She was breathless and confused and terrified and elated—all at the same time.
Hall continued, “You don’t have to decide right now, but think about it. I’ll help you get away from here, no strings attached. No shackles. You can be free. You can be whoever you want to be. I know that’s what you want. I’ve felt you inside me, remember.” The corner of his mouth twitched up irrepressibly.
She couldn’t help but laugh softly. “I’ll think about it. It’s a lot to take in. It’s…life-changing. But I’ll think about it.”
“Good.” He leaned over to kiss her gently. “I better get out of here before someone catches us. I’ll see you tonight at Court.”
“Hopefully, Patrice won’t pick you for her partner this week.”
“She won’t. I’ve been sending her back-off vibes when she touches me.” He gave her another rakish smile that made her laugh.
“That’s how you’ve done it! I’ve wondered how she’s been so stupid as to not choose you. You’re by far the most attractive Potential there is.”
“Thank you for that.” He kissed her again and then stood up, straightening his clothes and pulling on his boots. “Think about it. A completely different life, away from here. It might be exactly what you’ve been dreaming of.”
He was right. He always seemed to be right. It would be annoying if it weren’t so irresistible.
She watched him slip out of the room, moving silently, and then she collapsed back against the bed.
She thought about him for a long time, and then thought about her own situation.
She did want to leave. If it weren’t for Patrice, she would do so without any hesitation.
But Patrice was her sister, and she’d been very foolish lately. Kyla could hardly leave her to get into trouble with the Coalition.
There must be something she could do that wouldn’t mean abandoning her sister.
She mulled over it for a long time.
Six
That evening, Kyla felt very strange as she went down for Court at the normal time.
She felt different than she had even the day before—like she’d experienced something, lived through something, that no one else had.
She wasn’t sure if it was how she’d been with Hall that afternoon or the way she’d been seriously considering leaving her home planet for good. Either way, she felt far apart from the people around her—even farther than she normally did.
As she took her normal seat at the end of the royal table, she scanned the room, her eyes landing intuitively on where Hall sat among the other Potentials. He was watching her, as usual, and his lips turned up just slightly when their eyes met.
She had to fight not to smile back.
He was too much—his spirit not dulling even in the strangest of circumstances. She wanted to be with him, more than she’d ever wanted to be with anyone else.
Maybe that was enough. Maybe that was the sign that she should leave with him after all.
She looked away when her confusion made her too self-conscious. Court was in full swing, even though Patrice hadn’t yet arrived. Established couples had already started to make out, although no one was yet going too far. They didn’t yet know what mood Patrice would implement for the evening’s entertainment.
Kyla wished she were sitting next to Hall. She wished she could claim him as hers. Not that she wanted to have sex with him in front of all these people, but she wished she could take him back to her room this evening.
Instead, she had to hope that his gift would be enough to keep Patrice from choosing him as a partner tonight. It would be just Kyla’s luck for him to not be able to discourage her interest, and then she’d have to watch him making love to her sister.
She wondered what he would do, should that happen. Then she realized she already knew. He was a practical man. He’d told her himself. He lived with no shackles—no ties or commitments. He would do whatever needed to be done to get out of a tight situation without any harm being done to him or his profit.
Whatever had happened between him and Kyla wasn’t likely to change that.
It didn’t matter. She wasn’t expecting him to become a new man—a different man. She just needed to decide whether what they had was enough for her to leave her planet, her sister, and everything she’d known.
She sat in a daze for a few minutes, trying to figure out this mystery, until she heard a familiar fanfare from the horns signal Patrice’s entrance.
The fanfare went on for longer than normal as her sister slowly entered the throne room. Kyla tried not to cringe at the elaborate introduction. No matter how many times she was warned, her sister just wouldn’t learn. Calling attention to her royal pedigree was dangerous.
But a fanfare was just a fanfare. There shouldn’t be anything else occurring tonight that would be too much of a problem. After all, it wasn’t a royal masquerade. It was just a normal Feast Day.
Kyla was just registering this thought when Malone, the Court Director, cleared his throat and gave the official introduction. Instead of his normal, “The Lady Governor, Patrice,” he began a two-minute, traditional introduction, going through the entire family history and ending with “The Empress of the Five Destroyed Worlds, Lady Patrice of Evalon.”
Kyla almost groaned as the crowd burst into their normal applause. Some of them were clearly thrilled at Patrice claiming back her heritage, while others were likely just going along with the majority’s sentiment.
Either way, this shouldn’t be happening. There might not be any Coalition officials here tonight, but there could easily be Coalition spies.
Or even just someone greedy enough to report rebellion to the Coalition in return for payment or favors.
There was no way of ensuring that a group of people this large—anywhere—would be completely loyal.
Kyla felt sick as she briefly met her sister’s eyes. Patrice just raised her eyebrows and lifted her chin, in a willful expression she’d used ever since they were children.
