Chapter Twenty-One

I shouldn’t be here, but my nannies haven’t caught me yet. I stare into the dark pit in the middle of the room. I tossed chocolate into it, but either the bottom is too far away or my friend that lives in the bottom of the pit caught it. The rest of the space is empty, which I think is a shame, but my friend always breaks all the toys I bring it. Everyone fears this place, but I have never. I know I am safe here. No one else in the entire fortress understands me half as well as my friend.

“Are you awake? Are you there? Did you get my present?” I ask.

A raincloud puffs out of the center of the pit like a smoke ring. It spins overhead and sends a sprinkling shower into my face. My favorite is the fog. If I tell a good story, sometimes I get a rainbow. It always likes the most outlandish ones.

“Do you have a name?” I ask and wait for the darkness to answer, but morning comes first. I sit up in my bed and try to wake my limbs, but the dream clings to me like another vision. I scrub at my eyes and steady myself.

Every dream leaves me more confused than before, but the Sundo is real, and every morning in Bato-Ko seems to bring another horror.

After breakfast announcements, my first instinct is to bolt for the doors, but Virian blocks the way. Kalena’s latest announcement has Virian hovering like a hummingbird, floating here and there so quickly that I would lose track of her if she wasn’t dragging me along after her. Midsummer is Holy Omu’s feast, and everyone, including the Sundo, must stop for it. There is to be a party.

Another cursed party. Voices pitch loud around us in the great hall, ringing with an excitement I don’t share. Virian replies to everyone in rapid fire, making plans, throwing out suggestions. I pretend not to notice that the other candidates greet only Virian as we pass.

I suppress a groan as Virian tugs the limp strands of my hair and mulls over what to do with it. I shrug at her suggestions. If Kuran were here, she could at least smooth the way, charming everyone so all I need to do is smile and nod politely. It frustrates me that I’m going to be forced to waste another few hours of my short life not knowing what to do with my hands, not knowing what to say, not knowing where to stand, and pretending to enjoy it, while my mother rots in the dungeons beneath the palace.

Hells, if this is another test in disguise, then I am doomed.

“So I was talking with Nen earlier…” Dayen walks over to us and interrupts the spiral of my thoughts. I scowl, because Nen still hasn’t thanked me for taking his punishment.

“You really aren’t choosy about your friends,” I snap, and I regret it at once. I catch the subtle twitch in his fingers, as if he’s resisted the urge to flinch away from me.

“I was asking about Arisa’s marks,” he says quietly and takes a step back. “Did you know that in the southern provinces, birthmarks are considered a sign of power?”

“They also think most of us are not pure-blooded or pious enough, no better than dirt to them,” I say. He doesn’t deserve the dredges of my ill temper, but I can’t help myself. I am all spines today, and I don’t know why something as simple as a party has fouled my mood this much. Maybe it’s the dreams and restless nights. Maybe it’s because Midsummer is Kuran’s favorite holiday. Midsummer was always a time for family instead of work. Our mother always would cook us a meal of Tigangi food, no matter where we were on the continent or how rare the ingredients. We would keep our stall packed away, and we would watch the sun rise and set with mugs of hot coffee or chocolate.

Dayen pretends to stare at his toes and fidgets with his amulets. I understand what he’s trying to say. He wants to make sense of me, but a lifetime of fearmongering cannot be erased in a few days. I am not making things easier between us. I wish I knew how to, but I don’t.

I still need to find a way to get past the guards in the dungeons, but Virian and Dayen have been watching me closely. Since the Healing test, I haven’t managed to sneak away.

“You gossip more than my aunties, Dayen.” Virian sighs. “You know all the first families are invited to the fortress for Midsummer?”

I’m grateful for the change of subject, even though it reminds me of what I have lost. No one will be coming to meet me. Kuran is alone because I am here.

“My parents are coming. They’ll be proud I haven’t been disqualified yet,” Dayen says, lifting up his head, suddenly as eager as a puppy, but I notice how he still keeps Virian between us.

I miss arguing with Kuran. I miss my mother’s steady presence. I even miss Tanu’s books. I miss my old life. I wish I were with my sister running through the streets with a pocket full of good-luck money, chasing down cups of iced milk with red beans.

Instead, I’m trapped inside this hulking fortress, and it was all my choice. Not for the first time, I wonder if I made the right decision. Perhaps, I’d have had better chances trying to win over the Elders who will decide my mother’s fate, but it’s too late to go back now.

