Zuri's eyes tracked the tops of Jem's and Kalindi's heads as they moved through the crowd, finally vanishing behind the dense red curtains that led out into the back hallway. She sighed, interlacing her fingers, squeezing her palms together as if she could crush all her apprehension between them like a berry.
In about five minutes, Chike would follow after them; given his ability, Sorin had thought it a good idea to put him on watch duty, in order to intercept anyone who headed in the direction Jem and Kalindi had gone. Upon receiving his assignment, Chike had let out a sad exhale as he asked, "I'm the insurance?"
"More like a warning system. An alarm," Sorin had replied. Zuri could remember it with ease, though granted it had been just the day before: Sorin was picking flecks of dirt from beneath his nails, sitting cross-legged in a wide beam of warm sunlight. "If they hear you go down, they know to start running."
Now, Zuri locked eyes with Chike, his skin an even deeper umber against the soft white material of his suit. It seemed that both of them were hoping it wouldn't come to that.
Once Chike left, it would fall to Zuri and Aldric to scope out the ballroom and the neighboring parlor. Unlike Jem and Kalindi, they weren't venturing far enough to warrant a lookout. There would be no one else, no observant outside eye to keep them safe and covered. They would have to watch their own backs.
Zuri jumped as the music started up again, sudden and loud, this tune much faster than the last. There were a few murmurs of delight as more people moved towards the dance floor, bodies pressing close, fingers interlacing. Others lingered near the walls or the champagne fountain or the snack bar, all quiet conversations and laughter hidden behind satin gloves.
Though she fought it, Zuri was starting to shrink again.
A hand slid into hers, the palm rough with callouses, yet comforting in its firmness. She turned, meeting Aldric's deep blue gaze. "Zuri," he said, a knowing smile at his lips. His tone was gently amused as he said, "You're nervous, and it's showing."
Zuri couldn't fight a blush. "I'm not—"
"Talk to me. Tell me what's on your mind," Aldric said, squeezing her hand, and when Zuri just blinked at him, he nodded her on. "I'm serious; it'll make you feel better. Talk to me."
She didn't answer him for a while. Instead, she watched the dancers, how they all moved differently but together were something uniform, a million tiny waves in the surface of one river.
"I'm just hoping this is worth it," Zuri said at last, dragging her eyes back to Aldric. "I'm just hoping we're not wasting our time here. That's my greatest fear."
She watched his jaw tense; he released her, bringing his hand up to fiddle with his hair. "Well," he said, and if she'd seen any unease in his expression, it was gone in a second, usurped by a warm smile she recognized. "It won't be a waste of time if we don't let it be. Whether Vernon left something here or not, there's plenty of other resources standing all around us, isn't there?"
Zuri shuddered, sizing up the crowd once again for what was likely the fiftieth time since they'd entered the room. Hundreds of people, and what was together likely a millennium's worth of memories stored within their unique minds. To look into each of them would both take ages and zap nearly all of Zuri's energy. She would have to choose wisely, but on what criteria did she do that?
A flurry of movement caught Zuri's eye, and Aldric's too. Chike was making for the door, acting as though the appetizer bar was his destination before he slipped out through the curtains.
Their aloneness settled on Zuri like a heavy mist; she sensed it, cool and uncomfortable, as it condensed on her skin.
The music slowed down again, the musicians dragging their bows long and slow across the strings, fingers trembling out a perfect vibrato where they pressed against the fingerboard. She thought, distantly, of Sorin, waiting in the dark, hoping for their return.
They couldn't come back to him empty-handed. He had come this far, had done so much for this. She refused to let it mean nothing.
"Aldric, I'm ready," she said, closing the ends of his overlong sleeve between her fingers and dragging him towards the dance floor, where she placed her hands in his. "You know what to do?"
He seemed taken aback, before he nodded his head. His mouth quirked up as he said, "I'll follow you."
She grinned back at him, then stepped sharply left, brushing the fellow dancer nearest her.
She felt Aldric tighten his grip before the visions pulled her under, as brutally fast as a riptide.
If Jem weren't so worried about finding the belongings of a man who literally wanted to bring about the end of the world, she would've stopped to admire the mastery that was Mulaim Chateau.
