Chapter 5
THE FESTIVAL OF LIGHT
Ada
Asu told me while lacing my festival gown.
"Everyone's talking about it," she said, her fingers working the silk ties with steady hands.
"How Ferit was set up. How someone got him spectacularly drunk and aimed him at High Lord Volkan like a loaded crossbow.
" She paused, met my eyes in the mirror.
"They're saying it was Hakan. Him and Sarp.
Because of what Ferit said about you in the gardens. "
I went very still. "What did Ferit say about me?"
Asu looked away. "It doesn't matter."
"Asu."
"He called you a border-born whore." Her voice was flat. Careful. "Said your friendship with Hakan made you look like a plisk-lover. Said worse things I won't repeat because they make me want to set him on fire myself, and I actually liked the man."
My reflection stared back at me — white gown, dark hair, golden light from the window catching the fabric and making me glow like something divine.
The perfect image of the Light Princess.
. The girl who sat in Selim's class and watched them drag a student to her death and did nothing.
The girl who burned Hakan's face in a corridor and couldn't decide if she was sorry or satisfied.
"Ada?" Asu's hands had stopped. "You've gone pale."
"I'm fine. Finish the laces."
I wasn't fine. My hands were shaking beneath the folds of my skirt, and the scar on my memory — Hakan's face when my light struck his jaw, the shock and then something worse, something that looked like he'd been waiting for it — wouldn't stop burning.
He'd risked everything. His scholarship, his position, his life. For what Ferit said about me. And I couldn't decide if I wanted to scream at him or —
"There." Asu stepped back. "You look beautiful. Try not to commit any treason before the second course."
The Moon Crowning festival was already in full swing when I reached the grounds.
Gold everywhere — gilded columns, glowing fountains, lanterns like captured stars.
The colors of my father's divine light, the same colors that girl in Selim's class had been kneeling on when they tore the shadow from her blood.
I still didn't know her name. I'd tried to find out. Nobody would tell me.
I was contemplating whether I could disappear into the servant passages and skip the ceremony entirely when a familiar voice cut through my thoughts.
"You look like a woman plotting an escape."
Sarp. I stiffened, bracing for the usual cruelty — the cutting remark, the smirk, the casual devastation he and Hakan had perfected over three years of making my life miserable.
But the face that greeted me when I turned wasn't wearing its usual sharp-edged smile. Sarp stood a few feet away in festival clothes — dark blue, well-cut, his hair actually combed for once — and the expression on his face was something I'd never seen directed at me before.
He looked almost nervous.
"Sarp." I kept my voice flat. Guarded. The last time we'd been alone, he'd told me the Academy rooftop was open to students, knowing full well the night patrol would catch me there.
I'd spent two days in disciplinary review while he collected his winnings from whatever bet he'd made.
"Come to tell me the festival's been cancelled?
That the fountains are poisoned? What's the trick this time? "
Something flickered across his face. Guilt, maybe. Or the ghost of it.
"No trick." He held up both hands — empty, palms out. "Just thought you might like company that isn't trying to marry you off or lecture you about divine duty."
I stared at him. "You're not serious."
"Deadly serious. I even bathed." He gestured at himself with exaggerated formality. "Combed my hair. Left my collection of cruel remarks in my other coat. I'm practically a gentleman."
Against every instinct, something tugged at the corner of my mouth. I killed it immediately. "Why are you being nice to me? You haven't been nice to me since we were children."
He held my gaze. "Maybe I'm tired of being an asshole." A beat. "Or maybe the festival wine is exceptional this year and I need someone intelligent to drink it with. Take your pick."
I should have walked away. Instead, I heard myself say: "If this is another setup, I will burn you. You've seen what my light does when I lose my temper."
Sarp's eyes went to my hands — where golden light was already flickering faintly at my fingertips — and something like genuine respect crossed his face.
"Noted," he said. "Shall we?"
We walked. Through the festival grounds, past the ceremonial fountains, beneath lanterns that turned everything soft and golden. Sarp bought two cups of spiced wine from a vendor and handed me one without comment.
And Sarp talked. Not the way he usually talked — not with the razor edge, not with the intent to wound.