I still can’t erase the memory of my friends lying dead on a marble floor, even though they are still here beside me. I can’t erase the feeling of Teloh’s warm lips against my palm, even when it’s folly to think of him. I don’t know what to feel anymore. My emotions are like muddy water, mixed up and impossible to see through, even though I’m drowning in them.

“You look as if someone just died.” Virian tosses her head. “But this is just a party.”

Just. To her, it’s not another unnecessary cruelty piled on top of the necessary ones.

“There will be food, and Heavens know you’re all bones and you need it.” Virian catches me before I slip away. Her eyes are as big as a cat’s. “Arisa and the Baylan will be busy blessing the city, and that means we can have some fun.”

I doubt our ideas of fun are the same.

“Please, Kuran?” She bats her lashes and smiles, as if this would make her more pleased than anything else in the world. It’s the happiest I’ve seen her. The happiest I’ve seen any of them, and they might need this party in a way that I do not. Guilt seeps in through the cracks cut by Virian’s smile. Who am I to deny them this?

A party will not kill me, I tell myself.

“Fine,” I sigh and surrender to her.

…

I don’t recognize this part of the fortress, so I pay attention and add it to my mental map. At the end of a wide corridor lit with huge, patterned lamps stands a giant wooden door reinforced with steel bands. Three wheels the size of my head turn three thick metal bolts that lock the door in place, but the door stands ajar, just wide enough for us to slip through.

“Are you sure we’re allowed to be here?” I hesitate.

“The Baylan are allowed to borrow from the treasury. Did you ever notice that they’re always dripping in gems? They just have to return whatever they take.” Virian slides through the crack before I can protest, so I follow. “We’re not Baylan, but I asked my cousin if we could borrow something because most of our clothes were destroyed. I can use his name.” She taps a logbook outside the door. Names are signed in and out beside lists of items.

I follow her inside, and Virian presents the room with a wide sweep of her hands.

The hinge on my jaw is loose. The room is lined with all manner of containers full of colorful rings and bracelets that reflect the light like polished mirrors. Everything is meticulously organized. There are rows upon rows of bracelets, and an entire wall is hung with necklaces. I have never seen so many hairpins in my life, made from every stone imaginable, semi-precious to precious. Kuran would have been in the clouds and flown from one sparkly thing to another like a magpie. My mother would have rolled her eyes and given us a lecture about valuing material goods, but she grew up with every advantage when we did not. I think she struggled with our life more than we did, because it was all we ever knew.

“We should meet here if one of us is in trouble. We can lock it from the inside,” I grunt. My voice grates in my throat, as out of place as I feel in this room, and Virian makes an exasperated sound.

“Really? You’re thinking about that now?” She rolls her eyes and strides over to a large adjacent room stuffed full of precious cloth from every corner of the continent.

I reach out and touch a sleeve of linen embroidered with so many golden threads that the fabric feels as thick as armor. I cannot help the thrill at the feeling of cloth under my hands. It feels illicit, like something stolen, even though Manay Halna is nowhere nearby to scream that I am ruining the fabric. I might be tainting it with my touch, but I don’t care. Bolts of fabric are how I’ve measured the cost of everything in my life, and I’ve never had a chance to admire it for myself.

“You.” Virian looks me up and down. “Need a little color about you. Let’s make everyone remember us tonight.” She tosses me a yellow gown and shoves me in front of a large mirror.

“And you should wear blue. It will bring out the gold flecks in your eyes,” I say.

I press my hands together and practice another smile alongside her as we stare at our reflections. When we stand side by side, we look small and young and more afraid than I expected.

“Do you ever miss your old life?” I ask.

“It doesn’t matter. There’s nothing for me to go back to.” Virian swallows and shakes her head to compose herself, but I glimpse a moment of Virian raw. The girl behind the bluster, who huddled against the wall of the fortress the first day of the Sundo. I wonder how her nose was broken and what she fled to come here, but I know she is not ready to tell me.

“I forget that we have only been here days, not lifetimes,” I say. And I wonder if Virian and I have ever met before, too. If everything is destined to repeat, and we are all tangled together with invisible threads.

“Bato-Ko does have that effect. So, let’s make this one last as long as we can.” She smiles so brightly that I am dazzled.

Soon we are draped in jewels. Virian’s laughter is clear and infectious. It fills the treasury as we try on clothes and baubles. I can’t help but laugh with her. She teases a tiny bit of happiness from the tight clutches of my heart. For a little while, I forget the competition, and I start to think that my discomfort might be worth the price of Virian’s laughter.

But my mirth draws short as we step into the hall. Virian strides confidently ahead of me and my heart aches, because win or lose, we can never remain friends.