Chapter 25
25
At the end of my Sculpture Studio, Rafe is waiting by the door to escort me to lunch. I walk stiffly by his side.
This is new. This is weird.
It draws eyes when we arrive at the cafeteria together. Including Michael’s. I smile at him, and Rafe must see something in my expression, because he asks, “What is it with you two?”
“Nothing,” I respond too quickly.
Understanding dawns on his face, and he grins spitefully. “Naughty.” He leans closer to me and says into my ear, “He likes you too. I can tell.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say with as much flippancy as I can muster, but my heart leaps at his words. Or is it from the feeling of his breath tickling my neck? He’s standing very close, and I know how it must look to those around us. An apt display for our charade.
Michael is watching Rafe and me with a stormy look in his eyes. Is he upset? Rafe sees the look too, and he’s entertained. He puts his hand on the small of my back and leans in closer, causing a flurry of thrills in my belly.
Rafe whispers, “I’d go for him too if he weren’t so infernally self-righteous and dull.” The way he winks makes it look to everyone else as if he’s said something a lot more… intimate.
Michael’s jaw clenches, and his hands ball into fists.
I feel a power that I haven’t felt before. It’s intoxicating enough that I hardly notice the increasing heat of Rafe’s hand through my shirt or the way the warmth spreads as he moves that hand to grasp me around the waist and steer me toward his table.
Michael follows us. “Journey Castle,” he says stiffly. “I need to speak with you.”
I feel Rafe chuckle under his breath. “See you after,” he says, gently kissing the air close to my cheek. All a performance for Michael’s benefit, I know, but it doesn’t stop the heat building in the space between us. My breath is unsteady as I approach Michael, and I’m honestly confused about which of the boys is most responsible.
“Yes?” I ask Michael once Rafe has breezed out of earshot.
“I had some books to give you.” He rifles through the contents of his leather briefcase, not meeting my eye, then shoves two books at me, his hand stilling momentarily as our fingers brush. “The rest of the Foundations seminar read them earlier in the year; you’ll have to catch up.” It’s Utopia by Thomas More and The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli. They’re so different from the books of the same name back home. These leather-bound volumes have stylized script and textured pages, and oh so much character, like a letter written from the author as a gift to the reader.
The hope I feel from noting his earlier expression causes me to be brave, so I ask, “Maybe you can help catch me up?” Not that I’m hoping anything will happen; I’m supposed to be pretending to be in a relationship with Rafe after all. But I miss the mentor sessions with Michael I had as an apprentice.
He doesn’t meet my eyes. “Sorry. Bloche’s away again, and my schedule is full this week. It’s nothing you can’t manage on your own.” He does look up now, his eyes clear of any kind of care. “If you have any questions, you can ask them during seminar. Enjoy your lunch.”
And with that look and those words, suddenly all my doubts come crashing back. What’s a jealous glance? Easily misinterpreted, that’s what. Words and actions speak louder than imperceptible, probably imagined body language. I need to move on from my fantasies. They’re distracting me from what’s important, and, though I hate to admit it, they’re tearing me apart inside.
Rafe has saved me a seat next to him, but the thought of eating with a bunch of Guard trainees is not appealing. Bram and Yvette are at that table. They’te both clearly trying to get back into Rafe’s good graces, and he seems willing to put up with their presence, which I don’t understand. But he doesn’t protest when I bypass his table to sit with Georgie. Simon eagerly takes the empty seat instead. He’s been following Rafe around as if he’s auditioning for the role of his tail.
Mine and Rafe’s behavior has not gone unnoticed, and Georgie has a questioning, mildly offended look in her eyes. But everyone near us is clearly eavesdropping; they’re not even being subtle about it. I’ll have to wait until later to explain everything to her.
But no time presents itself before I need to meet Rafe for our first training session.
He’s reserved us a studio in the Spring wing, an area I’ve hardly explored. I enter a corridor that has an actual river running through it and soft moss growing on the walls. The river turns into a waterfall as I reach a staircase, which I descend, breathing in the fresh, cool mist. I should really hang out here more often. There are breezy rooms with pools, saunas, exercise equipment, and a lot of scantily clad journeys taking advantage of the amenities.
I find the room where Rafe has instructed me to meet him. He’s lying on a mat on the floor, shirtless, glowing with sweat, clearly having just finished a round of crunches, or perhaps shooting an underwear ad, because I’m pretty sure that’s the only other place in the universe where men look like this.
