12. A Countdown #2
Aria stepped to the edge of the curtain.
Outside, partygoers chitchatted, sipping their drinks, eating their food, awaiting their time to dance.
He heard the clock strike ten—he was perfectly on time.
He played a few notes on his lute, signaling the start of his set, and stepped through the curtain.
Polite applause greeted him as he sang, “O Say the Darkest Night of the Year, Winterend: Good Morrow to Men. Who would like to dance?”
The Director of Affairs at Cordelia Ballroom approached Aria at his final break and said, “Do you mean to cast all your spells during this final set? You’ve not done any magic at all so far.”
Aria peered up from where he’d sat on an ottoman behind the curtain.
After an hour and a half of performing music and putting on a brave, unaffected face, Aria could feel himself cracking like near-broken glass again.
“I will try.” He wasn’t sure he could. The flow of the arcane still remained absent from him.
Performing spellwork for the last half-hour he was contracted to play seemed impossible.
“This wasn’t precisely what we agreed upon, when we hired you,” said the Director, raising a brow. “We need magic. At least some lights? Something flashy? You’re not even projecting the sounds to the back of the room like most bards do.”
“I will endeavor to do my best with this final set,” said Aria. “You may pay me only what you think I’m owed, if that gives you comfort.”
The Director considered the offer and nodded. “Very well. Will you at least bless the champagne toast at midnight?”
“Yessir,” said Aria.
The Director added, with emphasis, “We didn’t hire you simply for music. We could have hired just anyone for that. You’re meant to be magic.” His eyes flickered to Aria’s elven ears. “You are, aren’t you?”
Aria couldn’t answer the question, because he didn’t know.
The Director clicked his tongue. “You were an adame, were you not? Is that the only type of magic you can do?”
Aria’s heart went cold. If he had no magic, he couldn’t even be an adame. Could he? He choked out, “I’ll do my best, sir. I apologize.”
The Director nodded once and departed swiftly out the side of the stage.
Aria took up his lute and moved on instinct.
It was like moving through water, or in a dream, and every motion felt slowed.
Dulled. He stepped through the curtain. The candlelit spotlight, controlled by a young man in a booth at the back of the room, made him near-blind to the crowd, which applauded politely as he reappeared.
He hadn’t done a bad job during his performance, as his skill for the lute and his adept singing were fine on their own, but the nobility in attendance surely thought they’d be getting a show of magic, and he’d not cast a single spell.
He tried to summon the missing magic again. Casting Light. A spell to make twinkling lights fill the air around the many well-frocked dancers on the floor. As he struck the note to activate the magic, Aria missed the string on his lute.
Where had his magic gone?
He managed to pluck the strings through sheer force. Three bad notes grated over his mind the same way it grated over the guests. Several people mumbled in concern. Aria cleared his throat and tried again. When he failed a second time—he pivoted back to music. Nonmagical, simple, and pretty.
He sang, “The Many Fallen Leaves Fly About Her Amber Hair, the Lacy Trail of Trees.”
In Aria’s periphery, he spotted the Director frowning, and talking animatedly with an orcish woman with gray hair and a bardic robe. The Bella Bards Guildmaster.
“The Seasons Come and the Seasons Change, Signaled By a Shifting Breeze.”
The Guildmaster’s words, visible even if her voice was drowned out by Aria’s lute. This bard sings without magic, but worse: he sings without heart.
Aria was like glass, and he’d finally broken.
NOBLE
Noble tore through Aria’s room, pulling apart his bags, digging through his books—trying to find something, anything, to indicate where he’d gone for Winterend. Hampenstead said he was performing, but where?
It’d begun to snow outside, and the clock chimed downstairs—a half-hour to midnight.
Noble groaned in frustration as he stomped his way to the kitchen, feeling as if he’d never know where to find Aria.
He couldn’t simply wait until he returned home.
Something in him tugged him forward, demanding. His soul said: Find him.
And then, on the bistro set, by the bay window: an invitation. Addressed to Romy. If she’d brought this here, then maybe—
Cordelia Ballroom.
Aria was at Cordelia Ballroom.
Noble knew it, beyond a shadow of a doubt. His soul said it with a shout: go to him. Now.
Noble stormed back out to the street, leaving his coat behind.
He left the mare where she was posted beneath an awning at the side of the house.
He could run to the ballroom faster than he could re-tack and climb back upon her.
The snow made the roads slippery, anyway, and it wasn’t safe for the horse to go more quickly than a trot.
