler would likely be gone in the morning, and even if he wasn’t—the likelihood of Taeru seeing him again was small. “What were you doing?” Alyx asked once he got within earshot.

  “Getting some fresh air,” Taeru answered. Alyx had likely not seen the person who was with Taeru, and there was no need to bring him up, now. Though, Taeru had to work to keep his head from turning to see if perhaps the stranger would reappear.