“Hey, Little Weed,” he greets me, the epithet holding no malice.
There’s a tattoo of a dragon on the left side of his chest. I drag my eyes away from his sculpted torso and very consciously focus on staring at his nose so that my eyes don’t accidentally wander anywhere else.
“Can you put on a shirt?” I reply in a higher pitch than intended.
Look at his nose, Ada.
He grins, gracefully leaps to his feet, and walks to the corner of the room, where he fills a glass from a small waterfall. Now I’m panicking because his nose is gone, and I don’t know where to look.
The room is mostly empty, with many windows and a fresh earth floor covered in rugs. There’s a crop of rocks in the corner where the waterfall flows into a small pool, the stones forming multiple storage cubbies. Across the room, there’s a crack where a root grows through the wall. I focus on that.
“Are you ready to train?” Rafe asks. I’m still aggressively staring at the root, but I see him in my peripheral vision, carelessly toweling off his sweat, his muscles doing all sorts of ripply things.
“About that shirt,” I remind him.
“I’m glad you like what you see,” he responds.
“Also, pants,” I add. His tight shorts provide a little too much information.
He laughs. “Little Weed, you’re gonna have to get used to all this perfection”—he gestures at his exposed figure—“if we’re going to be training together.”
Right. Training. Once I finish contemplating the deep philosophical truth—that I have only just come to understand—about the etymology of the term “washboard abs.”
To my relief, Rafe conjures a shirt from one of the cubbies. Then he stands, hands on hips, and says, “Okay, where should we start?”
I clear my throat. “You tell me.”
He slowly circles me, assessing, and I start to seriously regret the faded leggings and frumpy Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles shirt I’m wearing. Couldn’t I have at least fixed my hair? I still haven’t bothered to trim it, and overgrown waves are frizzing everywhere.
“How can we turn you into some kind of actual threat?”
“Gee, thanks,” I respond dryly as I try desperately—and hopelessly—to ignore the heat I feel emitting from his body so close behind me.
“If the Inquisitors have antimatter, you’ll need knowledge of basic combat so you’re not completely useless if your abilities are neutralized.”
Combat sounds very hands-on. One side glance at those tight shorts and I want to be decidedly hands-off.
“Let’s start with the Sire stuff. You seem to think that’s a particular weakness.”
“Yes, one of many.”
I roll my eyes.
“Do you have a sparker on your spoon?”
“Yes.”
“Take it out. Do you know how to use it to create a flame?”
“Yes.” Well, I do in theory, but I’m not particularly good at it. The mod creates a small spark that can be ignited with Ha’i.
Rafe takes out his own spoon, opens to the sparking mod, and effortlessly creates a flame. “Now you.”
I follow suit, rather clunkily.
“Again,” he says, watching my hands closely. “What’s causing you to fumble?” he asks when it takes me three tries.
“I’ve never been great at calling Ha’i on demand.”
“You’re thinking too hard. It should be effortless.” He’s not the first person to tell me this, but no one seems to understand that it’s anything but effortless for me. Maybe I’m just a weak Sire.
He has me try a few more times, and once I get a little smoother at it, he says, “You won’t always be able to access your spoon, so you need to be prepared to improvise. In this room, what can you manipulate with your Ha’i?”
“Um, you. Me.”
He waits for more, but my mind is blank.
“The lights,” I say when the thought comes to me. “Maybe the water can be electrified?”
He nods. “What else?”
“I’m all out,” I say.
“Think!” he snaps. My spine straightens from the sharpness of his tone.
“I don’t know, okay? I thought that’s why you’re here to help me.”
“There’s a rug on the ground, a source of static electricity. Out that window and through this wall, there are trees, with branches and roots near enough to break through.” His words are clipped and full of judgment. “The rocks in the corner can be heated. If you have sense with you, the mud could be sculpted and animated into a golem. You need to learn to think on your feet. You need to know what you can control!”
“Fine. I’m here to learn. I’ll do my best, but stop yelling at me!” Though I am annoyed at myself for not having thought of the tree. Plants are my thing.
“I’m not yelling; I’m speaking passionately.”
“Please reduce your passion.”
“I am a passionate person.”
“So I’ve heard.”
