Treason: Book Two of the Grimoire Saga (a Young Adult Fantasy series) (10 page)

He glanced down the other end of the table, but couldn’t see past Gavin’s frame. He figured they were equally as unengaged in whatever the king said.

Gavin continued his speech, but Braeden stopped listening. He wanted to roll his eyes. He wanted to laugh, to scream that this was a façade. A joke. None of the other Bloods were even listening. This was a charade, a formality they were all eager to end.

Braeden glanced out over the throngs of yakona sitting beside each other. At the first table, Twin watched Gavin with a forced smile from her place next to a Kirelm woman, who eyed Gavin through narrowed eyes.

With a small sigh, Braeden leaned back. He rubbed the small black talisman in his pocket and let his mind drift back to Kara. He would still ask for at least one dance, with or without Gavin’s permission. That way, he would at least be able to enjoy one last moment with her and not have to think about what would happen once they left Ethos.

Kara should have been paying attention to Gavin’s speech, but she was mostly focused on how much she wanted to look over at Braeden.

“Yakona!” Gavin said,
still
talking. “For the first time in over thirty thousand years, the kingdoms have been brought together under one roof to celebrate a new era of unity and peace.”

Gavin continued, but Kara tuned out. She’d tried. She tried to listen, to pay attention, but Gavin just went on and on. He spoke like he had a time minimum. It was all Kara could do to sit up straight. Now and again, her shoulders would hunch, or her eyes would snap in and out of focus as a bug crawled across the tablecloth. On one such occasion, she looked up to see a group of Hillsidians sitting at the nearest table, scowling at her. They leaned over to one another and whispered when she caught them staring. Kara looked back to Gavin, who continued without hesitation.

“…but that was ages ago, and this is a new era. We will not fall prey to what we once were, but look to the future…”

Nope. She wasn’t forcing herself to listen to that.

The room erupted into applause, which Kara joined without thinking about it. Gavin sat back down beside her, and she suppressed a sigh of relief. Finally—they could get on to the ceremony and then dinner. Her stomach growled. At least—

Ithone stood and addressed the table in much the same way as Gavin. Kara’s shoulders drooped. Her mouth hung slightly open.

But I’m so hungry!

Movement in her peripheral vision made her glance again at the first table. Twin caught her eye and pointed to her lips before smiling.

Kara closed her mouth and sat up straight. Twin was right—Kara needed to get over it. She was a political figure now, as much as that
sucked.

She watched Ithone but didn’t force herself to listen. Braeden snuck a look over his shoulder to her. He grinned, which made her smile back—that grin of his was too infectious to resist.

His eyes shifted over to Gavin, but Kara couldn’t see the king’s face from this angle. Braeden’s smile disappeared, and he turned away with only one quick look back to her. Whatever was going on between them, Kara didn’t like it. They were two powerful yakona—if they didn’t sort this out soon, their spat wouldn’t end well.

Something scampered up her leg. She looked down to see Flick curl up in her lap. His ear twitched, and he settled down to sleep as if she had simply forgotten him in her room.

She hadn’t forgotten—Twin told her she shouldn’t bring him. She’d set him up with a feast, which had distracted him as she left. However, it seemed his food hadn’t lasted as long as she’d intended.

She ran her fingers through his fur. He purred. Gavin looked over and frowned, but Kara shrugged. She wasn’t going to make her pet leave. Besides, she wasn’t much good at controlling him anyway. She settled back into her chair in an effort to find a balance between comfort and grace. This was only the second speech of several—she just hoped this would all be over soon.

Kara was two seconds from throwing her shoe at Blood Frine of Losse. His great big blue head was a beacon of long-winded loquaciousness. She’d vacillated between a couple words in the hour he took to tell everyone how great his kingdom was, but loquacious seemed to suit him best.

Two and a half hours of speeches was enough. She needed
food.
Flick whined from his place on her lap, so apparently she wasn’t alone even after the giant spread she’d left him earlier. She rubbed his head, but he batted at her hand with his tail and glared up at her.

Braeden’s occasional smile and Twin’s constant reminders to not look bored were all that kept Kara sane during the speeches. Frine was the last to speak, and he needed to stop. She was going to break something if he didn’t just
stop.

The hall erupted into applause as he finished and bowed, Kara admittedly clapping much louder than she would have if he hadn’t been the last to speak.

But instead of food, two Hillsidians in ornate green suits brought out a long, rolled piece of parchment and a quill. Kara should have read the program Twin gave her earlier. There was no telling when actual food would be involved at this rate.

Each Blood stood, crossed to Gavin, signed the treaty, and clasped his hand firmly before sitting back down to murmur with their nearest family member. When Aislynn—the last of the Bloods to sign—sat down, Gavin rolled up the fully signed parchment and set it back on the table. His hands hovered over the scroll until it gleamed with brilliant green sparks. With a
snap
and a dust of smoke, three more appeared on the table. He handed each Blood a scroll, and the hall erupted in applause yet again.

Kara glanced back at the first table out of habit, looking for Twin, but no one sat in the chair.

The hundreds of candles lining each wall dimmed. Kara tensed, wishing she’d brought her sword. Panic shot through her chest. Carden had found them. The Gala had been a mistake—it was the perfect place for Carden to attack everyone at once. He must have broken through, must have found—

Lights shone from somewhere overhead, focusing on a cleared area maybe a dozen feet from the head table. A group of Hillsidians in bright costumes posed, Twin at their lead.

Drums played from somewhere above, and the ladies in the group moved their hips in sharp time to the beat. A second chorus of drums joined in, and a third; each line of drums bred new movement from the group.

Kara sighed. She leaned back, shaking her head. It was a performance, not an invasion.

