“The Covinus doesn’t make mistakes,” Easton says confidently, and I stare at him for a moment before realizing he still speaks of the Binding. “You will be Bound to your perfect partner. One who doesn’t care about the past. One who only cares about the future.”
I scoff. There will be no partner who doesn’t care about my past. As far as everyone in our sector is concerned, and probably every other sector in Similis, my family is guilty of breaking our sacred Keys. The fact that I had nothing to do with the offense—don’t evenknowthe nature of it—has seemed to matter little in the eyes of my peers. Whispers follow me like an icy wind and have for most of my life. Over the years, I have learned to duck my head and weather the storm. Most days, the gossip no longer brings a hot wave of shame to my cheeks.
My thick skin doesn’t translate to days like the Binding, when I am to be paraded in front of the entire Community. In less than an hour, every eighteen-year-old will be Bound to their life partner. Classmates have been analyzing and giggling about it for ages, but I’ve always kept it in the corner of my mind, an intangible date to be dealt with somewhere far in the future. Now, it’s arrived and brought with it an acute sense of dread. That is, until Easton’s appointment at the Healing Center, when all my other worries were diminished by the massive one now looming over me. It’s difficult to see shadows when your entire world has turned to night.
The Community center is located in the central metropolis, same as every other important building, so it only takes a few minutes of walking to reach it. It’s a large structure, practical and plain like most everything else here. The entirety of the Covinus is housed within, along with the amphitheater where the Binding will take place. Tall and rectangular, it casts everything but the cobbled square in morose shades of gray.
The square is the only colorful part of Similis, a splash of crimson in a sea of taupe. In a world of uniformity, it is almost an affront to the senses. The stones spiral out like ripples in a pond in every shade of red imaginable. I often wonder about the square’s creator and what they meant in adding such a riot of color in an otherwise monotonous world. Maybe it was meant as a reminder to Similians that the square, and our Covinus encased within it, is the heart of our Community. I doubt the artist meant to make viewers feel rebellious and anxious and full all at once, the way I do when I see it.
On a different day, the square reminds me of all these things, but today I can only see blood.
Easton’s and mine, intwined. Blood means little here, no Community member above another, but it means something to me. The same life force runs through both of us, so that no matter where we go, we are always connected through it. Until he goes somewhere I can never follow.
Easton smiles at me gently and I have the urge to grab his hand. To squeeze and feel its warmth and make him promise to never let go. But touch is not something taken lightly, and he would be horrified if I attempted it in such a public place.
I am still staring at his hands, at the elegant fingers and perfectly shaped nails, when the first explosion rocks the ground beneath us.
The activity in the square comes to an immediate halt, a horrified hush descending over the red bricks.
We are a quiet people. Screams are rare. But they sound now, loud and anguished, from the direction of the Boundary gate. The gate that separates us from the Dark World and keeps the monsters from overcoming our Community, ones both human and beast in nature.
Everyone around me is frozen, their eyes blinking wide and uncertain. They are rabbits in a wild field. When faced with a predator, their best hope is to melt into their surroundings. This time, the predator isn’t even the explosion itself. It’s the novelty of it. A jagged tear in the smooth curtain of scheduled monotony.
My heart beats wildly and my muscles tense. The need to move, to dosomething,races through me but before I can bend to its call, Easton lays a soft hand on the sleeve of my coat. The contact, so rare and unexpected, shocks me into stillness.
“Trust in the Covinus. They will keep us safe.”
His eyes are imploring, and a sharp wave of shame pierces my chest.Don’t go where I can’t follow.Did I not just issue the same silent plea to him?
I dig my teeth into my lip, allowing the stinging pain to settle me. When our parents were Outcast, I promised myself to stay with Easton, to mold myself into whatever the Community wanted me to be in order to stay with him. And yet, twelve years later, I still struggle with calming whatever lives inside me.
Covinus vehicles race out of headquarters, dark vans with sirens as bright as the square. The Dark Worlders have made many attempts to breach the Boundary, but they’ve never succeeded. Easton is right. The Covinus always keeps us safe.
I force myself to turn away; to calm the racing of my heart and follow the crowd that has already started moving toward the Community Center.
Easton removes his hand, but his touch lingers even after I am seated with my year.
ChapterTwo
Mirren
The air is chilled on the roof of our quarterage. I shiver against it, peering out at the same squat gray buildings that stretch for miles around me. Quarterages give way to agricultural fields and beyond that, the lights of the Boundary. I’m too far away to see the Boundary men patrolling the wall, but I know they are there, warding off whatever threats exist on the other side.
One was gravely injured in the explosion, his burned body escorted to the Healing Center in a rush of sirens. No culprit was named in the attack, but it wasn’t necessary. Everyone knows it was a Dark Worlder. Our Boundary is what keeps us safe from the curse that shadows their land; a curse so dark and depraved, it infiltrates everyone who lives under it, twisting them into unrecognizable evil.
They say it’s our lights, shining against the stygian sky that keeps the curse at bay. The lights serve as a reminder of the prosperity that comes when you reject selfishness and embrace kindness and fairness. The lights of the Similian boundary shine at all hours of the day, a beacon of hope in an otherwise cruel world.
They don’t feel hopeful to me now. Instead, I feel numb.
I have been waiting to feel something else, something heated and powerful; something that could change the circumstances Easton and I have been handed, but the numbness remains. The lights only serve as a reminder that what was once bright is now dark. What once was full is now empty.
I’ve often sat up here and wondered what those living in the Dark World see when they look at our lights. If they see them as a beacon of what peace is possible, as we are taught, or if they are simply a cruel reminder of all that we have in Similis that they lack.
Most Similians don’t spare more than a passing thought for our lights or the Darkness that lay beyond, but I am not like most Similians. Most don’t have parents that were Outcast.
On nights like these, I often climb to the roof and squint into the Darkness, picturing my father’s green eyes. In all my memories, they are always twinkling as if in the midst of some great laugh, but I can never remember the sound of it.
Maybe it’s because I never actually heard it. We are a muted people, always keeping such things to ourselves.
