?Beginning a low hum, I lead and sweep her across the floor. Both of us ignoring the many people still in here setting up – including Hanna and Asher who I’m pretty sure roll their eyes at us.
?I continue lowly humming some random melody as we fall into a rhythm. Spinning across the floor with simple, practiced steps that almost pull me into a trance. My eyes drifting shut as I imagine I’m in a flowing gown and music that is more than just my making.
?I used to dream about this. Dancing with a masked stranger in a ballroom with music and magic and a past that can’t touch me.
?A presence enters the room and my body stiffens at it. Jullia and I stop at the same time and when I open my eyes the grin on her face is bright. When she sees me – and him past me – it dims.
?“I wish you were coming with us tomorrow,” she says solemnly. “You don’t have to come with anyone, you could just come yourself. We can dance again so you get the chance.”
?I lightly scoff and swallow every irrelevant emotion down as I smile at her and shake my head. “No need. I don’t carefor fancy stuff like this. I’ll be ordering in a boat load of food and then having an early night. I already have planned what I’m going to be eating.”
?Her eyes glance past me again before sighing. Softly, under her breath, she says, “You’re a horrible liar, Mavyn Tsuki.”
?And I laugh. A true laugh because she couldn’t be more wrong, and yet she is correct that all that was a lie. At least the first part of it was.
?She shakes her head at me before linking our arms and pulling me around and towards where Hanna and Asher still are. I purposefully look anywhere other than at the brooding devil with red eyes who entered the ballroom. I’ll have to start making my way over to Darian’s soon and I don’t want to fuel the fire anymore than I already have.
?After all, this is all my fault. They have no control over fate and I have yet to find a way to rip my soul out. The longer this goes on the worse it’ll be. They deserve a fated who’s better. A fated who isn’t broken or littered with trauma or cursed.
?I’ll find a way to fix it all.
Sixteen
Callahan – Novam 21
I don’t know who’s actually being punished at this point. It’s been a week and I don’t think I can take it anymore.
?We were going to try working it out. Me and Varian and Castiel and Thorne. Then she had went with Darian and that night. . . there couldn’t have been a doubt about what happened between her and the fucking angel.
?I nearly couldn’t stand her. She had me –us, her fated – and yet she went tohim. That’s when Thorne said if she didn’t want us then she didn’t have to have us. She’d be treated as any other student at this school. She’d be invisible to us, as she had stated she wanted during that party after she fed from Castiel.
?But I couldn’t stand to not be near her. I couldn’t stand not to be near her familiar presence. Her sweet scent muted butalways there. The blue and pink becoming even more vibrant when it catches pieces of the light. The spiders and now her snake always laying somewhere on her. Her perceptive nature and micro expressions and depth of knowledge.
?She has so many amazing qualities and such depth that isn’t coincided with her magic, and I wish she would just see that because she thinks that she isn’t worthy when in reality it is us who are not worthy of her.
?I refuse to believe that Darian is though, and after tonight I’m finished with this childish torment. I miss talking to her and hearing her voice directed at me and this silent treatment will not help me in trying to convince her that she is more than enough for us.
?Thorne and the others can do as they wish, but she is my fated whether she wants to accept that or not. I will do everything I can to be worthy of her and make her see that she is enough. That her scars and past do not define her. That we can live fulfilling and happy livestogether.
?Starting tomorrow. I’ll start tomorrow, a new day and the beginning of winter. And if she chooses to sleep with Darian then I will accept it because if she is not yet comfortable with me then that’s okay.
?I lift and am about to drag my hand down my face when I remember I’m still wearing my mask. The simple black mask covers only my eyes and nose and goes well with my simple black suit. I had been planning, from the beginning of the school year, to take Mavyn to this. She’d be dressed in an actual costume because I know she’s wanted to attend a masquerade before, and I know she’d dress as some sort of winged creature.
?Winter owls are her favorite bird.
?Since none of that happened I did not try tonight. I don’t plan on dancing or participating in any of the games and I’ve already decided I’ll be leaving soon.
?“You’ve been talking about this ball since you were fifteen,” a deep timber voice speaks. The owner of that voice steps forward to stand beside me. Our three inch height difference never bothered me before, nor has technically being the shortest out of the five of us ever bothered me, but he is currently looking down on me patronizingly.
?Lifting the drink in my left hand, I sip the bubbly wine and don’t comment. I’ve always had a romanticized outlook on things and they’ve never failed to point that out. Thorne says it’s because I’m the youngest out of them and I’ll grow out of it.
?Not that that holds any weight. From nineteen to twenty-four there isn’t really any big difference for immortals. We finish physically maturing at twenty-five and then virtually stop aging. It’s the same for most non-mortals, the only difference between us and them is we live a lot longer. The difference between living centuries and millenniums.
?So me being nineteen and Thorne and Darian being twenty-two doesn’t matter. Even Varian and Castiel at two hundred and seventy-two, for mortal – or human – aging they’re maybe between twenty-six to twenty-eight.
?No matter though. They can look down at me all they want and call my romanticizing immature, but of all of the hatred I have for myself, of all the self-loathing, I have never disliked how I view life.
?Varian shifts his weight. “Callahan. . .”
