Compete (70 page)

And Laronda drags Chiyoko away, throwing me another meaningful glance.

Wow, Laronda!

I remain alone, sitting at the wall.

I
n moments, Aeson Kassiopei stands before me.

His expression is carefully veiled, but his gaze takes me in with intensity—all of me, golden dress, glittering hair, subtle makeup. I think he must like what he sees because a faint trace of color appears on his cheeks.

“Lark . . .” he says. His voice is steady, composed.

“Command Pilot. . . .” My voice is as neutral as I can make it.

And suddenly, without asking, he sits down in the closest empty seat next to me.

There is a weird moment as my eyes widen, while I stare straight ahead of me.

And then, with my peripheral vision, I see his face is turned and he is watching me closely . . . and saying nothing.

“I’m surprised you’re still here at the Dance,” I say, because I have to say something. “I thought you hated these things.”

“For the most part, yes, I prefer to leave as quickly as possible.” He continues looking at me as he speaks, so that now I feel I must turn also and face him.

“I suppose you have to dance so much at Court,” I mutter.

“Yes . . . too much.”

There is an awkward pause.

“So,” he says, looking slightly away and down, as though examining the floor. “How does it feel? A week remains. A week of
freedom
, and then we arrive in Atlantis.”

“I don’t know.” I watch his fringe of dark eyelashes as they come down to shield his eyes. “Not sure what to think, actually. My fate, all of our fates as Earth refugees—they are the great unknown. At least you can return to your home and normal life.”

“Ah. My
normal
life. . . .” He looks up again and his lapis blue eyes are suddenly vulnerable, tragic. “My normal life indeed awaits.”

“I understand.” I nod. “You must have so many unimaginable duties, so much additional responsibility . . . being who you are.”

“And who am I?” he says, as his eyes bore into mine, his gaze overwhelming me with its force, so that I have to blink.

“You are—the Imperial Crown Prince,” I say.

“Yes,” he says. “It is who I
am
. I may play at everything else—soldier, commander, pilot. But the one thing that I cannot escape is the fate of Imperial Kassiopei.” And he grows silent with a bitter smirk. I have never seen him so strangely open, as he is in these bizarre moments.

“
Gravity changing now!”

The playful disembodied voice of the Music Mage comes from the air around us. And immediately the beat of the music slows down while a physical sense of falling intrudes on our strange conversation.

I watch the strands of Aeson Kassiopei’s pale metallic gold hair begin to float lightly at his slightest movement, his very breath. . . .

My own hair rises also as I turn my head, swept up by the low gravity.

“But there must be so many wonderful aspects about being who you are,” I say softly after that small pause. “So much good that you can do for all your people with the power at your disposal. . . .”

“Oh, yes. Always so optimistic, Lark.” He looks at me sideways with a sarcastic disdainful smile. “First and foremost, I can do what all Kassiopei do, and that is, perpetuate the bloodline. All that precious Imperial genetic material must not go to waste.”

I frown slightly, with the tense effort of maintaining the impossible talk. “Is it true,” I say, “that you have to get married soon?”

He blinks, looks down at his hands, flexes his long elegant fingers. “Yes.” And then he turns to me, again watching me sideways, while individual strands of his golden hair float like cobwebs over his shoulder. “I will announce my beautiful Bride as soon as we arrive in Atlantis. What do you think about that, Lark?”

“I—” my breath stumbles, while my heart lurches painfully in my chest. “I wish you all happiness and all the best. Congratulations. . . . You must love each other very much. . . .”

“Oh, yes,” he replies, with a strange expression. “Lady Tirinea Fuorai and I . . . we are—” His words trail away.

“I think I saw you speaking to her once,” I interject softly, awkwardly. “She seems very beautiful, amazing.”

He smiles suddenly, a faint ghost smile. “Oh, she
is
.” He speaks each word with a measured, barely-leashed force, all the while looking at me with a strange hard gaze. “And I can’t wait to see her, as soon as we get back. . . . Even now, I want to hold her with my hands . . . feel her mouth against my teeth, and press her against the wall—”

My heart is beating so violently that I feel I’m about to have a heart attack. At the same time a bitter horrible lump is starting to build in my throat, and it’s about to burst. . . .

I
am about to burst, and become a horrible pitiful thing of tears.

I continue to look at him, because it is all I can do. And I think he sees that actual change in me, the inevitability of what is happening inside me. . . .

And he stops.

“No,” he says suddenly, and his voice goes dark. “I
don’t
want any of it. I
don’t
want
her
—not with all her beauty and riches and genetic nobility and empty false smiles. But—I
must
. I must take her as my Consort, my Bride, and eventually my Wife, and I must
breed
her relentlessly until she produces fat litters of healthy children with perfect DNA for my Father to take comfort and pride in, to know that the divine Kassiopei bloodline continues well into the next generation. . . .”

He cuts off the avalanche of words, and stands up suddenly, and his hair billows around him in an angry golden halo.

He stands before me, Phoebos Apollo. . . .

I watch him with parted lips, stunned by what he just said, while vertigo comes to overtake me as I look up, seeing his face swim above me. . . .

“
Gravity changing now
. . . .
”

This time the words of the Music Mage slither through the air as the music slows down completely, and the low gravity starts fading into perfect weightlessness.

