a/n: if you think you've seen this chapter before, this is a rewrite! please excuse the questionable quality of the next few updates, i'm working through a handful of plot holes. as a rule, i'm committed to idea of quantity > quality, seeing as this is a first draft, anyway. it'll all be edited once i manage to get a grip akjsdhlklkj. in the meantime, just in case you've lost hope on this book right now, i hope you consider perusing through the other arkoverse novels (which are far better composed in terms of plot right now, and might provide some clarity — since everything will come together in the end.)
love, kakie
. . .
I didn't believe in love. But she always came so close to making me rethink it.
"I won you a race." I offered pathetically, as she drew the curtains closed and drowned us in suspenseful shadow.
I looked over the white pieces, evading her eyes. She took her seat, barely a meter away, then gestured for me to begin.
Pawn to D-4. A basic strategy. My mind was momentarily imbedded in the idea of Catarina outside, alone with the Wilde boys.
But as soon as Scarlett opened her mouth, all else was undoubtedly immaterial. "You cheated at the most prestigious Grand Prix in the world."
Her voice was like velvet, even when accusatory. Her accent was meticulously English, the perfect result of a lifetime of tutelage, as custom for every Wilde. Whenever she spoke, not a sound was out of place. Every syllable, every intonation, was deliberately selected.
"I won at your favorite sport." I crinkled my nose.
"You dishonored my favorite sport." She said it slowly, coldly. The little crevice of sunlight which shone through the portière glimmered briefly across her irises and they shone like honey.
Secretly nervous, I shook my head, "No I didn't."
"Save it for someone ignorant — pit stops are strategically essential. Also, they're part of the game. It's the rules. And no one wins from P13 in Monaco. Not without rain." She snapped, unexpectedly impassioned, "You got off without consequences because you're Arko Cade, and because nobody wants to piss off the most important person in the world."
"People piss me off all the time."
Her eyes flashed in momentary rage, "I meant your mother."
"You didn't." I propped up an elbow against the table, "Not really."
She leaned back against her seat and murmured, barely audible, "You drive me crazy."
I smirked, then, "I know I do."
Unamused, she took my bishop with a knight.
I pouted. "I should've driven with Ferrari. Maybe then I'd have impressed you."
She frowned, "I don't support Ferrari."
"You like the red cars." I scowled, "Besides, everybody likes Ferrari."
"I like people who don't cheat." She moved another piece — only then did I see she'd executed a perfect opening, the Queen's Indian Defense, her favorite.
I should've expected it. But (and I say this without meaning to cause offense, it's simply the truth) I always let her win, anyway.
I swear that's not me being cocky. Scarlett is smarter than anyone I know. It just so happens that I'm smarter than everyone altogether.
Maybe not wiser, though, as it took me a minute to realize what she might've been implying.
"I didn't cheat on you."
"What?"
"Three months, right?" Three months without my contacting her in any capacity — it was enough for her to pay me no mind the evening prior. "I didn't cheat on you, Scar."
The right side of her mouth bundled up into a frustrated smile as she murmured, "Well I have."
"Huh?"
"I've cheated on you, if that's what we're calling separate engagements, now. Or I would've, it's just..."
I took her bishop and she frowned.
"You're not my boyfriend."
I grew flustered — a common occurence, only around her, "Wasn't this... didn't we fix this... months ago?"
New year's eve, twenty-eighteen. Three bottles of cheap champagne between us and an even cheaper hotel room in Sapporo, where her mother's family is from. Hugo and Kitty were downstairs at some nonmagical stranger's party while Beau was in the next room with his fiancée doing God-knows-what.
I caught Scarlett crying on the balcony, with tears glistening down her face, reflecting light from the neon street signs and some premature fireworks. She never cries, ever. Not even when we were children.
But it was the first December she'd spent without Grayson. December's a big month for Scar — her birthday comes, then Christmas, then New Year's. And amidst all of it she feels so lost between the celebrations, so bored of pomp.
