Never Stop Dreaming
ANNA
“Hair and make-up time!” Isabella called.
She began rattling orders off before running into her room and returning with her arms full of bags and styling tools. She covered the table with them, then placed her hands on her hips and looked it all over before glancing at the two of us. She looked at us both from one to the other, a plan forming in her mind as she assessed every feature of our faces.
“Okay,” she said, “I've got it.”
“I think I’m going to need wine for this,” Roslyn said.
Isabella rolled her eyes. “Just for that, you’re going first.”
I watched Roslyn’s expression change from bored to assaulted. I couldn’t contain a triumphant chuckle, but Isabella was oblivious as she fiddled with something when suddenly pop music started blaring from behind her.
“What is that?” Roslyn asked, trying to see around Isabella.
When she moved, I saw a small battery-operated speaker with a digital screen.
“How did you get one of those in here?” I asked, shocked to see anything electronic inside Nightfall’s walls.
“My dad,” Isabella said, smirking. “He let me borrow it.”
I stared at the older-style MP3 player as if it were some witchcraft from the future.
“Awakened Adepts are allowed things like that?” I asked.
“Well, no, but some things get overlooked,” she said, grinning as she shrugged.
We listened to Isabella’s playlist, gushing over our new dresses and discussing what the ball would be like. I heard several songs I recognized and sang along with Isabella and couldn’t help but notice Roslyn’s utter failure to so much as hum along to any of them the entire time. I recalled the harp in her room and wondered if her family was wealthy enough to be oblivious to pop culture. Still, even the British Royal Family knew pop stars.
But seriously, how could such a famous pop song come on, and you don’t at least bob your head?
“I can’t believe I missed Caelan asking you to the ball,” Isabella said, glancing at me as she did Roslyn’s hair in a gorgeous updo of fiery curls.
“You didn’t miss much,” I said. “We’re just going as friends anyway.”
“Friends?” Isabella said in disbelief. “I’ve seen you two sparring. You’re his favorite Initiate. He didn’t ask you as a ‘friend’.”
I blinked a few times. Was she right? Caelan and I had bonded but his feelings for Saryna had been there from day one. I’d never thought about him from a romantic standpoint after that.
“It doesn’t matter,” I muttered.
Isabella pulled one of several bobby pins out of her mouth and stabbed it into Roslyn’s hair. “Doesn’ madder?”
Isabella’s words spoken through the bobby pins made Roslyn snicker as she cast a curious look my way.
She knew something.
“I just, I don’t know, I guess I was hoping someone else would ask me,” I said.
Isabella dropped Roslyn’s hair and looked at me.
“Oo?” she demanded, the muffled sound making me giggle.
“Look, seriously,” I said. “It doesn’t matter. Besides, you haven’t even told us who you’re going with.”
She jammed the last bobby pin into Roslyn’s fabulous updo and crossed her arms. “Now I’m not going to. You’ll have to wait and see.”
