“Did you see that?!”
“I know!”
“I can’t believe I was here for that!”
“The Princes of Vail are so hot!”
“Forget that, did you see Kazimir? Good Light.”
Rabbit tried not to listen to the loud whispers or the chatter, but it was hard when they were only partially trying to be polite about literally talking about him while he was standing right there.
“Careful, Prince of Music,” Sila was suddenly at his side, clapping a heavy hand down on his shoulder to shake him out of his daze, forcing Rabbit to finally tear his eyes off the closed door that Baikal had walked through.
He shook his friend off. “Don’t call me that.”
Rabbit had always hated the nickname, but there was nothing that could be done about it. He’d been dubbed the Prince of Music his freshman year, a title that drew far too much attention. It didn’t help that the words “cold and aloof” had been attached as time had gone on, somehow only making peoplemorecurious about him instead of less.
Fortunately, at the end of the day, it was still nothing more than a dumb college nickname, one he’d leave behind as soon as he graduated.
The same couldn’t be said about Baikal Void.
“Seriously though,” Sila sobered, dropping the teasing tone. “Being on the Brumal Prince’s radar isn’t a safe place to be.”
“It was an accident,” Rabbit reminded, glancing down at the mess of food still on the floor with a sigh. A worker was already coming over with a mop, and he stepped aside, giving the man an apologetic look. “Besides, he’s got to have better things to do than waste his time on me.”
Sila stared at him silently, but just before Rabbit could ask him why, he shook his head and swung his backpack over his shoulder. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Reminded that he was also now going to be very late, Rabbit clicked his tongue and followed his one and only friend out of the cafeteria, keeping his head held high and his expression blank as he moved through the throngs.
Pretending like he didn’t notice all the glances and the giggles and the whispers.
And how he’d never gotten around to actually telling Baikal Void his name.
Chapter 2:
“Your table is right this way, Mr. Trace,” the blonde waitress smiled brightly at him as she waved him to the right of the large restaurant located on the grounds of Club Vigor.
Rabbit’s mom had made the reservation for him, not caring that the price of the place was so far outside the normal university student’s budget he would be the youngest diner there. At least he wouldn’t have to worry about running into any classmates that could recognize him and whisper like they did whenever he passed by on campus.
The restaurant took up an entire floor, the walls on three sides made up of floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the hismul court—or were those draftclone courts? Rabbit couldn’t tell, his mother hadn’t allowed him to play sports for fear he’d injure his hands and end his career before it’d even begun. The color scheme was dark warm tones with glass and metal accents, a floating candle orb hovering perfectly four inches over the center of each table.
Uniform, all of it.
Boring.
Like Rabbit.
At the beginning of the semester, Sila had plopped down at the table across from Rabbit, given him one look, and then asked when he was going to stop behaving like a zombie.
Rabbit still wasn’t sure if it’d been meant as an insult or a joke.
“I had the pleasure of watching you play once,” the waitress said as she led him to a table closer to the windows on the right of the entrance. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear when he looked at her. “You were amazing.”
“Thank you.” He tried not to sound too standoffish, but the words came off tight and the way he forced his pursed lips into a partial smile wasn’t much better. It would fit into his image, at least, the unobtainable Rabbit Trace.
Sure enough, instead of being offended her smile widened, and then she was motioning to one of the tables. “Here you are, Mr. Trace. You can scan the code located beneath your holo-orb to access the menu. Will you be needing anything else?”
“Water,” he said. “Two.”