She turned eighteen. There was a party. Then another. Then another. There was a series of debutant balls, other initiations into adulthood. So much attention, and yet so much loneliness. She endured it all without her cousin, her best friend.
It was snowing when we kissed. She tasted like strawberry kit-kats and salt and asked me to hold her, in rare vulnerability. We fell asleep together atop dusty sheets with our fingers intertwined and nothing else.
"What on earth could you possibly mean, Arkael?" She asked.
"I thought..." I drifted off, unable to think of an apt explanation. The truth is I'd been under the impression that we'd reached some sort of formal agreement that night, after the years of adults encouraging our match and making such a deal of it. We'd always been...something. Either less or more than friends. Not quite there, but always could be.
"Nevermind what I thought, then." I cleared my throat, feeling that the sentiment had gone stale.
"So is that what this all was, loulou? An opportunity to impress me... gone awry?"
I missed her smile. It made me feel like I was smiling, too.
As my cheeks went warm, I simply played on in silence.
There's a word for it in Tagalog. One of those culturally significant terms that no one can translate with any real effectiveness. It explains a heart-racing, stomach-churning, extremely uncomfortable sensation. Some people call it butterflies, but that's not quite it. It's what I feel when I'm with her, unceasingly.
"What's loulou in Japanese?" I asked, in a lame attempt to reengage conversation.
"You know Japanese."
"Okay, but what kanji would you use for it?"
"The least affectatious selection. What's loulou in Tagalog?"
"You know Tagalog."
We'd taken up one another's mother tongues to properly begin correspondence when we were sixteen. Of course, I was always teased for being homeschooled, while Scarlett and the lot of them attended MagiCourt school.
"Munting lobo." I said, when she sat there, in silent stillness, awaiting a response.
"Why are you here, Arko?" She asked eventually, as soon as she'd cornered my king into single-spaced movement.
I sighed, "Because I missed you, is that so bad?"
It was laced with enough sarcasm to make her roll her eyes, as Catarina does.
"If you missed me, you'd have called."
"I don't have a cellphone."
"I bought you one."
I shrugged, "I don't —"
"There's one number saved in it, and it's mine. You hit the little button that says call." She meant to be patronizing, and knew what it did to me.
"I know how to use it, I just don't want to."
"Are you sure about that?" She smirked, then reached for her rook as I let go of my king.
Our fingertips met as she breathed it out, "Checkmate..."
Her mouth fell agape as we made eye contact, full of a numb shock.
We sat in silence for a moment, and I knew that she'd felt it — the emptiness in me, between us, where there would usually be magic.
She mumbled, "What did you do?"
"Why would you assume it was my fault?!"
"I told Hugo not to give you any more Magimortium — " She stood, chair squeaking against the floor as she turned and began to step away...
"Wait, Scar." I caught her wrist before she escaped my reach. She looked down at my fingers, brows narrowed in utter confusion, mind obviously spinning, thinking how our mutual contact could be so lifeless and dull.
Our Aurae are exact polar opposites, emerald green and crimson. It's hard to explain, but whenever we touch, little bits of magic seem to electrify between us. It's a distinct feeling, like two perfectly complementary energies meeting at a specific point, realizing they're whole. Suddenly, that was gone. And she knew something was horribly wrong.
"Just... just let me explain. Do you trust me?"
"No." She didn't even hesitate.
"Okay sure, I know you don't, but just this once — will you?"
I felt her pulse quicken between my fingers, but she stopped.
And it all spilled. How my half-dead father stole my mother and the magic in me. How my mother had Casted out a significant portion of my Aura and split them into pieces. How those pieces were hidden, distributed evenly between the MagiCourt Houses for protection. And how I needed Scarlett's help to retrieve them all before it was too late.
She always made me nervous, but my stuttering had built up into unintelligible ramble. She remained frozen, staring at me, as if I was perhaps in some sort of trance. The further I drawled on, the more foolish I felt I sounded, especially as she reoccupied her seat and looked up at me like I was a great deal more insane than she'd imagined me to be prior.