Her own home, though larger than her small, three-unit family would ever need, was nothing compared to the magnitude of the estate. She and Kalindi marched through long, broad corridors, lined on either side by colossal country-style windows, painting the marble floors below them in ribbons of silver starlight. The rounded ceilings, decorated with ornate frescoes of cherubic children and half-naked women swathed in white cloth, seemed miles above their heads.
She could hear everything in the stillness of it all. Hers and Kalindi's footsteps, their breath, the hubbub of the ballroom getting further and further behind them.
If the bastard would hide anywhere, it'd be the west wing, Sorin had told them earlier. It faces away from the rest of the city, and there's a dressing room up there where Lorenz used to meet with all his tailors and seamstresses. It'd be the perfect place for a coward like him to make camp.
As they barreled down the hall, Jem half-jogging to keep up with Kalindi, she sent a prayer up to Kiro that the stupid cat was right.
She looked up then, her eyes locking on a tall silhouette at the end of the hall. Immediately, she stopped, grabbing Kalindi by the elbow.
"Jem, what—"
"Guard."
"Huh?"
Jem's eyes widened; the silhouette was getting closer. "Guard," she said again, and whipped her head around frantically before her eyes landed on the heavy velvet curtains hanging from either side of the windows.
There wasn't any time to consider their other options; Jem yanked Kalindi aside, sweeping the curtain around them and letting the darkness swallow them up.
It was still for a moment, Jem's mind fuzzy save for the minacious clack of the guard's boots along the marble. Was he alone, or were there others? How long would they have to wait here? What if he'd seen them? It dawned on Jem that though she hadn't prepared for a battle tonight, they might have to fight anyway.
Fingers fluttered across her wrist, so soft, so timid, she might have imagined it. She looked up into Kalindi's face, shadowed, yet outlined in the silver gleam of moonlight pooling through the glass, and only then did Jem realize how close they were. She could nearly taste Kalindi's breath.
Somewhere beyond them, the shoes clacked, and clacked, and paused.
Jem's eyes lowered to Kalindi's mouth.
Kalindi's eyes widened, and she shook her head, mouthing at her: We shouldn't.
Maybe that was true, but Jem knew with undeniable conviction that if she didn't now, then she wouldn't ever. She brought her hands, quivering yet sure, to Kalindi's waist, and leaned closer. "Aren't you tired?" she whispered into the princess's ear, ignoring the fierce beat of her own heart, like thunder in her chest. "Aren't you tired of worrying all the time about what you shouldn't do?"
She saw it: the moment Kalindi let go. And she had never looked more beautiful.
Kalindi sighed, and reached for Jem like she was something long searched for and finally found. The force of the kiss struck Jem, unopened her, laid her bare; she gasped into Kalindi's mouth, pulling her closer, fingers pressing tiny wrinkles into the soft fabric of the princess's gown. Jem was alive with it all: Kalindi's sweet taste on her tongue, Kalindi's arms reaching up and up, twining around Jem's shoulders, the subtle music of their soft, shallow breaths mingling in the air.
Jem traced her hand up Kalindi's back, curving it around her ear, her chin. Kalindi shuddered and at last turned her face away, her chest heaving. "Jem?"
Jem brushed Kalindi's face with her knuckle, flicking her jeweled earring. "Kali," she whispered once she'd caught her breath. "Is everything okay?"
"No. I mean yes!" Kalindi said, and groaned. "Listen. I want to...I want you, more than I've ever wanted anything. I just—this is the exact opposite of what we're supposed to be doing right now."
Jem couldn't fight a smile. "Is it really?" she said. "The exact opposite?"
"We can't be late; Sorin will murder us."
"Maybe, but Sorin will murder anyone."
"That's beside the point—"
The curtain abruptly swept aside, and Jem swallowed a scream when she recognized Chike standing there, the curtain closed in his fist.
He narrowed his eyes at the two of them, no doubt noting the intimate placing of Kalindi's hands, or the suspect ruffling to Jem's once-neat ponytail. They both tensed, waiting for the question likely lingering on the tip of his tongue.
Instead, he just sighed, ushering them out. "I took care of the guard," he said, gesturing at the unconscious man he currently held by the collar like the guard were nothing more than a bag of potatoes. "You're welcome, by the way. Can you two just get a move on now?"