He grins but moves on without missing a beat. “Let’s start with static.”
He demonstrates, rubbing his socked foot against the rug, then, lifting his leg bent at the knee, he—exhibiting a distracting level of dexterity—passes his hand in shiin below his foot. A flame sparks into existence and then is quickly extinguished as Rafe claps it between his hands.
It’s awesome. But I’m not going to give him the satisfaction of saying so. “Can you do that again?” I ask.
Rafe rubs his toe on the rug. I move to watch more closely, and this time the flame he sparks swooshes into a large blaze, igniting a lock of my hair.
Rafe’s surprised expression makes it clear this wasn’t supposed to happen.
I instinctively slap at the flames, screeching, my face heating as the fire licks its way up my hair.
Rafe quickly flicks opens a mod on his spoon that immediately stifles the flames.
The room is acrid with the scent of burning hair. “What just happened?” I ask.
“I’m not quite sure. That wasn’t a normal response. I didn’t use that much Ha’i. It’s almost as if…” He trails off, looking at me curiously, but he doesn’t complete the thought.
“As if what?”
He ignores my question. “You should practice this on your own until you get the hang of it.”
“I’m not sure I should; it doesn’t seem very safe.” I take stock of my hair, but there’s so much of it that the locks lost to the fire are hardly noticeable.
“You should be fine. That was an unusual circumstance. Just make sure to have your snuffer mod on hand.” He brandishes the mod he used to extinguish the flame.
“Uh, I don’t have one of those.”
“I have an extra I can lend you.”
“Thanks.”
Rafe has me create static with my own foot and try to set it alight, but he seems distracted, and I’m scared of another fire. While I can make a spark, I can’t seem to make a flame. Eventually, with a huff, Rafe says, “I think that’s enough for now. Let’s call it a night.”
I nod, a bit disappointed. We didn’t cover much ground.
“Walk back to my room with me,” Rafe says. “I can get you that snuffer.”
I nod again.
The path through the Summer wing is becoming familiar, and I know we’re almost to his room when the tapestries turn the color of freshly cut grass and the walls illuminate with firefly lights. When we reach his door, Rafe asks, “Do you want to come in?”
He could easily just grab the mod and bring it out to me, so obviously the answer to this question is no.
“Sure,” I say.
As he rummages through a drawer for the snuffer, I wander around his room. He doesn’t have a roommate. I guess that princes are above sharing accommodation. On top of the piano that dominates his sitting area, there’s a small sculpture of a dragon made of reflective hematite with amethyst eyes. Next to the dragon is a gilt frame with a picture of the Vanguard royal family—who, since Quorum, I have made sure to learn more about. They’re all sitting in a line on a dais, as perfect as a painting in a museum. Rafe’s father, King George, sits next to his wife, Princess Lilith—who looks younger than some of her stepsons. Alexander, the heir, sits on the right side of the king, and Rafe and his younger brother, Benjamin, are next to the princess. Though they don’t wear crowns, they exude royalty. With the exception of Prince Alexander, they are all blond, and with no exception, they’re all beautiful.
Benjamin sits with less grace than the rest of them, slightly reclined like the one picture frame off-kilter in a line of symmetrical ones. There’s less severity to his face. Fewer sharp angles and lines. His eyes hold more humor than haughtiness, more question than declaration.
Rafe comes to stand next to me and hands me the mod.
“Thanks.” I take it, but he makes no move to shoo me out of the room, so I say, “He looks fun.” I gesture to the youngest prince.
Rafe smiles, his whole face softening. “Ben is the most like our mother. He’s the sweetest of us—we’re not a particularly sweet family.” I let out a snort. “But Ben is different. He’s… kind. And funny. I miss him.”
“Why didn’t he come with you to Genesis?”
“He’s not a Sire, so he wasn’t considered to be at risk.” His expression hardens. “I wish Hypatia had remained there with him. Her condition is far too unstable for her to have been sent unsupervised so far from home. That’s why I had to come too.”
“What do you mean? Weren’t you sent here for being a Sire?”
“I was close to mastering in Blood Sci, and I’m eighteen. No one would have made me come, but I chose to, to look after Hypatia. And I failed to do the one thing I came here to do.” His nostrils flare, but then he inhales and blinks away all evidence of his emotions.
Perfectly controlled, he indicates the piano and asks, “Do you play?”
