#the scam

"Sorry," he said, a little embarrassed. "I thought you were ready."

Despite the terror that gripped her bowels at the thought of what would happen during the ball, she tried to smile, not to show him the emotions she was now forced to hide from him. As short as the period in which they had been each other’s confidant was, she already missed it: keeping secrets wasn’t exactly what she did best, just like hiding emotions, and although she realized she was getting really good at it, it still was something Silvers did naturally and committed her so much energy she collapsed on the bed every evening without even the strength to undress, which obviously she forced herself to do, if she didn’t want maids to gossip on inappropriate details that would surely arrive at the queen’s ears. The only things that consoled her, and it was a meager consolation, was that with the Scarlet Guard’s intervention, her live would have fewer worries; Farley told her that they only needed one minute of darkness, so are supposed it was going to be a quick action, with no unnecessary casualties, but even if it weren't so, she would’ve had to accept it anyway, or she would’ve had another enemy to worry about. Obviously she didn't consider the rebels her allies and she knew that nobody would care about Kilorn's presence in their ranks if they had to betray her, and at this point she began to think that even who she had considered for a lifetime her dearest friend could be willing to do it, regardless of how much she risked, and was still risking, for him too, but she was willing to endure this too if one minute was enough to get rid of the queen.

"I was distracted," she replied vaguely but it wasn’t easy to sidetrack Cal, and the prince looked her straight in the eye, tilting his head slightly. If he hadn't been a burner, and the heat emitted by his body hadn't made the whole room warmer, given his attitude he could’ve been a singer, like his mother: when those bronze eyes were fixed in hers, she couldn’t resist the temptation to believe his words, to want to do what he said. Perhaps, when he had convinced her to do that scam, he had enchanted her.

"Are you still worried about the ball?" he investigated, and Mare nodded, thanking him mentally for providing that excuse that, moreover, wasn’t totally a lie.

"One step at a time, it's the best you can do," he tried to reassure her, without even realizing that his words didn’t applied only to the dance lessons he was giving her privately, when their duties as future rulers came at the end, but also on how to change the world and get rid of the Scarlet Guard’s weight that weighed on her chest more and more every day, making it almost difficult to breathe.

"I guess your steps have always been much longer than mine," she replied, returning to the basic dance moves. Cal chuckled and confessed that he hadn’t always been a great dancer. Mare laughed at his story, but deep inside, she was thinking at how beautiful it must’ve been to have a choreography as her greatest concern.

"I thought princes were born with an innate skill for dance and futile conversations," she teased him, even though she knew that Cal was different and if it was on him, he would’ve closed himself in a garage or a barrack, without doing nothing else than building or training. If his story had been different, he probably would’ve abdicated, but his mother had died to make him sit on that throne and even if it was Maven the one more skilled for that sort of things, even if he was still a little too young to reign, Cal, just like his father, ignored the fact that his brother was better with words, manners and knowledge of court customs and strove to be a good future king. She wondered if Maven would’ve been a better ruler: she knew very little about him, but he gave her the impression of being sad, and he would’ve been even more once she managed to kills his mother. To shake off that annoying thought, which threatened to make her crumble, she concentrated on Cal’s hands, firmly positioned on her waist, and on the faint aroma of wood smoke that followed him wherever he went. It reminded her of warmth, autumn and home, making her feel as if they shared memories that didn’t really existed, intoxicating her as the merry melody they were practicing on, which made her heart beat wildly. At the thought of home, she felt a grip tighten her stomach, but forced herself to ignore it: it was really too long since the last time she was her family, apart from Gisa, who was making her a dress for the ball and had taken her measurements just a few days before, but within the walls of the palace, the love she felt for those people was off limits, or the queen would’ve managed to remove what she would’ve called weaknesses. How love could be considered a weakness in that world was incomprehensible to her: during one of their lessons, Julian had told her about something that had come before Norta, a society made of empires, corruption, war and freedom, much more than she would ever be able to taste, even once she became queen, where love didn’t destroy, didn’t corroded the soul as it was happening to her, but used to build bridges, and continued to allow people to dream of a better future. That era no longer existed and in its place only smoke and ash was left, and it was known that nothing can flourish in those conditions.

"It's our nature," said Julian. "We are made to destroy, it’s the only constant of our species: regardless of the blood’s color, humanity is damned to fall.”