The King Trials 2: Beyond.

~Dancing Under The Stars~

I push the hatch open, heaving myself out of the circular hole.

Kelan is right behind me, climbing up the rickety wooden ladder.

I lengthen my spine and I turn my gaze to the heavens. Awe disrupts my breathing. The canvas of the universe is painted with galactic hues, a stagnant explosion of infinite colours from dazzling pinks, electric blues and vivacious yellows. A cosmic wonder. It is as if the heavens released a breath and it caused ripples of interstellar clusters.

I find myself at the brink of the tavern's roof. Not the tallest infrastructure in the village, but high enough. My eyes never leave the scintillating aether.

"Kelan...are you seeing this?" I breathe. "It's absolutely...phenomenal."

"Yes," Kelan says from behind me. I twist my shoulders to glance back at him. "No words come close to a beauty that surpasses all splendours."

Eyes of the night gripping twilight.

Heat warms my face, the flustered singe rises in my cheeks. I turn from him to behold the cosmic magnificence. Kelan shortly appears in my periphery, arms folded behind his back. In the cool night air, echoes of tavern music swirl around.

Curious, I peer over at him. His steel features thawing gradually into a placid look. But his eyes bear much discontent, a burden that gnaws still.

I nudge him with my elbow. "What troubles you?"

"Vince," he says with all the venom he can infuse into one name. "I do not trust him. The other Herems, I tolerate, they are all under my guard. But with Vince, no matter how amiable he pretends to be....He is an Emikrollian after all."

Not this again. "Is that why you dislike him, because of something he was born into and had no choice in the matter?"

"Of course not," he dismisses brusquely. "Beside bearing an ill-feeling toward shim. And my instincts have never led me astray. I also despise how close you two have become, more than rivals for one throne should ever be. Your focus should be on none other than the Trials, they are still yet to begin."

I free a glum-filled sigh. "He is merely a temporary partner. For this point, we all need one another more than we want to kill each other. Treating one another as 'friends' until the time comes when they prove themselves as foes. Vince is an ally just like Solaris has been to me."

Kelan shakes his head in staunch disagreement. "Solaris does not look at you, the way he looks at you."

I look back at him questioningly. His eyes consume mine.

"And how would that be?"

He takes a long time to respond. Eventually he says, "The same way I look at you."

I release a built-up sigh. With resolute fact and all the sincerity in the world, I say, "You are an imbecile."

A frown puckers his forehead, equinox brows gathering.

I move close to him so that I can tangle both of my limbs round his one arm. "Look to the sky," I direct. And he follows, his eyes cast to the heavens. "Why would I count the stars, when I already have the moon?"

Kelan looks back at me. Something awakens in his eyes that cause it to shine like black waters. Something in him daring to hope.

"It all does not matter, no one else matters," I say it more like a promise. "Not when I only see you, none can compare. Perhaps none ever will."

He flares a brow. "Perhaps?"

I giggle softly, untangling my arms from him and waltzing to the centre of the roof. The music swells below with a series of two-beat drums and a mass of pounding feet; the music reverberates through the soles of my boots and channels through me.