Chapter 19
Celine and Nelly don’t ask where I spent the night, and we head to breakfast as usual.
“I heard what happened,” Nelly says as we wait in line.
I’m stunned. “How?”
“I told her,” Celine says as she places a roll of bread on her tray.
I’m not sure if she was trying to be helpful, but I hate having other people witness my shame, my stupidity. “Right.”
“Alayel is a jerk,” Nelly says. “I think he was still seeing Silvia.”
Her words are like a sharp blade between my ribs, but I pretend I don’t care. I can’t allow myself to be humiliated by that stupid bastard.
“Well…” I swallow. “We weren’t serious, so… it’s fine.” I take a bite of the apple I just grabbed, but it tastes like sand.
“It’s fine to be upset.” Celine’s eyes are focused on her cup as she fills it with tea.
Nelly tsks. “Nah. Some men don’t deserve our feelings.”
“I had no feelings.” My lie sounds childish and stupid, but thankfully my friends don’t call me out.
Nelly only gives me a smile. “You’ll find someone ten times better.”
I return her smile and nod, appreciating her support.
But is it the solution? Filling an open wound with someone else? Do we need romantic love to feel happy? Like always, all I have is questions, and no answers.
The only clear thing is that as much as I tell myself that I should have known better, it still hurts. A lot. And then I hate that it hurts, and it hurts even more.
My tray has only an orange and an apple, as I’m feeling too nauseous to eat bread or drink anything hot.
When we sit, Celine says, “Cardiana’s day is coming. Maybe she’ll bless us.”
Nelly takes a loaf of bread and spreads some butter on it. “There’s a ball, right? Why haven’t we heard about it?”
Celine drinks a sip of her tea, then says, “It’s always like that. The exact date is decided at the last minute. And it’s not like we need advance notice, since we can get our dresses from the depository.”
Nelly chuckles. “I’ll go early and bribe that woman. All our dresses absolutely did not look the same.”
I wonder if she’s thinking about the dress I wore, and realize I never told them how I got it. I remember Alayel at the ball, ignoring me, and now I want to slap my face a hundred times to stop being so stupid.
Celine shakes her head. “It doesn’t really matter. We wear red, praise the Goddess of Love, and have fun. It’s my favorite festivity. They might let some of us leave the academy and watch the festival in the city.”
I eat a piece of my orange and think about Commander Mallor and his promise to reconsider my position in the academy around Cardiana’s festival.
The sour taste coming to my mouth is not from the orange.
Now I won’t even have Alayel’s protection.
And then the memory of the bastard prince storming the commander’s office confuses me.
Nelly’s taking a sip of her juice, then stares beyond me, eyes wide. Celine does the same. I turn, still with the orange in my mouth, and see Alayel standing by our table.
He crouches, so that his face is level with mine, then blinks slowly, as if his eyelashes could make him seem innocent. It’s a lot of gall from his part, and some foolishness. He’s too confident that I won’t throw a cup of tea on his face.
“How are you?” he asks, his tone so sweet that it might actually make me puke. And yet he’s still ridiculously good-looking.
“Fine.” I shrug, not wanting to let him notice I’m upset. “You?”
“I had a horrible night.” He gives me such a sad look that if I didn’t know him better, I’d pity him.
“Well, gotta be careful with star nectar.” I turn back to my orange, but he doesn’t budge.
“Mayara, I need to talk to you.” His voice is so sad, so sweet, so beseeching that it reminds me of my brother when he was little, when begging for something he shouldn’t have.
I’m about to tell Alayel that I don’t want to talk to him, but then I figure it would be too kind, and I’m not in a kind mood. Instead, I give him a sweet smile and tilt my head, as if puzzled.
“Something wrong?”
“It’s what I’m wondering.” His eyes are scanning my face, trying to read it, perhaps.
“We can talk tonight, can’t we?” I blink, aware that I can’t do the same as he, with my short eyelashes.
A trace of a smile forms on the corners of his lips. “Like usual?”
I frown, looking concerned. “Why not? Is there something wrong with you?” Ha! Acting like he’s going crazy is a balsam to my wounded heart.
“Nothing wrong. See you tonight.” His almost smile turns into a satisfied smirk. Stupid smirk that I never noticed. He then gets up and leaves.
I don’t even look at him.
After a few seconds, I ask, “Is he gone?”
“Yes,” Celine says.
Only then do I realize I had a manic smile on my face, and I drop it.
Nelly is staring at me with a puzzled expression. “What was that?”