"So let me get this straight." She said, "Your mother brought your estranged father back to life, and now all he wants to do is steal Aura — specifically yours, and he managed to succeed because you're now nonmagical, except he didn't really, because you've actually got far more Aura, which your mother took from you as a baby, to save you and your family from the MagiCourt's scrutiny?"
"Yes, and that excess Aura was kept between each of the four Houses."
"Okay — so Sebastían's at the MagiCourt now, procuring one portion, Catarina is here to help retrieve another, hidden at La Alcazar, and you've told me all this because somehow, perhaps, you thought it'd be easy, and I'd have both the Song portion and the Wilde portion?"
She'd said it all so fluidly and without emotion that I was left to babble, full of shame.
"You have no clue how any of this makes sense, don't you?" I asked, sheepishly.
"Not at all, I think I need to lie down."
"Oh, by the way, I'm dying." I nodded, "Give it a week or less. My body will expire."
"Oh." She said, "That, too. Right."
Her mouth had grown crooked, her forehead creasing with discomfort.
"So... you knew nothing about this?"
She looked down at her shoes, tucked a stray hair behind her ear, before leaning back and pressing a finger to her temple, "I always knew Romeo wasn't your father. I suppose you did, too."
I didn't.
"To be honest," She mumbled, "He's the only Wilde your mother ever trusted. In fact, he might just be the only Wilde worth trusting at all. So one of the Castaways is surely with him, there's no doubt about that. Trouble is..."
"We don't know where he is." I sighed.
She raised a brow, sharp and knowing, "But I do know a way to contact him."
The air grew awkwardly warm. "I... you do?"
"You remember his... EnSpellopes, was it?"
Little Auric paper pockets where one could scribble a note, stuff it in, and the whole message would disappear, sending itself off towards its maker. Romeo had used those often.
I blushed, "I was five."
"I could say envelope when I was five."
"But then why would you call them envelopes when they're magic envelopes? They're Spelled envelopes, how else would you differentiate — "
"Really, you want to argue the semantics of magical envelopes right now?"
"Fine. So you have one?"
"No, but he left some with my father, who keeps them in his desk at the MagiCourt. There should be at least a few left... They weren't meant for correspondence, just for emergencies."
She gave me a once over, then concluded, "I think this might classify as an emergency."
"Thanks." I said, when her face contorted in disgust, as if the emergency in question was my choice in attire and not my imminent death.
"So that's three out of four, we just need the Song portion..." She said it more to herself, thinking deeply, fingers steepled beneath her sharp chin, till she looked up and decided, "I think we need to tell Beau."
"Fuck — why?"
"I'm nowhere near as close to Uncle Harvey as he is." She deadpans. "And his engagement to your mother — yes, of course I know, don't give me that look, nobody ever tells you anything precisely because you overreact... Their engagement means she must trust him, no?"
I nodded, however apprehensively.
So she continued, "I don't know anything about this, but I'm willing to bet Beau does. He likes to keep tabs on potential enemies. And you're one, you'll always be one."
"But Beau's the reason I had a head full of Magimortium last night.. and that's likely the reason my father managed to break past Creede's magical borders. They weaken when I weaken, and I should've known better, but something tells me he knew what he was doing all along," I sighed, "He keeps friends in strange places, and there's a possibility my father was one of them, right? Hugo would make a much better accomplice in all this."
Scarlett bit her lip, as if withholding a thought. Then she forced her eyes shut, regretfully, as she said, "No... Absolutely not."
"Why not?" I asked, puzzled.
"Because last week, Hugo purchased some Aura, to supplement his lack thereof. From the Magic Hunter."
I felt the color drain from my face.
"Your cousin's been doing business... with my father?"
"Not business, no. Just one transaction. You know how Uncle Henri is."
"Yeah — he's a dipshit who fell in love with a nonmagical and now punishes their son for being a Demi."
"It's not that simple, you know. Nothing ever is." She came to her family's immediate defense, "The world mocks Hugo, and his father will do anything to spare him the humiliation. My point is, for this mission of yours, it might be best to keep Hugo at arm's length. But Beau... Beau can help you, immensely."
