Chapter 4 One Aeon Pre-Great War #2
Built to accommodate four hundred angels at a time, the hall was only half full for their graduation celebration, and only half of those present were students. The rest were instructors and guild council members who had been invited to welcome the newly graduated to their disciplines’ ranks.
Lila picked at her cake and tried not to let her apprehension show on her face, though her heart beat wildly in her chest and her stomach wound itself into increasingly uncomfortable knots.
This was it—the last thing to be done before she moved in with Castor and spent the rest of her existence as his constant companion.
For a long time, it had been all too close, and yet, deceptively far away, but now there was no escaping it.
Lessons had been a buffer that couldn’t last.
If only she could be like Eva and Adrianna, filled with excitement at the prospect of spending eternity with her soulmate. She stole a glance at the couple—Eva was stealing a bite of Adrianna’s cake, and Adrianna was flicking crumbs at her. Both were laughing, the love in their eyes taunting Lila.
A long time ago, upon Castor’s creation, the Creator had decided that Castor would benefit from having a partner, and so his soul had been split into two pieces, and Lila had been fashioned from the second half.
There were others like her—products of a soul-split—but not many.
Most of Lila’s peers thought she was blessed—how special she was to have a soulmate, to never have to be alone.
Oh, how Lila wanted to be alone. She wanted it even more than she wanted to be an architect, though neither scenario was bound to happen.
Eva and Adrianna were the other soul-split couple in their class, but Lila suspected they would have been joined at the hip regardless.
They did annoying things like pass each other supplies before the other asked; they finished each other’s food and each other’s sentences.
They’d even submitted the same housing blueprint without knowing what their other half had asked the architects to draw.
Lila and Castor had argued up until the deadline over the matter of housing, not least because his blueprints made no sense; his embellishments were decorous, but not at all functional.
Lila had drawn her own blueprints, and she’d done a better job than the architect he’d commissioned.
In the end, they’d tried to compromise, and neither of them had gotten anything they truly desired.
Their entire relationship, really, was a lose-lose situation, but Castor was the first half of their collective soul, so it had always been skewed in his favor. Ultimately, everything from the house they lived in to their chosen occupation to how they spent their free time was his decision.
Lila sucked in a deep breath, trying to dislodge the pressure in her chest. Her hands trembled, and she clasped them on her lap beneath the table. To distract herself, she tuned back in to her friends’ conversation.
“No, no, I have to tell the story again. One more time before we graduate,” Adrianna was saying to Beni. She grinned as she twirled her topaz necklace, and the stone twinkled in the light, the same warm brown as her skin. Her straight black hair spilled over her shoulders, glossy and sleek.
She was still the leader of their group, as tall and lean as Eva was short and shapely. But where Eva used flattery and charm to get her way, Adrianna was all bluntness and brute force.
“Again? We’ve only heard it a thousand times already,” Eva complained, sitting between Adrianna and Lila.
She picked at a pearl and rose gold pin in her reddish blonde hair—one of Lila’s creations—and Lila cracked a smile at her childish pout.
When Eva got cross, she had none of Adrianna’s gravitas.
A frown only made her more adorable, the sudden color in her pale, rounded cheeks highlighting her cinnamon freckles.
Unfortunately, Adrianna and Eva had both been sorted into painting instead of woodworking; if she couldn’t be an architect, Lila would have liked to work alongside her friends.
“We already graduated,” Beni shot back, launching a grape at Adrianna. He’d grown into his broad frame, and now he towered over all of them, but this never dissuaded Adrianna from picking on him.
She dodged the grape, and it landed on the floor behind her.
“Not completely. Not totally.”
“What are we talking about?” Lila ventured.
“The Ceramics Chamber.” Adrianna waggled her eyebrows, and Lila regretted asking. If they told that story, the topic of conversation would inevitably turn toward—
“I still can’t get over the look on Luc’s face.” Adrianna snickered.
“Wait, you have to tell it from the beginning,” Castor demanded, toying with his goblet to Lila’s left.
He sat at the end of the table opposite Adrianna.
His gold circlet had been straightened over the dark hair that flowed to his waist, and when he frowned, his narrowed brown eyes made his pointed chin and high cheekbones more severe.
As pale as the polished marble they tread upon, he could be just as unyielding.