He told me about a merchant in the border market who'd tried to sell him a "genuine shadow-realm artifact" that turned out to be a painted rock.
He did an impression of Professor Selim's voice that was so accurate and so savage I had to press my hand over my mouth to keep from laughing in front of a group of priests.
I didn't understand it. This was the same man who'd spent years at Hakan's side, dismantling me with casual, coordinated cruelty. Who'd bet lordlings I'd cry at dinner. Who'd watched Hakan tear me apart and handed him better ammunition.
But here he was, buying me wine and making me laugh and looking at me like I was a person instead of a target.
"You're staring at me like I've grown a second head," he observed.
"I'm trying to figure out the angle."
He was quiet for a moment. Then, softer than I'd ever heard him: "There used to be.
I'm not proud of that." He stopped walking.
"For what it's worth, Ada — the things Hakan and I did to you.
The way we treated you." He ran a hand through his carefully combed hair, ruining it.
"It was shit. We were shit. I was shit. And I'm sorry. "
I opened my mouth. Closed it. Of all the things I'd expected from this evening, an apology from Sarp was not among them.
Before I could respond, he smiled — lopsided, almost shy — and offered his arm. "Come on. The lantern display starts soon, and I refuse to watch it alone like some tragic romantic hero."
I took his arm. Something about the apology, maybe. Something about the way his voice had cracked on I was shit, like the words had cost him more than he'd planned.
We found a spot near the central fountain.
Sarp leaned against the fountain's edge beside me, close but not too close, his shoulder warm near mine.
He said something about the fire dancer's technique being mediocre and her costume being magnificent, and I laughed — actually laughed, the sound startling me — and his face lit up with something that looked dangerously close to genuine delight.
A flash of russet near the fountain's base caught my eye.
Melo sat beneath the stone rim, half-hidden by the crowd's feet, watching us with an expression I couldn't quite place.
Not her usual vigilance. Not the sharp wariness she wore around most people.
She was studying Sarp with her head tilted at that particular angle she reserved for things she hadn't made up her mind about yet — curious, almost, the way she looked at unfamiliar magic or a locked door she hadn't decided whether to open.
Sarp noticed her. Of course he did — Sarp noticed everything, it was his most irritating quality.
"Your fox is judging me," he said, not looking away from Melo. "She's been doing it all evening. I can feel it."
"She judges everyone."
"No, this is different. This is specific." He crouched down, resting his forearms on his knees so he was at Melo's level. "You've got opinions about me, haven't you? I can tell. The ears give it away."
Melo's ears twitched. She held his gaze for longer than she'd ever held anyone's except mine — three seconds, four, five — and then she did something I'd never seen her do with a stranger.
She didn't leave. She just settled her chin on her paws and watched him with those ancient turquoise eyes, and something passed between them that I couldn't read and wasn't invited to understand.
"Huh," Sarp said softly. Then he straightened, brushed off his knees, and turned back to me with his easy grin firmly in place. "I think she likes me."
"She doesn't like anyone."
"Exactly my point."
The lanterns launched into the sky and everyone around us tilted their heads back, faces soft with wonder. Sarp was close, his shoulder warm against mine, and when he turned to look at me there was something open in his expression that I hadn't seen before — something unguarded, almost young.
He kissed me.
It was brief. His mouth barely grazed mine, and he kept one hand loose at his side — giving me room to step back if I wanted to. Giving me an out he already knew I'd take.
I waited for something. For the flutter, the warmth, the sharp involuntary catch of breath. I waited the way you wait for a clock to chime — expectant, certain it will come.
It didn't come.
There was nothing. Worse than nothing — there was the specific, hollow nothing of kissing someone you have loved your whole life and realizing with devastation that you love him the way you love a brother.
The way you love something safe. His mouth was warm and he was kind and I felt nothing, and the absence of feeling was so complete it was almost embarrassing, like discovering a door you've been afraid to open for years leads only to a broom cupboard.
I pulled back. He let me. His eyes searched my face, and I watched him read it — all of it — in a single second.
"Ah," he said quietly.
"Sarp—"
"No." He smiled, and it only cost him a little. "Don't apologize. I've known for a while." He looked out at the lanterns. "Just wanted to be sure."