I huff, and perhaps exhale some of the anger I kept hidden when he stopped by our table. “I thought it would be nicer to make him wait, you know? And keep waiting, waiting, waiting.”
Nelly glances at her juice, thinking. “Maybe he has something important to say.”
I shrug. “Maybe I don’t want to hear it.”
And I don’t. Alayel has a way to twist words and wrap them around me, and I’m tired of being his prey.
I have more important things to worry about, like what’s going to happen after Cardiana’s festival and what Mallor is going to do to me. My stomach chills, fearing being expelled from the academy, losing everything I fought for.
And then there’s the hatchlings. What is it that Katrine can wait for? And who’s he?
Still, amidst it all, there’s Alayel. Alayel, Alayel, Alayel. Ignoring me one day, crouching by my table the next, making me so confused.
Celine has flying practice this morning, and since I have time off, I walk with her to the Outer Hill.
As we approach the bottom of the stairs leading to the summit, her fear radiates like waves.
“You’re used to flying, aren’t you?” I ask.
She looks down. “I broke my arm twice, so I missed some lessons.”
“Don’t you enjoy it, though? Flying?”
Celine stops. “The moment when I’m in the air, when there’s nothing beneath me, and I’m suspended by the wind only? I love it. It’s exhilarating. But then I have to go back to the ground, and landing is always terrifying.” She gives me a faint smile. “But I should be fine.”
“I’ll be at the Outer Beach, waiting.”
We part ways; she climbs the steps to the hilltop while I head for the tunnel that leads to the beach.
The day is warm and I remove the uniform, then hide it in the bushes.
Wearing only my linen underslip, I enter the water and feel the force of the waves against my body, washing away my anger, my bitterness, my memories of Alayel.
When the first gliders jump from the hill, I get out of the sea and return to the bushes, where I take my uniform, then put it on once my body is dry.
From here, I can’t see who’s flying, since the sun’s up, but I notice that some gliders move more smoothly than others, and I don’t know if it’s the recruit’s talent or their gear.
My heart still cracks when I look at them and realize it will never be me, up there in the air. I’ll never fly like them.
Even if I recall what I saw on the day of the attack, I still want to fly. Some irrational part of me wants the thrill, the joy, even if it might mean my early death. Perhaps the potential for some pleasures stifles our own sense of self-preservation.
After a long time, the first glider lands with a second-year young man I don’t know well. From here, it doesn’t look dangerous. He ends in a run on the soft sand.
More gliders land, and I think about Ava and Vos, stuck in that room, unable to feel the ocean breeze from up close or the sun on their skins.
But it’s for their own protection, I tell myself, still unable to shush the part of me that’s starting to think that keeping them locked up is wrong.
And yet, if riders want to kidnap the little dragons, we have no choice but to keep them safe.
A recruit lands with a loud thud, runs a few steps, then stumbles and falls. Something in my heart stutters, thinking it’s Celine, but it’s another male recruit. Celine lands much later, and hits the sand in a smooth, perfect motion. I wave at her and she gives me a triumphant grin.
She can fly.
Hopefully she won’t be picked to go into the air during an attack, at least not anytime soon.
I head to the hatchling’s room soon after dinner.
At the bottom of the stairs, someone steps out of the shadows. Startled, I step back.
“It’s me,” Alayel says.
“Oh. Hanging around these parts?”
“No.” He prowls toward me, his steps slow. “You didn’t come to my room, so I figured I had to find you.”
“Why?” I pretend to have no idea what he’s talking about.
He sighs. “Goodness, Mayara. Stop doing this. Stop pretending you mean nothing to me.”
I want to laugh, but I swallow it. “Oh. Is that supposed to be a problem?”
“You’re upset, aren’t you?”
I cross my arms and narrow my eyes. “Why should I be upset?”
My voice cracks a little, perhaps because my heart is making such a racket in my chest. Even cold and hurt and hollow, it has this impossible strength to draw my attention to its whims.
He swallows, then makes his sad boy, pitiful face. “You think I don’t love you.”
I don’t even understand what he’s trying to get at. “Is there anything false in such a thought?”
“Everything false!” His roar stuns me. “Everything! I meant everything I told you. I want you to be my queen. You were acting odd this morning, then you didn’t come to my room. Was that because of last night?”
“You’re smart, Alayel. Figure it out.”
“Weren’t you the one who said that the space between unsaid words was ripe for misunderstandings? Tell me. Tell me why you’re upset. I’d rather deal with your anger than your indifference.”
“So indifference does bother you. Funny.”