It wasn’t safe for Noble to sprint, either.
He slid at a street corner, his black dancing boots skittering against the flagstone, and he crashed into a pile of wet, sticky leaves.
But he didn’t stop for more than a moment—he had to sprint on.
He clamored to his feet and kept at it, facing south.
He knew precisely where to go. He’d been to Cordelia Ballroom a dozen times in his life, for one gala or the next.
The large ornate white stone structure sat at the corner of the Harbinger District and Historia, and as Noble approached, parked carriages grew in number, with many attendants sitting and smoking, awaiting their patrons to exit for the night.
He called out to one man, standing by a carriage, holding an umbrella against the falling snow. “You’ve the time?”
The man glanced at his wrist. “A minute ‘til midnight, my lord.”
He was going to make it. Panting, Noble skittered to a stop at the tall staircase leading to the Cordelia Ballroom.
He climbed two steps at a time, and the attendant at the door blinked in alarm as he rushed through.
He tried to signal to the Caller, meant to announce any guest that arrived, but Noble rushed by him, too, and into the crowd that faced the stage.
The Caller simply said, “Uh—Earl—uh, Former Earl? Yves St. Clair!”
It was so crowded inside—all had gathered in the central chamber to raise their champagne flutes at midnight. Noble nearly despaired. He’d never find Aria like this.
“The damn elf won’t come out from backstage now,” groused a man, holding a clipboard. A coordinator of some kind. “Some bard he is. We aren’t even getting blessed champagne for the toast.”
Noble’s eyes landed upon the stage.
“Forget it,” said the man to someone at his side. “Start the countdown. Go!”
A woman stumbled towards the ballroom and shouted, “Ten!” The guests shifted in excitement and joined her as she cried, “Nine!”
Noble’s eyes landed upon the stage. Backstage. The bard—his bard—was backstage.
He ran.
“Eight!”
The other guests gasped and grunted and exclaimed as he pushed his way through.
“Seven!”
He took the steps three at a time.
“Six!”
He shoved through the curtain, but couldn’t find the opening.
“Five!” The heavy velvet drape seemed like grasping hands, holding him in place, wrapping more tightly as he tried to fight through. He grabbed the bottom of it and lifted it over himself—activating the pulley system.
“Four!”
The curtain began to draw up, but Noble paid no mind as he dashed into the dim interior of backstage. But the dark made it easy, because Aria was so fair that he stood out. A beautiful, flickering candle’s flame.
“Three!”
He sat at a vanity, pen in hand.
“Aria, no!” Noble cried.
Aria jolted back, turning wide, tear-filled eyes toward Noble.
“Two!”
Noble was too late. The pen dripped with the ink Aria had signed with.
“One!”
Noble fell to his knees at Aria’s feet.
“Happy Winterend!” the crowd screamed.
A tear chased a trail down Aria’s face. He trembled as he said, “Noble?”
Noble could do nothing but place his forehead against Aria’s knee. “I was too late.”
Aria sniffled. “Noble, the curtain—you’re—they can see us.”
“Fine. That’s fine,” said Noble. It didn’t matter.
He had to say this, no matter the consequence.
Even if he was too late. Even if Aria had bound himself to Hampenstead.
Noble had to speak. He gazed up into Aria’s face, at his perfect tiny nose, and soft round mouth, and his magical blue eyes. “I love you.”
Aria exhaled, voice shaking. “What?”
“I love you.”
“What are you doing?” Aria asked, and he let the pen fall from his fingertips. It landed with a clatter upon the stage. The crowd grew more and more quiet—catching onto the display.
Noble sat up on his knees and took Aria’s face into both his hands. “I’m telling you how I feel. I’d like to marry you. And I care not if I’ve a title, and if these people talk about us in gossip rags. I don’t care if I let down my mother. I’m in love with you.”
Aria pulled Noble’s hands from his face slowly, brows pinched in thought. He was quiet for long enough that Noble’s mind began to run away with his deepest fear. Aria did not feel the same.
But Aria plucked a leaf from Noble’s hair, instead, and said, “You raced here from your gala.”
“Yes,” Noble said, choking on the word.
Aria let the leaf fall, and took up Noble’s hand instead. “Because you love me.”
Noble squeezed Aria’s fingers, imparting his warmth, and affection, and gazed deeply into his blue eyes, trying to find the spark—the signal that he felt the same. “I do.”
“Even if I cannot be your adame? Even if I cannot use magic at all?”