by Dana Swift
She cocks her head to the side, thinking. “Yeah, maybe I do.”
Kalyan has been acting weird since discovering my one Touched arm. Is it pity? I practically know every reaction to my ungodly and unnaturally naked limb. But his surprise, delight, and understanding about the legends…Yeah, it’s strange, and different from all my other experiences. I can’t seem to drag it out of my head, even after we start flying.
The skyglider twitches in the air. I start and can’t help but grab onto him.
“You okay?” I ask. I’m always in control of my own flying. Haven’t had to rely on someone to cart me around since I was twelve. Gods, I wish Hubris hadn’t died tonight. Or better put, I wish I hadn’t killed her.
“I’m fine,” he says.
“I can fly us if you want.” My arm hasn’t moved from his body, but I feel uncomfortable latched on like this.
“I’m fine,” he repeats with a laugh. He seems overly happy. Maybe he’s on an adrenaline high from the fight or maybe he is still grinning about me telling him he was right about my needing help. Is that all a man needs to be happy? Validation?
The skyglider falters again and my stomach dips out from under me. My other arm wraps around him instinctively and now I’m hugging the guy. In a moment it’s over and we cruise like nothing happened. “Are you doing that on purpose?” I ask.
He laughs. “Possibly.”
Then the oddest thing happens. He reaches for my hand. My right hand! I release my hold, but instead of nudging me backward to indicate I should let go—which is what I expect—he catches my palm, lightly squeezes, and pulls my arms together so they continue to wrap around him.
“It’s safer,” he whispers.
I don’t know what to think. No one touches my right arm on accident. My parents don’t intentionally avoid it per se. But still, I’ve become accustomed to using my left hand for everything. Any contact with anyone and I offer my Godly arm, not the naked and alien-looking flesh. Enough awkwardness and bullying from other children taught me long ago it’s a monstrosity. I still think it’s one of the main reasons I wasn’t sent to the academy to learn magic with Jatin and other royal children.
Yet Kalyan touches me like it’s nothing. The first time he helped pick me up and the first time we had given our respects on the Naupure stairs he had taken my right hand, but that had been an accident on my part and he hadn’t yet known about my Touch. But tonight, it’s as if he saw my arm, my insecurity and my pain, and was making it clear that…
Gods, this is your fiancé’s guard! He carried you and now you’re letting him squeeze your right hand? But my body leaps for joy like it’s escaped the palace for the first time. That one simple gesture felt safe, and right, and more intimate than I could possibly imagine. My palm still tingles with the pressure and heat of his fingers squeezing mine.
I can’t let him know what it’s doing to me, though. “Safer because you are that bad of a flier?”
The skyglider lurches and I hang on for dear life. I let out a yelp too. I’m not proud.
“Yeah, I’m not too good.” His voice slices with sarcasm. He’s messing with me.
“You know, I can take this thing over,” I say.
“Not without me letting you.”
He’s right. It’s grueling to take over a skyglider unless the original flier’s magic fails or they allow it. But…is this flirting? Is he flirting with me? His tone is the kind filled with secret smiles. I shimmy and twist forward to try to grasp his expression.
I catch his eyes.
“Drop over there, in that square.” I gesture and the skyglider dives. The world tumbles from under us and wind springs up as we plummet. “Gods, not literally.” My fingers fan over his stomach and the momentum of the dive slides my whole body against his. That’s when Kalyan’s stomach flexes and not in some display of his core muscles. He coils in pain.
As soon as my feet hit cobblestones, I scramble to the ground.
He’s laughing. “Sorry.”
I don’t join in his merriment. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
His laughing eyes widen. “How…how did you find out?”
“Gods, it’s obvious when you make me hang on to you like that.”
Kalyan steps over his skyglider and in a quick snap it’s shortened and hooked back onto his belt. “Look, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you immediately. Right when I found out, which was only about an hour ago, I—”
I walk forward, cutting off his rambling. He’s so used to not having pink magic he doesn’t even know when he should ask for help. “It’s okay. Just let me see it now.” I glance down at his stomach.