"Scar," I tried desperately to reason, voice absentmindedly hushed as I glanced around and hoped so very deeply that he wasn't listening in, "Last night, Beau all but threatened to take Creede away from me. If I tell him all this now, he'll either use the information to his advantage, or he'll help us but hold it over our heads."
She leaned forward, finally meeting my eyes as she'd spent so long in thought, "You may not believe this, but you're not exactly his biggest threat at the moment. In fact, he may even currently consider you an ally. Uncle Harvey has a lot to gain from his union with your mother... It would give him an unprecedented advantage in Creede, so he has a personal investment in its protection, and I'm sure he'd help you."
"So you're saying Harvey would help me precisely because he's selfish?"
"Of course. And we both know that the best way to pry any away resources from Harvey Song is through his de-facto son. The network they've built together - Beau and Harvey - it's expansive, crucial to your efforts. My brother is the best shot you have at finding that piece of yourself with the Songs."
"Because you've always been a little more Wilde?"
"Because, in the grand scheme of our family's affairs, I've always been the irrelevant one." She said, without malice, "The inconsequential one, on either side. The Wildes have Hugo to pick and prod at, and the Songs have Beau to worship. I go unnoticed, so I'm privy to less information. But that's why you can trust me."
"You're also more powerful than them both."
"Which is also why you need me."
She was right, of course. On every count. Hugo would be loyal if it came to protecting my own interests, but with the bigger picture in mind, and his apparent history as part of the Magic Hunter's clientele, it would be difficult to trust him explicitly.
Beau was the other way around. He'd always be a threat to any individual, but to a movement — to serve a means which might gain him a greater end, Beau would spare no effort.
But then I thought of its implications. Of my mother, and her big heart. Then I recognized how she'd fear her trust's abuse, how warily she'd guard something so precious to her, the fate of her son and country. How there was no way she'd trust Harvey Song with its safekeeping, and how his nephew had manipulated me into weakness so easily the night before.
"No," I decided, "She wouldn't keep it there. Not with those Songs."
Scarlett's smile was crooked, lopsided, like I'd just pointed out something she'd already been thinking of, "And yet you thought I'd miraculously know where both the last Castaways are, no?"
"Wishful thinking," I realized, head nearly bowing in apology, "But you're still the closest link I've got to either House."
"You know..." Her eyes narrowed, "I still haven't decided whether or not to help you."
I loosened my collar a smidge, but by the time I'd gained the confidence to look back at her, she was smiling. Just a little. Just enough to look some degree of mad.
"What do you want?" I asked, knowing she always needed personal incentive.
"Well, what's in it for me?" She returned, surprisingly self-assured.
Scarlett has this inclination for self-preservation, like any Wilde before her (with the exception, perhaps, of Romeo and her grandfather before him). Mixed with the Song's spiritual obsessions, it means that she is bound by hereditary (and perhaps a little stereotypical) nature to prioritize her own interests above others'. I think it makes her strong.
Albeit selfish. "You get the satisfaction of helping me?"
She shook her head, "That's not enough... my mother taught me that empathy is best kept within the heart, not pouring out of it. You've always had far too much empathy — you try to hide it, but you do."
"And you've always had far too little."
"I'd be risking my life, Arko." She looked down at her scarlet-painted nails, and the emblem she wore on her littlest finger there — a ring, gold-set and thick with an empty space round the middle where one might think a gemstone should fit. "You're asking me for help because you need me to play superhero while your uncle and Catarina are weak and your Aura is... absent."
"You need me." I ventured, bravely, "You do."
She raised a brow, curiously, "How so?"
With a gulp and a hesitant throat-clearing, I explained — "My mom says this thing — lahat tayo may katapat. Old textbooks - those written by the ancient Magical scholars - they like to assume that Magicals married to keep money within their respective families... to maintain that economic, shallow advantage that's consistently chased by the simple-minded, capitalist-crazed Unawares, but it was always about the magic. It was about keeping Aura, our own ethereal wealth, in concentrated measures.