“Are you all right?” Gavin asked, his voice entirely too close.

Kara looked over and nodded, leaning back when she realized his face was barely a foot from hers. She turned back to the performance without answering. She leaned her cheek on one hand to give herself a better distance from Gavin. It was an unbecoming way to sit, but she doubted anyone would see her in the dim light.

The dancing intensified, the music and curves of the dancers’ movements growing stronger and stronger the longer they danced. Their choreography hypnotized Kara—they moved with a primal passion but spun with a grace she would never master in her life. And Twin led every movement as if she’d choreographed it herself.

The music raced to a crescendo, the dancers spinning and jumping as the racing beat made Kara’s heart beat out of control. They paused—some in midair—as the song ended.

The room burst into applause. Most of the noise came from Hillsidians, but Kara saw a few Kirelms nodding to each other as they clapped. Anyone could appreciate the skill required for such a passionate dance.

Twin bowed as the rest of the dancers retreated into a door behind the sloping staircase. “Thank you! Next, we will be hearing the lovely voices of the Kirelm singers. Please give them as kind a welcome.”

Four lines of Kirelms walked from behind the very stairs where the Hillsidians had disappeared. As they spread out across the floor, Twin bowed to them and left. The singers now had the room’s full attention.

Each Kirelm snapped their wings open in the quiet hall and took off at a different time, heading for the otherwise inaccessible rafters. As they flew, a low hum began. It resonated in the hall’s acoustics, brewing as they flew. The sound blended with the beating of their wings, growing stronger the longer it lasted, until the first landed on a walkway high in the rafters. The humming split apart into lyrics Kara didn’t understand as the Kirelms sang a sweet tune, its somber lines dipping in the perfect blend of the singers’ harmonies.

Kara settled back in her chair, hunger forgotten. Even Flick set his paws on the table to get a better look.

At an unseen cue, the somber melody broke into a racing thrum. The song had no instruments, yet some of the singers managed to create a deep bass rhythm that held the troupe together like a drum line. The song raced away, a vocal epic that kept Kara on the edge of her seat.

The song built, growing in power until Kara leaned forward, waiting for the end but not ever wanting it to finish. Goose bumps raced across her arms. The vocalists held the last note, a cliffhanger, even as the room erupted into applause.

“That was beautiful!” she said to whoever would listen.

“Wait until you see what’s next,” someone said beside her.

She turned to see the Lossian prince sitting in the seat next to her. He had been so quiet throughout the speeches that she hadn’t even looked over to realize he’d been in the seat next to her. Come to think of it, she’d never actually heard him speak before.

“Is Losse performing next, by chance?” she asked with a grin.

He smiled. “Perhaps.”

One of the Kirelm singers flew toward the head table and hovered in the air as he came near.

“Next come the Lossian dancers, who pride themselves on performances that perfectly balance art and war,” the singer said. He bowed to the table and flew off into the now-empty rafters. Kara wondered where the other singers had gone.

A mist rolled out into the crowd from nowhere in particular, weaving through the guests’ feet as it consumed the floor. The fog swirled in the room’s center, growing thicker. A Lossian woman appeared from the mist, even though there was no way for her to have even crawled through the thin fog without being seen.

The Lossian performer stood on one leg and rested the other on her knee. She held a sword just in front of her face, eyes closed, and did not move. The room settled in to watch.

A harp played, though Kara couldn’t see it. Its gentle notes hovered over the mist. In response, the Lossian dancer waved her sword in small arcs, her arm the only part of her body that moved. Wherever her sword pointed, another Lossian appeared, already mimicking her movements as they rose from the mist. In a matter of minutes, perfectly spaced Lossians covered the floor.

“How are they doing that?” Kara asked, leaning toward the Lossian prince.

He grinned. “There are some water techniques we will never share, even with you.”

So it was a water technique—used for war, no doubt. She wondered if the Lossians were maybe moving through the mist somehow, or changing form to remain unseen. She shook her head and turned back to the performance. She would have to figure it out later.

A drum joined the harp’s chorus in a combination Kara would have otherwise thought to be, well, strange. But as the two instruments blended together, the Lossians spun their swords and moved in unison, always with a gentle grace that rivaled even Twin’s dancing. The drum sped up, pulling the dancers along with it until they were jumping and flipping across the dance floor as one.

The drum slowed, its notes fading away until only the harp remained. The dancers, in turn, slowed as well until they stopped altogether. Just as the original dancer had summoned them, she now dismissed them. They sank into the mist one-by-one until she was alone on the dance floor. She paused in the same position she had assumed at the dance’s start and bowed once the harp notes faded away with a mournful twang.

The room applauded yet again.

The dancer bowed once more. “My friends, please welcome Ayavel’s seers for our final performance.”

She dissolved into the fog as it faded away. Two lines of Ayavelians entered, breaking up the mist as they strode through it. They each carried a glass vase with a lid. Inside, a blue orb glowed in its clear prison, its light twisting around with no defined edge.

The Ayavelians bowed to the head table and lifted the lids from their vases. The orbs flew out, each spinning around the others until they became a floating blur that rose into the rafters. The blur of light darkened the higher they went, turning black as they spun faster and faster.

A
boom
echoed through the hall as the spinning orbs collided near the ceiling. Darkness spread from the ceiling like dripping paint on a globe—it encircled the room until the last light faded.

Kara held onto her armrest. She didn’t like darkness, not complete darkness like this. Gavin’s hand found hers, but she brushed it away. She had Flick. She would be fine.

A brilliant white light erupted in the room’s center, blinding her. It took a few moments to blink away the sudden brilliance, but Kara gasped when she did.