CURRENT TIME

EVVIE (17 YEARS OLD)

I couldn't tell Caidan the truth. I'd learned the art of lying the moment I'd first slid my toes into ballet slippers and tied the pretty ribbons around my ankles.

The bruises on my arms confirmed it too. I'd smiled serenely through the pain and utter shock that someone would speak to me the way the boy with red hair had done yesterday afternoon. He'd whispered in my ear that he was going to marry me one day and told me all the ways he'd hurt me. He promised me endless suffering with his own mindless smile plastered on his face, speaking in a light unhurried manner as if we'd been comparing our calculus homework. All the while he held my arm in a savage hold that left behind purple fingerprints I later hid beneath long sleeves. He'd tested me too, menace gleaming in hazel eyes, as he beared down further with his cruel grip, sharp fingernails digging into my skin, enjoying the torture and waiting to see when I'd cry out—Please stop! No more!

But my dance lessons had taught me too well. I could bear the agony of pushing my body to near-collapse with an artful smile, to never bite back at the taunting disapproval when I couldn't hold my position as well as expected. To never acknowledge I was exhausted and my spirit close to breaking.

Yesterday, the boy had seen my teardrop pendant and sneered, "How ugly."

I braced myself for a mocking insult, but Caidan said, "It's beautiful and whimsical. It suits you."

It wasn't his touch on my arm, it was his smile. Slow and cautious and dimpled. It was as if a key had been turned and my body came alive. Acute awareness and wonderment flowed through me as delicate as the sea glass hanging around my throat. We held each other's gazes for a minute, an hour, an eternity, my mouth curved up to perfectly reflect his. Both of us smiling with our entire bodies.

It was the slow death of sound that had both of us turning back toward the fighting pit. The voices lowering to a hush note. The bewilderment at what was happening between the brawlers.

Graysen had stopped fighting and stood in front of Zielenski bodily swaying. His hands hung limply by his sides, knuckles split and bleeding. Defeat in the slumped line of his shoulders. The way his head was bowed, the sweat-coated black locks falling forward, reminded me of Nelle that day at the beach when she'd collapsed into the shallows. Sucking in a deep breath he raised his head to look at his brothers and spoke to them.

"What's he saying?" I asked Cadian.

Caidan had glanced away and we were so close I could rise up on the flat of my toes in a relevé to press forward and sweep my mouth along his cheek.

A frown creased Caidan's forehead, and his square jaw flexed. As he answered me, his tongue tripped over the words as if he was reconciling the information at the same time he spoke. "He's not going through with it..."

The fight?

That's what everyone one else was thinking too.

But not me. Not his brothers either.

Graysen meant marrying my sister.

Graysen suddenly twisted aside, stabbing a furious finger at Kenton and Jett, and roared, "I'M NOT DOING IT! I WON'T!"

Hope swelled inside my chest.

"Marry me," I asked breathlessly. If Graysen wouldn't marry Nelle, then Caidan could marry me, and I'd be saved from Corné Pelan.

But the words were gone, lost in a sea of voices and shouts that rose up like a tidal wave when Zielenski powered through. He slammed his fist into Graysen's jaw and knocked him sideways.

One heartbeat Caidan stood before me.

The next he was gone.

And I was left alone in the darkness.

~THE END~