774 PQ
This isn’t the first time she’s snuck out at night. Around the time she turned thirteen and realized how easy it was to navigate the secret internal passageways snaking through her ancestral family home, Selah Kleios had begun to do it practically every week for no reason other than because she could.
She’d go on long walks down to the beachfront below Breakwater’s gray shale cliffs, kicking off her boots to dig her toes in the warm sand, and wander the alleys near the universitas where student nightlife spilled out from the brownstone tabernas in music and strange lights. She had actually been brave enough to go inside one once, though she’d promptly been shooed out by the barlady for being so obviously underage. She had decided to ignore Tair when her friend pointed out that of course the passageways in the manor are easy to navigate—they’re not meant to be secret, just discreet enough for servae to avoid being seen. How else did Tair always win at hide-and-seek when they were kids? She’s been using them all her life.
So no, when Selah sneaks out one late summer night, it’s not for the first time. But it is the first time she’s convinced Tair to come with her.
The older girl’s hand is clammy in hers, and she swears she can hear Tair’s heartbeat pounding against her chest as they fly over cobblestone and concra in the dark. Tair on her cruiseboard, Selah on her bike, wild in the freedom of the night air. She can’t help but thrill at the smooth warmth where their palms touch, pulses racing as they glide alongside one another.
One hour, that’s what Tair had said when she finally gave in. Selah had shrugged, letting her take that for agreement, but there’s no way the two of them will be home before sunrise. The fireworks, the dancing, the morning ocean vespers . . . she won’t let Tair miss out on a moment, not when the Festival of Sol and Luna only comes once a year. Cultists may be slightly spun out—still hung up on worshipping intangible gods and deities instead of the All-Mater Terra beneath their feet—but they know how to throw one hell of a party.
The beach is already teeming when they arrive. Dancers thronging together to the music of the drum and steelstring band, decked out in gold streamers and moonmasks and archaic togas like the Caesarians of old. Groups of friends laughing and drinking and pushing each other into the soft, gray sand. Next to her, Tair has her arms crossed, pressing in against herself, and Selah sees what she’s staring at. A small knot of middle-aged men, deep in their cups, wearing civilian clothes but easily given away by the green scarves poking out of back pockets—off-duty Cohort Publica.
Selah rolls her eyes. She’d bring Tair closer if she dared, press their foreheads against one another, let her know it’s going to be all right. It’ll be wonderful. She won’t let anything go wrong. Instead, she grabs Tair’s hand and tugs her toward the center of the crowd, kicking off her sandals and pulling her into a fast dance after the music’s wild beat. A light grows in her solar plexus as the corners of Tair’s lips quirk a begrudging smile, then a little laugh, until both girls are breathless, screaming and giggling to the point of tears. Out from behind her piles of dusty books and paper trails, Tair’s deep-set eyes are alight with mischief, her close-cropped curls framing her face like some otherworldly halo, and Selah’s heart bursts with joy.
“Seventeen tomorrow,” Tair shouts over the music. “How’s it feel?”
“Bona fide divine.”
“What are you looking forward to more? Getting your hands on your trust fund—” Tair spins her around, “—or the look on those little boys’ faces when you show up for class?”
“Reality drop. Those little boys are three years older than me.”
“Exactly.”
Her schoolfriends think she’s completely lost her mind, but Tair of all people understands what it means to her, the accelerated course of study approved for her at Luxana Universitas beginning in two weeks. Years of rigorous training in her superior levels—paired with private tutoring by Dad’s secretary Gil Delena—yielded exceptionally high scores in her entrance exams. She’s earned that course.
When the song ends, the band strikes up a much slower tune. Selah thinks she knows this one, something Arran hums now and then. She can’t be too sure. As much as her brother loves to sing, it’s not one of his gifts.
Tair takes her hand and it’s slower, this time. Closer. And suddenly Selah’s not at all sure where to rest her eyes.
“One more month for you,” she says, just to say something. “Eighteen. How does that feel?”
A shadow dances quickly across Tair’s face—something conflicted, something secret, though she’s never been much good at keeping her thoughts off her face. Not that this needs to be a secret, anyway. Selah is a patrician, but Tair is a verna. For her, becoming an adult means a different kind of freedom altogether.
“I honestly have no idea,” says Tair at last. “It doesn’t feel real.”
“What’s the first thing you’re going to do?”
“Open a bank account.”
“Boring. Maybe something that doesn’t involve my parents holding your hands?”
Tair chooses that moment to spin her around and in, so that all at once she’s wrapped up in her arms. She’s suddenly very aware of how tall Tair is. She’s very aware of her mouth, and its proximity to her own.
“I can think of a few things.”
And Selah’s heart does a small loop on itself. Maybe this is it, then. That thing they never talk about, but has gradually stretched out in the past year or so, making itself impossible to ignore. That thing she’s coming closer and closer to acting on with each passing day, and she doesn’t know why she’s overthinking it like this, but she just thinks it would be so much simpler if Tair were the one to do something about it first.