“Terribly,” I respond. Kor’s taught me a bit over the years.
“Show me,” Rafe commands.
I sit on the bench and begin to pluck out a passable rendition of the “Moonlight Sonata.” It’s not a song I particularly enjoy, a bit too simple and slow for my taste, but that’s what makes it easy enough for me to do it some kind of justice.
Rafe sinks down next to me and brushes my hands away from the keys.
“You’ll deafen me if you keep that up. You’re tearing the soul out of a beautiful song.”
“I suppose now you’ll tell me that Beethoven was a Maker or a Sire or something?”
“No, just a genius.”
“A philistine a genius? Such a thing is possible?”
“It was different in the earlier generations. The more time that passes since the Exodus, the more the provincial world is separated from the truth they denied, and the more they devolve in their ignorance.”
Ugh. I’ve been trying so hard not to hate him. Why must he keep making it impossible?
But then he begins to play the sonata. And he does it properly.
It’s beautiful, like no version of the song I’ve ever heard before. Damn him. Why does he have to be so good at everything? I was wrong to ever consider it simple; when played correctly, it’s anything but. The notes wrap around me and pull my pulse into the melody.
I’m envious. I wish I could speak my emotions through music. It sometimes feels like there’s something inside me but I don’t know the language to let it out, so I’m doomed to never be able to fully express myself.
Rafe leans into the music, the muscles in his back and shoulders rippling. It’s like there are two separate masterpieces: Rafe, his whole body engaged, his hands doing a deliberate and intricate dance on the keys; and then the music itself, so beautiful, so haunting, so rich. He transitions into the third movement of the piece, one I hardly know and could certainly never play. His hands move so swiftly that they become a blur in my vision. He bangs them almost violently, and yet the sound released is melodious. When I play piano, I just use my fingertips. Rafe uses his whole hand. The tendons stretch as the sides of his fingers, his knuckles, all get pulled into the dance.
He’s forgotten that I’m next to him, probably forgotten that I’m in the room at all. I can tell because I see the difference in his demeanor. The way he’s shifted out of himself and into the song. The way he rocks his body into each note. All his usual harshness has melted away. Angles and lines disappear, revealing an unrecognizable face. One I have only seen the barest glimpses of before now. An expression so passionate that it makes me wonder what it would be like to kiss him. To do more than kiss. If he gives this much to his music, imagine what he could—
Um… scratch that thought.
He starts to play a different song, though it takes me a moment to notice as one song merges smoothly into the next like a rushing river flowing into a calm ocean. A familiar ocean. And though I don’t want to break the spell that’s been cast over the room, I’m so surprised that I say, “I know this song.”
“You must be mistaking it for something else,” Rafe responds, his attention never leaving the keys.
“No. I would never forget this.” My voice comes out dreamily because that is how this song makes me feel. It wraps me in a memory that smells of cinnamon cocoa and feels like cold cheeks and toes sticking out of a warm blanket. “My father used to play this for me when I was a child,” I say. It’s the same tune played by the music box beside my bed.
“That’s impossible.” The certainty of Rafe’s deceleration pulls me out of the warmth of my memory.
“Why?” I ask.
“This song was written by a Levite for meditative use by the Prophets of Naiot in order to help them achieve a prophetic state. There’s no way you could have ever heard it.” It amazes me how such sweet music can come from his fingers while such contempt drips from his voice.
“Whatever,” I respond. “Think what you like. I know what my father played for me.” I close my eyes, wanting to slip back into the song. I clasp my hands, rubbing my scars against each other. I won’t let Rafe’s music be ruined by his attitude.
But my words have angered Rafe, and his fingers bang down against the keys with a clang of sour notes. “I’m telling you, there’s no way ‘Yosef HaLevi’s Nocturne’ was your silly lullaby in the philistine world.”
I momentarily forget how to breathe. “What did you just say the composer’s name is?” I ask.
“Yosef HaLevi,” he drawls.
If I hadn’t spent the last few months constantly suppressing my reactions, I would never have been able to pull off the nonchalance that I achieve as I say, “You’re right. I must be mistaken.” But I know I’m not.
What am I even doing here? This plan of ours doesn’t necessitate us becoming friends. “I’ve been in here long enough for all the necessary tongues to wag. I should leave.” I shift off the bench and stand.
He doesn’t walk me to the door.