"You know how the old Songs think that Aura is our souls. Everyone is a little bit Maigcal. If you want to make it Scientific — even nonmagicals have Aura, counts ranging between zero and twenty-five. I guess my point is that's why it would hurt you to lose me."
Complementary Aura. Science, that was it, I thought. Logic would convince her. That was the only possible way.
She stared at me, unreadable. "How does that explain anything about what I have to gain from helping you?"
"Maybe you just don't get it," I taunted, to which she scoffed, but I persisted anyway, "Or maybe — you do. You get what I'm implying but you refuse to believe it, as I had, for so long. But you and I are Aurically compatible, Scar. That's why the adults kept pushing us together. That's why we're Scarlett and Arko — everybody knows. You lose me, and you lose a life's worth of potential. You lose your katapat."
Then Scarlett smiled — genuine, despite how she shook her head in some degree of disapproval.
"You drive me crazy." She said again, except this time, intending for me to hear.
"I know I do." I repeated, far more apologetic.
"So you've really just come here for me?" She asked, "Not for Beau? Not for anyone else?"
"Of course," I admitted, shyly, "I thought you'd kill me."
"I might, still."
"Understandably."
Then we laughed. Absurdly, like there wasn't so much at stake. Like there wasn't so much that hurt. We laughed until she nodded, "I'll help you, Arkael. Of course I will."
There was some intimacy in that. Like she'd acknowledged, for once, just how much she valued me.
"So off to the MagiCourt, then, first." She stood, patting her skirt down as if it needed any adjustment, "Before Sebastían returns. We'll hide you quite well, I think. We secure those Castaways we're sure of before we can worry about the last one."
"They only work when all the pieces are together," I nodded, "So even if we manage to keep one away from my father, we have sufficient leverage."
"True — your father needs all of them to destroy Creede. But if you don't get all of them, you'll die." She said, "I'll try to get word out through some secret Song channels. But first, I'll help you send word to Romeo. Then, we can use the portal in my father's office to head off to La Alcázar — the MagiCourt doesn't trace that portal. You'll be safe, and undetected."
"Thank you." I sighed, "Can I kiss you?"
"Absolutely not with those filthy nonmagical lips."
"Alright, I figured."
"But before we go, I need a favor. think of it as your way to thank me."
"What is it?"
"Will you play? For Grand-maman?"
It was sweet and kind, filled me with relief and gratitude.
"Of course." I nodded, "Of course I will."
. . .
There are eighty-eight keys on a piano. I know each like the back of my hand.
Robert Wilde taught only his youngest son to play. They say that's because he was the only one with the heart for it. His older brothers never had that capacity for softness, never believed in beautiful things that they could not selfishly exploit.
Wildes are usually unkind, and always unforgiving. Robert's youngest son was neither. An anomaly. An odd footnote, an unexpected afterthought, at the end of a timeless love story.
And in the lonelier days of my childhood, when my mother was swallowed by her sadness, when nothing else could repair the loneliness, when the silence grew mind-numbing and friendless — Robert's son taught me.
Scarlett led me upstairs, through the maze of archaic stone columns and heavily outdated gothic decor. Every wall had some priceless work of art to boast, every room some architectural feat. But it felt sad. Almost like a dilapidated museum, where the exhibits are exquisite but overflowing with worth to the point of total under-appreciation.
We crept up further towards the attic, where light was allowed entry through windows left ajar, only veiled by seemingly weightless drapes. Flower vases were scattered about carrying mismatched bunches, each just as fragrant as the next. And from the far end of the west hall, where light beamed brighter than anywhere else, music was playing.
"She likes this song." Scarlett said, almost humming along, "She rarely ever plays anything else."
"Then why have me interrupt?"
"Because she'd appreciate that even more... You haven't played for her in years, and if things don't go well, if you die... no one might ever play for her again. Not in the way she likes, at least."
Always honest. Brutally.