“And you didn’t want to come out tonight,” she says quietly, willing her closer.
“I didn’t not want to,” says Tair, eyes flicking down to Selah’s lips—briefly, just the tiniest moment. “I just didn’t think it was a good idea.”
“Still think so?”
The song continues and they linger there, the flush of that young, unspoken something sitting heavy between them. Selah could count each individual freckle of Tair’s fawn-brown face if she wanted, the glint of that silver ear cuff just visible through the spray of auburn coils. Fireworks paint her face in reds and blues and Selah wonders if she should say something smart, or funny, or just say anything at all if it means that Tair will just do it, already, just—
Something knocks into her hard from behind.
A group of townies, their leader at the head, a cigarette hanging lazily from his mouth. They’re dressed well, crisp tunics and shirts of yellows and blues and whites for the occasion. Not urchins, then. Just the kind of boys you might cross the street to avoid.
“Do us a favor, girls,” says the straw-headed boy at the lead, smirk writ nasty even before he stops to wet his lips. “Take it somewhere else.”
Selah scrambles up off the sand, all righteous indignation, but Tair gets there first.
“You got a problem?” she barks.
“Yeah.” He flicks the red-lit stub of his cigarette toward her. “Thing is, there’s a certain level of class to the Cult of Sol and Luna. No one really wants to watch a couple serva crims going at it like bitches in heat. Unless there’s an invitation to join.”
Selah feels her face go hot with rage. How dare he? How dare he presume to teach them about manners and class? But even through her anger, she’s aware of the subtle shift that passes through Tair on her left. Shoulders pulling back, she stands a little taller, even as her face goes neutral.
“The Boardwalk’s public property,” Tair says, calm and reasonable. “I’m allowed to be here.” Her voice is sickening in its neutrality, because this boy has the kind of face that’s asking to get punched.
Selah hates this. Tair may be a verna, but she’s worth a hundred of these pathetic plebs.
“Not if I say different,” says the boy, his friends laughing nastily behind him.
“Oh, and who are you?”
“What?”
“Well, you must be important to have a say in things like that, yeah? So who are you?”
“You giving me lip, serva girl?”
Tair shrugs. “Just making conversation.”
The boy steps up into her face, and Selah can see Tair willing herself not to back down, even from the invasive hot breath mere inches away. “Take your little friend and fuck off now,” he says, betraying his own caste with his careless vulgarity. “There’s a nice pig pen a few streets over. It’ll do for you and your crim slut.”
“You’re plebeian, aren’t you?” Selah hears herself asking, and the boy’s eyes snap over to her, alive with delight. But he can’t hurt her, not the way he could hurt Tair, even if he doesn’t realize who she is just yet. So she finds herself cutting in between them, both so much taller than her, a hand on each to push them apart.
All the same, she just barely stops herself from crying out when the boy grabs her wrist. The entitlement is bruising. No one’s ever dared touch her like this before.
“Are you trying to make this worse for yourself?”
“Actually,” she gasps. “I’m giving you an out. See that man over there?” She nods over some yards away toward a huge man she’d spotted earlier, six foot something of muscle on muscle. The boy’s gaze follows hers. His eyes widen. Good.
“That’s my bodyguard,” she lies, privately screaming with gratitude that Dad and Mima let her study theater arts at her superior. “Horace. And you’ve assaulted me just now, so I’d give it another . . . I don’t know, fifteen seconds before he comes over here and beats the living daylights out of you.”
The boy glances back at her, then back to the huge stranger—who by some grace of Terra actually is looking over in their direction.
“Now, the way I see it,” she says, “you talk like trash, which means you’re a pleb. So you probably don’t know who I am. That’s not something that merits Horace beating the living daylights out of you, of course. But you are vile, which actually does merit him beating the living daylights out of you. So. Your choice.”
She can see the wheels of the boy’s mind working as the gravity of the situation bears down on him, the now-clear lack of cuff on her ear ringing the alarms of his mistake. His hand around her wrist is a punishable offense. He could be stripped of citizenship for this, should she choose to press it to that point. Not that she would. But he doesn’t know that.
“C’mon, man,” one of his friends says quietly, pulling at his shoulder. “Leave it.”
The boy releases Selah’s wrist, glancing nervously over at the fictional Horace again. “You’re a patrician?” he asks, the word slipping from his tongue like a death knell. She doesn’t deign to answer; a withering glare should suffice. His gaze shifts back to her, then over to Tair for the first time since Selah intervened. “That’s disgusting.”
Savage, she thinks ferociously as he shoves past her, disappearing back into the crowd along with his friends.
“We should go.”
It comes from behind. Selah rolls her eyes and turns back to Tair, who doesn’t look up at her. “No, it’s curbed,” she says. “They’re just angry little boys looking for a fight.”
But Tair is firm.
“This was a mistake.”