He takes a giant step back. “Wait, what? What do you want to see?”
“The bruises on your stomach.”
“The bruises on my…” He chokes on his laughter. “Those are fine. I don’t need pink magic.”
“Are you sure?” This must be how he felt, wanting to check out my arm earlier.
“Yeah, stop trying to undress me, Smoke.”
“I wasn’t…that’s not what…” I clamp my mouth shut. I’m falling for his antics again. I need to get better at not letting him get to me. “The place is this way,” I say as deadpan as possible, and turn.
* * *
I’m pleasantly surprised the bar’s inhabitants don’t want to rip Kalyan’s and my heads off. Respectable members of society line the wall, not black-clad Vencrin sailors or drug dealers. But I forgot to account for the fact that thanks to our ripped black clothing, that’s what Kalyan and I look like. For blood’s sake, Kalyan has someone else’s blood splattered on his pants. How did I not notice that before?
I think it says something about me that I want to cast on my red mask and yell boo as the third suspicious set of eyes takes me in and then drops away. Or, even better than boo, Hello, everyone, I might rule the country one day. Imagine that.
The warmest greeting comes from the candlelit lamps dripping from the ceiling and the yards of fabric draped between them. The second-warmest greeting comes from the gleaming tabletops, oiled by thousands of hands.
“Corner,” Kalyan and I say at the same time. We share a glance. Is he as paranoid as I am, or does he know his blood-splattered pants need to be hidden from this bewildered crowd? As I slip into the corner seat, it feels nice to press my back against the cushion and survey this glowing marshmallow kingdom of laughter and drunkenness.
“So, you’ve been here before?” Kalyan asks.
“No, I’ve just seen that it’s open after I leave the Underground.” I lean forward and he mirrors me. “I don’t normally go celebrate after I beat up ten men.”
“Then what do you do?”
A man ambles up to our table. “Drinks are at the bar. Here is what we are offering this late at night.” A menu smacks onto the table as he turns away. I guess I can count that as the third-warmest greeting, but the paneled curtains, in all their brocade brightness, come pretty close.
“Do you think they know we knocked out ten men and burned their ship, or is it something we said?” Kalyan asks.
“Must be the way we breathed.” I know it must be our faces, but I don’t want to ask him how I look right now. Because it’s going to end up being an awkward “You look fine,” or even “You look beautiful,” when I don’t care because I survived a Vencrin battle, and thank the gods, Kalyan isn’t someone I need to impress. Just someone I need to cover if a Vencrin walks in right now.
The waiter boomerangs back to us eventually and we order everything that sounds edible. Kalyan goes to the bar to buy Roloc, a frothy liquor Agsa invented that glows in a rainbow of colors when swirled. I ask for a continuous flow of coconut water to be dredged to our table.
“So tell me, what do you think of Jatin Naupure?” Kalyan asks as he slides back into our little corner. There he is, Jatin, the man I do need
to impress one day. The man I’ll have to be pretty for.
I choke on my first sip of coconut water. I’m starting to wonder if there is a mind reading spell the academy secretly teaches its students. “What? Why?” I sputter.
“I want your opinion.”
“Why would I have an opinion about him?” Gods, I really don’t want to talk about my fiancé.
“You seem like the kind of person who always has an opinion.”
Was that an insult or a compliment?
“I mean that in a good way. I want to know what you think,” Kalyan continues before I can say anything. “And I know you have some impression.”
He had me there. I can’t say I didn’t meet him in the carriage. I don’t exactly know how to answer, though. I’m speechless.
“Fine. Better put, do you think he and Adraa will get along?” He tries to catch my eye. “Be happy?” Well, that officially reconfirms it, then: Kalyan doesn’t know who I really am. I’ll have to thank Maharaja Naupure later for keeping my identity a secret.