Fighting her nerves, Kyla glanced back over at Hall. His expression had sobered, as if he too knew what she was afraid of.
Kyla didn’t have time to dwell on it long, though, since Patrice made her way over to the Potentials in a completely silent throne room to go through with her traditional ritual of choosing a weekly partner.
Kyla silently pleaded for her not to choose Hall.
Patrice walked past each of the men, studying them all carefully. She always did that, even when she already knew who she was going to choose.
Then she reached out to touch Hall’s hand, and Kyla tried not to gulp.
Almost immediately, Patrice pulled her hand back and shook her head.
Kyla let out a breath, knowing that Hall had used his gift to once again discourage Patrice from choosing him.
It was nice. Really nice. That one man in the world—in any world—didn’t want Patrice over Kyla.
He only wanted her.
Patrice ended up choosing a dark, beefy man who’d been around for about a month. Things moved quickly after that, as the best of the food was served and more wine was passed around for the guests. The other women started to choose their partners. Kyla might have chosen Tor, just for someone to talk to, but he was on duty tonight, stationed at the main entrance of the room.
He nodded at her, and she gave him a little wave.
Since she couldn’t choose Hall, Kyla just kept her seat. Better to be alone than to be forced to pretend intimacy with anyone else.
As the Court declined into its normal decadence—with people over-eating, getting drunk, and coming loudly in a variety of positions around her—Kyla realized for the thousandth time that she wanted nothing to do with this.
Maybe this was her home. Maybe this kind of pleasure was in its blood. But it wasn’t anything she wanted.
Better to be with Hall—even though she didn’t yet fully know him—in some faraway planet than to be here, facing an endless life of empty evenings, watching people pre
tend to live.
Because that was what was happening here. Her father had been right, so many years ago. They were filling themselves with a pale, artificial copy of what meaningful life should really be about—like their wine that was supposed to be fine but was only a shallow reflection of the real thing.
***
Kyla didn’t sleep at all that night.
She left Court feeling nauseated, and the nausea didn’t dispel, even after reaching her room and finally finding peace and quiet.
Her mind just wouldn’t rest. She had to do something. She just wasn’t entirely clear on what it was she should do.
In the morning, she decided what she really needed to do was talk to her sister. She couldn’t tell her about Hall, of course, but she could at least try to talk a little sense into her.
No matter how foolish, Patrice was still her sister, and nothing was going to change that.
She asked her maid to tell her as soon as Patrice was up and available, but unfortunately Patrice always slept in very late. So Kyla had to wait four hours—until just after eleven in the morning—before she was told that Lady Patrice was awake and in her dressing chamber.
Kyla went to find her.
“You’re up early,” Patrice said with a little smile as Kyla entered the room. Patrice was brushing her hair, seated in front of a mirror at her dressing table.
Kyla moved a chair from against the wall closer to where her sister sat. “Early? It’s almost noon.”
“Who does anything before noon?”
“I do.”
“Yes. You’ve always been a little crazy that way. I blame it on the fact that your natural instincts aren’t satiated by a skillful man.”
Hall was more than skillful, Kyla couldn’t help but think—but then she brushed the thought away because it would just be asking for trouble if she tried to defend herself against such a trivial attack. “You promised me you wouldn’t do anything to cause trouble with the Coalition.”
Patrice rolled her eyes. “And what did I do?”
“You know what you did. First, at the masquerade, and then last night at Court. You know you’re asking for trouble, Patrice. You know it.”
“That’s Lady Patrice to you,” her sister snapped.
Kyla sighed, feeling like she’d just been slapped, but also knowing from long experience that this was how Patrice always got when she felt defensive. “I’m serious about this, and you should be too. We’ve had it easy here—because the Coalition mostly leaves us alone. But that’s not going to last forever if you keep flaunting your royal history in their face. Someone is going to tell.”
“Who? Who will tell? Everyone here is loyal to me and to our traditions.”
“You don’t know that. It’s too many people to know for sure.”
“Are you going to tell?”
“Of course not! I love you! You know that.”
“Then let me be who I am.”
“What you’re going to be is killed or imprisoned if the Coalition decides you’re defying them. Why can’t you understand that?” Kyla’s voice broke as her frustration and helplessness grew. It was like arguing with a stone wall. Something absolutely immovable.
“So that’s what you think? That we should just give up everything in fear of them?” Patrice’s voice was uncharacteristically serious all of a sudden, and her eyes were cold and hard. “We should give up all of who we are? Our history, our identity, the nature of our world—just because we’re afraid they’re going to hurt us? That’s really what you think? We should let them take everything?”
“If you keep this up, they are going to take everything!”
As she said the words, Kyla was hit with a chilling revelation—one that changed everything.
She saw again the over-indulgence and meaningless pleasure being chased by the people in the throne room last night—and she understood with frightening clarity why it had always felt so empty to her.
It was empty.
But they’d been left with nothing else.