"I don't think I play the way she likes, anymore." I confessed, more than I should've. I'd grown to play out of obsessive habit instead of any real passion. More violently than romantically. More like myself, and not the man she perhaps wished I'd mimic.
"You'll always play like Romeo." Scarlett scoffed, shaking her head, "Like nobody and everybody is listening."
She knocked lightly against the last door to the left, cooed some gentle, affectionate greeting, then motioned for me to follow her inside. I did, albeit with timid steps and a half-bowed head.
The room felt startlingly empty. The walls were a cold white, mostly bare save for some more modest paintings, lacking in any ornamental decoration that would be expected from this house. There was one coffee table, with an array of dying flowers strewn indelicately over its surface, greying skeletons of what they once were. A dusty old piano sat in the corner, covered by a sheet, draped in forgetfulness. A spinning gramophone warbled some ancient tune I recognized from parties — the same one that always elicited some kind of frown from my mama, which she then voluntarily dissolved with a shot of Tanduay or drowned with an all-too-full wineglass.
There was love all around, but I never heard it singing... Till there was you...
And there was one lounge chair, velvet and soft-looking despite its noticeable age, with a sole occupant, hair silvery with wisdom and limitless strength.
"Kind of you to visit." She turned, face unreadable, examining me in her peripheral before she looked me in the eye.
"You look handsome, jeune loup. It's been quite some time."
Charlotte Wilde. Their matriarch, their well-loved (or, incredibly envied) queen. Scarlett's grandmother, from whom she'd inherited cleverness, wit, power, and a middle name.
"Oui, ma Reine." I hung my head in polite humility (the Wildes aren't royalty, not by nonmagical standards, but are always addressed as such), "Though I know you dislike company."
She chuckled, "Nonsense, child. I appreciate yours. Now, will you play for me? Or shall I sit here and reminisce, alone, for another hour?"
Scarlett nudged me by the elbow, already smiling. "Go ahead. I'll fetch Catarina."
With a tense gulp, I nodded, unable to think up an excuse.
"How could I ever refuse?" I half-shrugged, lips tight, already stepping towards the piano, the one which she'd gifted, decades ago, to her late husband.
"Le Roi used to play for me, you know? And then Romeo after him." She mumbled.
Her eyes went glassy for a moment. She regarded a painting against the wall. A Braque, if I'd ever seen one.
"I know." I nodded, uncovering the antique baby grand's keys as gently as could be helped. The ivories had yellowed. It hadn't been touched in years.
"What would you like me to play, ma Reine?"
She blinked, a few times, looking down at her withering hands like she might find some archived memory there.
"Adagio." She decided. I didn't need to ask — she meant Bach's arrangement. My liking for his work was Romeo's influence.
It started slow. It should've been simple, easy — but the piano had been abandoned to rot for so long that the keys stuck together here and there. Some of them thrummed onwards, hammering at the old instrument's bodice in a fractured melody so out-of-tune that it was a wonder she didn't ask me to stop. Instead, she closed her eyes and leaned her head against her chair, finding comfort where I found none.
"You play just like him." I thought I heard her murmur.
I know. I grimaced, swallowing the memories, despite being unsure of whom she was referring to. Whether it was her husband or her favorite son.
As the piece finished, she hummed along, waving her hands like a conductor. I followed suit, finishing with a slowed flourish, and she clapped her hands lightly, eventually pressing them together and looking me straight in the eye, almost apologetically.
"Something's the matter, isn't it?" She asked.
I nodded, timidly. Older Magicals are always a little more intuitive, a little wiser, in that curious, supernatural way.
"Then fix it, jeune loup." She said, like that would be the easiest thing in the world, "You're Romeo's boy as much as Eliza's, you know that? He'd never stand to see something he loved so broken, unhealed."
Then why did he leave?
I rose, gently, just as she gestured for me to come closer. Then she held my face, as if to examine it, like she knew exactly what might be at stake. Like she feared it would be the last time.
I knew she felt it, too. The emptiness in me. The magic that was missing. Especially as she murmured, eyes and voice steely,
"But sometimes, only we can heal ourselves, no?"