I guess that means I can be truthful. I finally face him head-on. “Honest answer?”
“Of course,” he urges. Eagerness lights his eyes.
“I think Jatin is arrogant and cold.”
Now he’s the one to cough. “Wow, so you’re saying she hates him, then?”
“I don’t think it would be hatred between them.”
He brightens, cocks an eyebrow, and smiles. Maybe it’s the adrenaline from the compact series of events that have transpired in the past few hours, but I want to release this truth, out of the thousands of secrets I hold within me. “I think it would be worse, contempt.”
He pauses, looks down at his drink, and rubs the condensation off the glass with his thumb. It flashes pink to blue. Jatin is his raja! I shouldn’t say this stuff to him, no matter how honest or loopy from adrenaline I am. Besides, honesty isn’t my strength. I still can’t seem to tell him my real name. I don’t want to burst this thing, this partnership we have.
“I’m sorry if I offended you. What’s he really like?” I ask.
He frowns as if he can’t name one good quality. Oh blood. “Gods, you can’t think of one nice thing?”
“No, no, just don’t know where to start.”
I snort, but gulp my drink to obscure the noise.
“He’s good at magic.”
“Ah, huh. But so are you,” I counter. And Gods was he.
“It isn’t a contest between the two of us.” He smirks.
I smile, then look out the window for a second. Why was I trying to make it a competition? I liked Kalyan, almost everything about him. In some weird, twisted part of my mind did I want to convey he was better than Jatin, better for me?
Kalyan doesn’t sense my troubles. “But really, he wants to help others. The avalanche in Alkin wasn’t for show. He flew as fast as he could and after he saved all those people he was…happy.”
I nod. Jatin’s letter flickers into my memory. “Yeah, happy enough to rub it in Adraa’s face.”
“How do you know about that?” He smirks again as if he’s caught me in something.
Blood. How would Jaya Smoke know about those letters? “Um.” Might as well tell the truth on this one too. “About a year ago the Belwar staff started opening all out-of-country mail after an attempted poisoning of a Belwar raja. A staff member read this…well, this love note.” I shrug. “Sadly, it kind of became a thing for Adraa to read them aloud. The other women think it’s true love or some crap.”
The color drains from Kalyan’s face. I think he must know about the secret messages. “What?” he says.
“But it’s all a joke. He did that, you know, probably to tease her, to make fun of her. It’s all pure competition between the two of them.”
He shakes his head. “Gods, I’m embarrassed…for him.”
I suck in a breath, wondering if I should ask something. When will I have a chance like this again, though? “What does Jatin think of Adraa, then? I mean really.” I wait, as I’ve never waited before.
“Well, she’s a little annoying.”
“Yeah.” I gulp my drink to offset how resigned my voice must sound.
I knew it! I knew the sneering face that joked about our loving relationship only joked because I repulsed him. I remember my younger self, so jealous of where he was, and I wasn’t, that I would constantly ask questions. I would try to trip him up on some form of magic I could do better than him. I think I would hate young Adraa Belwar too, with her insecurities splattered across the page and encoded in each line of text.
Adraa: I created water today, made it rain for a few minutes. Have you ever done that? Not just manipulated water but created it?
Jatin: I do that all the time. Rain is easiest, but I’ve done all types of white magic precipitation too: snow, sleet, hail.
Kalyan pulls me out of the letters and back to the bar. “What? You’re going to agree? Just like that?”
“Oh, was that a joke? You were joking?”
“Of course.” He laughs as he shakes his head at me. “Here, let’s make a deal. I’ll answer a question about Jatin if you answer one about Adraa.”
“Why do you care so much?”
“Because they’re our employers. Their happiness is practically our happiness.” He sounds like Riya. I want a good raja to serve, she had said. My marriage really is important, affects thousands of people. Talking about this without telling Kalyan my identity is wrong. But I would love to know his perspective on Jatin, and Jatin’s perspective on me. And I’ll never have an advantage like this again.