She almost choked on the reality of their world—of everything that had been taken when the Five Worlds had been destroyed and then taken again when the Coalition had swallowed them up a hundred years ago, without even a fight.
“We’ve already lost it all,” Kyla whispered, her eyes blurring with tears that surprised her. “They’ve already taken it all. We’ve just been pretending that they haven’t.”
Patrice stared at her, and for a moment it felt like they actually understood each other, that they shared something hard and painful in their gaze.
But then Patrice’s face cleared and she shook her head. “They haven’t. Not yet.”
“We want to say they haven’t because we’re comfortable here. But we lost everything good and deep and real about this place a long time ago. No empty ritual or rootless claim to be Empress is going to change that.”
“What do you know anyway?” Patrice snapped, her cheeks flushed with what Kyla recognized as real anger now. “You’ve always been jealous because you can’t be Empress yourself.”
“I’m not jealous! Neither one of us can be Empress. And I don’t want anything you have.”
“You can tell yourself that all you want, and you can pretend to be worried when all you really want to do is take away what’s mine. Leave me now. I don’t want you anymore.” Patrice’s tone was regal, authoritative, ice cold.
Kyla froze for a minute in the wake of it. “I’m your sister,” she whispered.
Patrice met her eyes with chilly hauteur. “I know who you are.”
Kyla shook her head and turned around to walk slowly out of the room. She wasn’t going to convince her sister to be smart. Her sister didn’t know her at all.
There was nothing left for her here. No history, no real identity, no planet worth having. And no real family.
There was absolutely nothing keeping her here anymore.
She could make something different of herself if she left. She could be the kind of person she’d always wanted to be.
It hurt. It was terrifying. But it felt absolutely right.
She’d said to Hall once that maybe they were doing life wrong, and she realized she had been right about that. She was doing life wrong. She was trying to live without any risk, and that would never give her what she wanted.
She was going to leave with Hall.
On this recognition, she picked up her speed down the hall. It was too early yet for Hall to be out on a walk, but Kyla was going to go outside and wait for him. She wanted to tell him. As soon as possible. Her body thrilled with it, even as her spine still shivered with fear.
She was so caught up in her decision that she didn’t look where she was going, and she collided full-on with someone as she turned a corner.
“Whoa,” Tor said, smiling as he reached out to stabilize her balance. “You’re in a hurry.”
“Not really,” Kyla lied, since she could hardly tell him where she was actually hurrying off too. “Just not paying attention. Sorry about that.”
“It’s fine.” Tor glanced over her shoulder, at the hallway she’d just turned out of. “Were you visiting your sister?”
Kyla nodded, feeling glum again, despite her excitement about running away with Hall.
“No luck in talking sense into her?”
“None.” Kyla let out a long breath, speaking the truth she’d come to just now in her sister’s dressing room. “She’s never going to see reason. She thinks it’s a way of laying claim to who we really are—as a people, as a planet—and who she really is. She thinks she can find meaning in it. She’s never going to stop.”
“Even if it puts her—and you—in danger.”
“Even if. No matter who it puts in danger.”
Tor’s mouth twisted. “It would be nice,” he murmured, “if people would occasionally be smart.”
“I haven’t found that happens very often.”
He chuckled softly, a little bitterly. “Me either.”
Kyla waited, since it looked like he was going to say something else. An expression she didn’t understand twisted on his face.
Finally, he murmured, “All right. So be it. We do what we can.”
She nodded. “Yes. That’s all we can do.” She smiled at him and tried to hide her impatience. She really wanted to get outside and wait for Hall to come find her. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. I’m just fine. I’ll talk to you later.” He gave a little shrug and walked away from her, continuing in the direction he’d originally been going.
Kyla gave him one last glance, and then she cleared her mind and headed for the back entrance to the palace.
The most important thing right now was to find Hall.
***
Hall went outside just after noon, far too early for Kyla to be out yet on her walk.
He knew it was foolish to feel so jittery and excited, but he did. He’d asked Kyla to leave with him yesterday, and he thought there was a pretty good chance that she’d say yes.
He didn’t know for sure, though. He hoped she’d have her decision made when he saw her this afternoon.
He walked down the trail they normally took, pacing back and forth from where the woods ended at the palace courtyard. Still no sign of her.
He felt like a foolish boy, about to get lucky for the first time.
He still had no idea why he’d offered to take her with him yesterday. It hadn’t been planned. He’d always assumed he’d have to leave her. But after connecting with her so deeply, after feeling like there was nothing more important than her, he just couldn’t see himself walking away.
What could it hurt, after all? If things worked out between them, they could stay together. And, if not, then nothing serious was lost. He could make sure she was taken care of. She’d be happier somewhere else than she was here.
No shackles.
No one could be genuinely happy on this god-forsaken planet—all of the pleasure it offered was totally fake. In reality, it was as empty as the prison planet he’d been trapped in last year. Evalon was prettier, but people here were just as desperate, stripped of what made them real.