“Enough bitter nonsense spoken for tonight,” he says in that moment, looking down at me, with a strange mix of pain and fierce intensity. “My apologies for spoiling your mood, Lark. Have a good night.”

And then he turns his back on me and starts to walk away.

But then he stops.

He turns around.

And like the force of the tide, inevitable, Aeson Kassiopei comes back, looking at me with an impossible to describe expression in his eyes.

“Oh, what’s the use . . .” he mutters softly, to
himself
, making a helpless gesture with his hand.

He stops again before me, and this time reaches out with his hand, palm up. “Come, Lark,” he says. “Dance with me—for the
first
and
last
time.”

I glance down at his outstretched hand, and then I look up into his eyes.

I stand up, while the winds seem to gather and stir around me, and the haunting song that plays from the walls of the spherical chamber is “Caribbean Blue” by the classic artist Enya.

And I take his hand, feeling with a shock, for the first time, the warm hard grasp of his fingers closing around mine, as he leads me onto the dance floor and into the aerial realm of awe. . . .

A
eson holds me by the hand—a gentle tug is all that’s required to launch us upwards over the honey lake of light below, while the floor sinks deeper down and falls away completely.

And then he pulls me closer, and suddenly I feel his other hand, strong and warm, come around my waist . . . and the mere touch sends shivers of electric charges throughout me, like concentric waves made by a stone cast into a lake.

His hands . . . touching me
.

We start circling gently to the ethereal rhythm of the waltz, and he pulls me in closer and closer with each turn, so that now his golden hair is mingling with my dark locks, and his face is inches away from mine, as he stares directly into my eyes with his clear blue ones. We are enclosed in a cocoon of floating strands and melody, and I feel his breath wash softly over my lips until I tremble with sweet honey agony that I don’t even understand. . . .

I am
nothing
, a weightless thing of air and breath, and all he has to do is pull me in closer yet, to close the distance of just another microscopic space between us that’s separating us, and I will
dissolve
into him. . . . Because right now, while it still exists, that tiny distance is the equivalent of infinity.

My hand that’s held tightly in his is now
on fire
with the overwhelming flood of sensation and warmth coursing between us. And my other hand rests on his shoulder, trembling fingers tangled in his soft golden strands of hair. . . .

Oh, pull me in
, my thoughts race in a fever, even as we soar toward the ceiling, where the honey flow of light has turned to rich deep amber—ripe, sweet light.

Closer, closer, please
. . . .

I watch his face, mesmerized. It has grown soft and slack with a gentle
intimate
expression that’s intended only for
me
.

“Lark . . .” he whispers, his breath washing against my lips, just as we rise close enough to touch the ceiling with its orbs of champagne bubbles and vines of cascading grapes.

And still holding my waist tightly, he lets go of my hand and suddenly brushes his fingertips against the side of my cheek, making me tremble, while sweet fever rises, in dissonant tendrils of chills and heat, buzzing inside me.

I see him in that moment of strange fragmented time . . . a sweet golden-haired boy with wise old eyes, a young man with a burning gaze of a child, a cold prince of blue ice and immeasurable distance, a selfless silent hero with a black band worn only by the ancient dead. . . . He is all of them and more, because he looks at me now, indomitable like a mountain and yet so
lost—
looks
inside
me, and through me, and somehow he
knows
me in that instant, more than I know myself.

“This cannot end,” he whispers, following the trail of his fingers with his breath, as he speaks close into my ear, words like drops of rain, softly falling.

His eyes . . . they are perfectly
desperate
and perfectly clear.

In that moment at last I
know
him also.

My lungs expand raggedly with each inhalation. I shudder as I see the dying light in him, and I want to weep suddenly.

“Please . . .” I say. And I don’t even know what I’m asking.

Please don’t let go
. . . .

In response, his hand tightens around my waist. Our mingling breath and the air between us, it is now my entire world.

“Lark . . .” he repeats again, and he is drowning. “I—”

“
Gravity changing now!”

I’ve never hated a phrase so much as I hate this simple one now, because it cuts him off, and indicates the end.

The end of the song.

The end of the haunting music.

The end of our beginning and any possibilities.

At once gravity starts to bloom, and with a shudder we both grasp each other’s hands and begin the soft descent, at the same time as the floor starts rising up gently toward us.

All the meanwhile as we slow down our circling, he continues to watch me, with a raw, intimate, hopeless gaze.

At last we stand on the dance floor. Breathing, breathing. . . .

He still holds one of my hands, as he leads me back to the perimeter walkway.

Here he stops and looks at me again.

“Thank you for the dance, Lark,” he says.

“Thank you . . .” I echo him softly. My voice has lost all its resonance and is leached of energy. I feel his
loss
already, the fading of the touch and the growing distance.

But then he says something that makes me pause and freeze in place.

“Whatever has happened between you and Sangre,” he says, “I hope it did not hurt you deeply. I am very sorry about it. You deserve to be happy. Whatever has happened, it is none of my business—”

“
You
happened,” I say suddenly, finding my voice.

He grows still. And his eyes are wide-open, startled, vulnerable things.

“
You
happened between us,” I repeat. “Logan and I broke up because of
you
.”

His lips part. He blinks.

I’m not sure if it is astonishment or some other
insight
.

And then he only shakes his head, and nods to me. The next instant, without saying another word, he turns away and begins walking swiftly through the crowd.