“Okay, deal.”
“So what’s Adraa like really?”
“Well, she’s good at magic.” I mimic Kalyan’s tone and attempt to duplicate his low voice, but kind of fail. I was trying to be funny, but instantly grow uneasy at the lie. I can’t say I’m good at magic, because Jatin is already a raja, while I might fail at being a rani. An emotional tidal wave tumbles over my face before I can wash it away.
“What’s wrong? That was good. The voice might need some work, though.” He smiles and I can’t help but smile back a little.
“It’s fine. I’m fine.” I gulp back the emotional wreckage of my life.
He places his chin in his hands. “Please tell me.”
He is kind. Those eyes want to know; he cares about me regardless of my position. Why does that have to be so nice? I should tell him who I am.
“You trained with Jatin at the academy, right?” I blurt out.
“Yeah, pretty much.”
“Will you train with me?”
“You want to train with me?” He jerks up and points at himself.
Without warning, the insecure Adraa emerges. “Never mind, forget I asked.” I gulp the coconut water.
“No, I don’t want to forget that. Yes.”
“Yes?”
“Yeah, let’s train together.”
I know I must be beaming. I will finally get to experience how people are taught at the academy. Maybe failing at white magic at my royal ceremony isn’t imminent.
Food pours onto our table at that moment. From a central bowl of rice, smaller bowls pinwheel in an array of heat and steam. Goat stew, lamb curry, wicker nuts, pepper bark, silken fish caught in the Belwar Bay, and thick triangles of naan are the first to pop to my attention.
“Okay, next question. You go,” Kalyan urges as he scoops food onto his plate.
I don’t care about this game anymore. First, I want to eat. Then I want to contemplate what just happened. I’m finally going to train with someone who studied at the academy. If it weren’t for my arm badgering me with pain, I would practice right now.
“Oh, I don’t know. Jatin’s favorite color?” I offer.
“Really?”
I realize a seco
nd later I actually do want to know this. “You can tell a lot about a person by their favorite color. I knew this kid in the palace who I swear became an orange forte because he loved the color that much.”
Kalyan’s face twists in skepticism. “Who loves orange that much?”
“Exactly. And I’ve found the people who say their favorite color is their forte are either obsessed with it, like that kid, or plain conceited.”
“So what’s yours?” he asks.
“Pink. But what’s Jatin’s, huh?”
Kalyan scrunches his face as he stalls. “Why pink?” he asks. He’s grasping, not wanting me to know Jatin loves white. I knew it. Mr. Arrogant must love white, be as obsessed with it as he is with himself.
“Because in a clinic, pink is the color of miracles.” I don’t miss a beat. “Jatin’s favorite is white, isn’t it?”
“Okay, maybe it’s one of his favorite colors.”
“That’s worse than orange.”
* * *
Thirty minutes later and I’ve found out Jatin was either ignored or idealized more than picked on at school, wrote the love notes on a bet, and doesn’t like wide-open places like the deep ocean. And even though the information is about Jatin, since it comes from Kalyan’s mouth, I feel as if I’m discovering more about him than about my fiancé. He talks about Jatin’s fears and history so freely, without any anxiety his raja will punish him for it. That tells of a level of closeness not even Riya and I could ascend to.
Then our conversation devolves and we forget our little game. Kalyan and I talk about Naupure’s current poverty bill, which hopes to furnish jobs to the Untouched. We come to the agreement that thirteenth- through fourteenth-year class are tied for the worst in life. We discuss the ethics of the truth accords even though we both agree chanting someone to tell the truth is better than the past judicial system where rajas had to constantly hold trials. We eventually revert to the issue of Bloodlurst and the Vencrin. And what we did tonight comes back to me. All the stolen firelight comes into focus. I still have no proof Moolek has anything to do with it yet. Kalyan seems to be thinking the same thing.
