Page 110 of The Amber Sunburst

She spins around in fear, but the Auxiliaries that didn’t finish are either dangling right over the water or have just enough room in the compartment to breathe through their noses, their screens outlined in red.

So the whole ‘no safety net’ thing was a bluff then? Seems cruel when the stakes are already high enough. But she supposes it does engage the audience more if it seems like a matter of life and death. And everyone knows half the point of the Trials is the spectacle.

The camera broadcasting to Alexander and Kallias’ screen pans to the sand, where Auxiliaries are finding each other or kissing the ground or thanking the Forms. Music plays loudly over the muted video.

She sees Eudoxia and Zeno run into each other’s arms like long-lost lovers. Zeno lifts her up and Eudoxia wraps her legs around his waist. She smiles wildly into his hair and his hand strokes sweetly up and down one of her legs.

When Alexander passes them they wave excitedly, but Zeno doesn’t put Eudoxia down. He swings her to his back and carries her around the beach threatening to throw her in the water. She’s laughing maniacally into his ear like Arete at her most wild, and it makes Ophelia’s heart melt.

This is why she thinks they’re meant for each other. There’s no one who can make Eudoxia laugh like that, uninhibited and free. And Zeno looks like he’d rather be nowhere else for the rest of his life, glancing over his shoulder every three seconds just to see her face.

Ophelia grins, then refocuses when she sees Alexander smiling at them warmly from a few paces up the sand. His linen shirt is soaking and sticking to his body like a siren’s wet dream. Eudoxia always laughs about the fact that he never wears his undershirt, but now Ophelia understands why he doesn’t.

She watches him wave one last time at Eudoxia and Zeno before turning around to search the beach. Once he finds what he’s looking for, he is a man on a mission. It’s not hard to see who he’s on his way to. Kallias’ hair makes him stick out in any setting, especially now that he’s milling at the edge of the crowd near the waves.

When Alexander gently places a hand on his shoulder, Kallias doesn’t startle. He just slowly looks down to the hand, then the arm, then farther and farther until he gets to Alexander’s eyes. He turns so they’re facing each other and Alexander asks him something, frenzied and desperate.

Kallias tilts his head and nods, and Alexander pulls him into one of the most passionate hugs she’s ever seen in her life. One hand on Kallias’ lower back, and the other in his hair, both rough and tender at the same time. Kallias’ eyes meet the camera for a moment like he’s worried someone’s watching, but he looks away just as quickly and gives in, melting into the embrace. His face is buried in Alexander’s neck, arms wrapped around his back.

Forms, they’re so sweet.

The broadcast does one more pan around the beach before shutting off. When she looks next to her, the Educator is walking away. There’s a meal and a replay of the highlights for everyone in the towers, but perhaps the Educator has more important things to do with his time.

She distributes more food and tries to remind herself of the wonderfully relaxing night she’s going to have tomorrow with her friends as the hoots and hollers of the viewers leave her scowling. They agreed to meet in Zeno’s room and do nothing but sit around, which Ophelia has no problem with. That was unbearably stressful for her and all she did was watch.

TRIAL III

THE TOWER, MAJOR ARCANA XVI

29

ALEXANDER

James Jobson loved the sea. And Alexander loved everything that his father loved, so Alexander also loved the sea.

Alexander still loves the sea, even two near-drownings later. That’s why, when Ophelia told him about a door on the bottom floor that leads to a hidden cove, he all but ran downstairs.

That’s where he is now, breathing in the salty air from the water lapping up to shore. He watched the sun set over the horizon earlier, but it’s long gone now, replaced by the cold light of the moon.

Maybe his lack of ocean-induced trauma is strange, a testament to every other fear his childhood managed to instill in him—it would be absurd to let a few run-ins with the sea overshadow years of self-loathing and mommy issues!—but thank God for that. Alexander doesn’t know what he would do if he no longer had the sea.

It’s the only place where he truly feels his father’s spirit anymore.

Probably because it’s the only place he ever saw the real, unfiltered version of his father in life, too. Only when mist from the waves settled over them could James Jobson be who he really was: a nerdy, technology-obsessed, witty, atheist king of a Catholic country.

And somehow the sand and the ocean sounds and his father’s soft voice made Alexander more himself too—like they welded together all of the hundreds of iterations of his personality to make him something more than just good company. Something almost real.

Miriam Helena, on the other hand, hated the sea. And Cain hated everything that his mother hated, so Cain also hated the sea.

He probably still does, though he was perfectly willing to use it as a weapon against his only brother. His only family, anymore.

There was a time when they liked each other, Cain and him, but Alexander can’t remember when it stopped. Just that, at some point, midnight sneak-outs to watch the stars ended. Morning runs around the grounds ended. Playful bickering in the halls ended.

But he also remembers the day after their father died, when he ran down to the beach, tripping over his own feet. He sliced up his hands falling down the last flight of jagged, wooden stairs, but he let the open wounds mix with the sand anyway. He sat in the gentle waves and sobbed, emotions heightened from all of the wine in his system.

And then, suddenly, there was Cain, right next to him. Not saying anything, not even looking at him, but still there. They watched the waves for hours.

God, he misses Cain so much.