Beni groaned.
“All right, fine, but it’s the last time. Ever,” he conceded.
Adrianna leaned forward, smirking. She pushed aside her dessert plate and rested her elbows on the table, her hands clasped beneath her chin. Then she lowered her voice as much as she could amid the noise in the hall.
“So, once, when we were all supposed to be sleeping, Castor and I snuck out of the dormitories and followed Beni to the Ceramics Chamber in the Lessons Hall. And what do you suppose we found when we got there?”
“Yeah, yeah, I was with Felix.”
“Yes. But that’s not the good part.”
“You think that because you’re not Felix.” Beni scoffed.
“Eww. Hard pass. Anyway, we were going to sneak up and scare the aether out of you two, but Master Corinne beat us to it. She was furious.”
“‘Such shameless behavior,’” Castor mimicked Master Corinne’s high, breathy voice. He punched Beni’s arm, and Beni punched him back.
“I thought she was going to drag you two before the Council.” Adrianna cackled. “But then”—Adrianna’s eyes glittered as she got to her favorite part of the story—“Luc burst into the lessons room through the other door, and she nearly jumped to the ceiling. Her wings came out!”
“‘Why are you out of bed?! Are you involved in this?!’” Castor mimicked.
“They were both half-dressed. I’ll never forget the look on Luc’s face. He said he only wanted to borrow a polishing stone, but Master Corinne didn’t believe him.”
“Of course she didn’t! Studying when you should be eating, sleeping, or fucking is unnatural!” Beni popped an orange slice in his mouth.
“Well, she mainly didn’t believe him because Felix lied and said Luc was there to meet with them.
He got all thespian and whined about Luc being ashamed of them.
And Luc was just standing there all flustered and red.
” Adrianna chuckled, red-faced herself, and slapped the table. “Sweet aether, it was hilarious.”
“I don’t think it was right of Felix to lie about that,” Eva chimed in. “I mean, I know Luc is insufferable, but still…”
“It’s the only time he was ever punished for something.” Adrianna shot Eva a look. “I say he deserved it.”
“It wasn’t the only time,” Eva argued. “He used to be late to every dinner, remember? That’s why Master Tabitha made him eat with the instructors.”
“That wasn’t a punishment,” Castor said.
“He ate with the instructors because no one else would eat with him. Look at him all puffed up over there, the smug bastard.” Castor pointed across the room, and Lila followed the line of his finger to where Luc stood, greeting and shaking hands with a crowd of older masters at one long table.
Some of the masters were instructors; others were guild council members.
Two or three she recognized from the Council itself.
In his high-collared white robes and the gold circlet that crowned his chin-length, feathery blond hair, he was the most radiant angel in the room, though that might have been due to the shaft of light angled right toward his person.
He always carried himself in a courtly manner, as though he’d been created for the sole purpose of being superior to every other angel in existence, and he did so as he spoke with the master nearest him.
Yet Lila discerned the fatigue in the slump of his shoulders and the dimness in his normally bright eyes. For a foolish moment, she wished he would look her way so she could smile at him.
Instead, she looked away.
“Poor Luc,” Eva chided. “I bet he hasn’t sat down the entire banquet the way the masters are parading him around. No wonder he doesn’t have any friends.”
“You think that’s the reason he doesn’t have friends?” Castor replied.
“I bet he won’t get to eat any of this delicious food.” Pouting, Eva gestured to their half-eaten dessert plates.
“Eva.” Adrianna smirked. “Do you have a crush on Luc?”
“What?!” Eva whipped her head around. “No, no, no, I was just saying…I mean, I think that…Well, it’s awful that—”
“I’m joking.” She pinched Eva’s cheek.
Eva slapped her knuckles.
“You have the sweetest heart to think of Luc’s poor stomach.” Adrianna cocked her head. “Better?”
“Hmm.” Eva pursed her lips and gave her a dramatic side-eye. “Perhaps.”
A weighted stare passed between them.
“Cheers.” Adrianna lifted her cup, and Eva’s along with it. “To no more lessons.”
“And no more Luc,” Castor added.
Lila fought the urge to elbow him.
“Cheers,” she responded along with everyone else. They clinked their cups together and took long draughts of the sweet wine.