Jem nodded fiercely, taking Kalindi's hand. "Yes sir. We were just doing that! Moving, I mean!"
They made for the west wing then, climbing the curving staircase, and it almost felt as though Jem was walking on air.
The cellar was unimaginably cold, the frigid air enough to raise goosebumps along Sorin's skin. As he waited there, he alternated between pacing in a tight-knit circle and sitting in the corner—between two unopened crates of pinot noir—with his knees drawn into his chest. Try as he might to ignore it, there was a sharp pang of discomfort pulsing within him again and again: a needle that sank deeper into his heart with every beat. In the end it didn't matter that he hadn't gone inside; the memories still ambushed him, pounding at the inside of his skull until his temples throbbed.
His room in the chateau hadn't been all that different from the cellar, really. It was just as dark, just as chilly, the scents of mildew and musk perhaps twice as strong. He recalled the day of his arrival at Mulaim in vivid color; he could close his eyes and instantly be there—the dense thud of the limousine's doors shutting behind him, the way his beaten leather shoes echoed softly against the polished floors. Without so much as a glance in his direction, Lorenz had handed Sorin off to the servants, who led him through the grand hallway, past the lavish staircase, and to a faraway corner of the house, secluded from the family's and servants' quarters alike.
The servants pushed him aside and slammed the door shut hastily, whether from fear or revulsion or some sickening motley of both, he would never know.
Young Sorin had blinked into the dark, hugging himself, his nails digging into the flesh of his arms until they pierced bloody semicircles deep into the skin. It was the first moment he recalled realizing that this was wrong, all wrong—that his parents had lied to him, that he was not something magnificent, and he never would be. He was a stain, and like they would with any other filth that dared soil their precious silks, they had blotted him out.
A more distant memory floated up behind Sorin's eyes now, even as he tried to blink it away. Around a year before he ended up in Sinje, he was barely eight years old, and he'd only just discovered his power. He'd fallen asleep the night after the meteor hit and woken up again, bewildered and frightened, in a cat's body.
For several disorienting hours, he hadn't been able to figure out how to change back. When his parents shuffled back in from work, their faces still smeared with coal dust, they had tried to shoo him out, flippantly regarding him as if he were a common street cat. Only when he managed to speak did they recognize him, but by then the memory of their cautious stares, the way their lips slightly curled in disgust, had sunken irretrievably into Sorin's being.
Mama, he remembered saying that day, near a week later. His head was in his mother's lap, her fingers in his hair, carding through the strands the way she knew always soothed him. I'm scared; I don't want to morph anymore. I don't know what's wrong with me. What's wrong with me, Mama?
His mother had only smiled down at him, twirling his newly-lightened streak of hair around her index finger. Nothing's wrong with you, precious. You're our star. Nothing will change that.
And oh, how blindly he'd believed her.
A noise startled Sorin from his reverie, yet he gladly welcomed the interruption. They were footsteps, he thought, but they didn't sound like anyone's he knew—they were heavier, denser, like they belonged to someone wearing military-grade boots. Sorin stood, climbing halfway up the ladder, ear tilted towards the hatch.
"Be careful with that," hissed a voice: velvety, male. "The night's effectively gone to shit if that thing detonates before it's time."
Sorin went very, very still, his only movement the slight quiver of his knuckles as he held on tight to the rungs.
There was a tired sigh from above. "I'm doing my best, Enzi."
"That's Sergeant Sekibo to you." A pause, followed thereafter by a heavy thunk. "There, that's good. Now let's get the hell out of here; you're making me anxious."
"Yes sir."
Sorin listened, and listened, his ears twitching, as the footsteps got further and further away, leaving him alone in his former silence. And yet something in the air had changed—a new, threatening vibration, a subtle disturbance that tasted like destruction.
He didn't know how to disarm an explosive, if that's what it was, and from this far away, there was no way to warn Zuri or the others. It seemed there was only one way to make sure they all got out of there alive.
Sorin turned his head, eyes catching on the satchel still leaning against the wall where Chike had left it.
"Oh, by fucking Kiro," Sorin cursed, clambering down the ladder and tearing the satchel open.
He pulled the suit out, stared at it, cursed again just for good measure.
Finally, he put it on.