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In a small silver dish, a pile of pastries lies beside the bed, adjacent to a colorful bowl of fruit. I smile, thinking how out of it I must have been to have not even heard Rory. But now that I’m awake, I’m buzzing with energy. All I want to do is run it off.
I slip out of bed, stretching grandly. I curl my head down to my knees, shaking away the tension, dropping my fingers to my toes, before raising my arms to the ceiling and holding still. After a few exercises, I find myself dancing along the walkway of the dorm, cartwheeling and freestyling, delicious friction tearing at my muscles as my legs slide into a deep triangle. It’s been too long, too painfully long. My body yearns for it and every nerve feels alive once again. As I wheel my arms around myself and enter into a perfect somersault, I hold myself upside-down for an extended period on my palms before springing backward onto my feet. I remember the exhilaration of dance, the liberation whenever my body behaves like the brush instead of the paint.
How I’ve replaced that joy in recent months with politics. With debates. Thrashing opponents with the truth of a well-chosen word instead of bewitching them with my body. In a way it feels like progression, a transfer of confidence and experience from one mode of expression to the other.
A low voice calls to me from the other side of the dorm. “Can I wake up to this every day?” Luke murmurs, plumping the pillow behind his head to get a better view.
“Day?” I ask archly, gesturing to the window which shows nothing but pitch-black.
Luke shrugs lethargically. “That means nothing here. It could be two o’clock for all that says.” He glances at the clock opposite us. “Ah. Seven.” He runs a hand down his face, which no longer strains with exhaustion. He leans across to the bedside table and selects an apple from the fruit bowl. “Everyone will be wondering where I am.”
I tilt my head at him as I catch my breath.
“I don’t want to go out there,” he continues in a hesitant voice, throwing the apple between his large palms. “They’re just going to look and whisper, and some of them will dare each other to say stupid things to my face.” He settles deeper into bed, taking a bite from the apple. “I’d much rather stay here and watch you dance naked in my bedroom.”
There is no music but I don’t need it. With a small grin, I oblige him. I resume dancing, mixing it with more general acrobatics. I dart forward, curling myself into a front flip, my legs arrow-straight, my feet pointing up into the air. I arch until I’m upright, panting slightly, my hair loosened from its relaxed ponytail and spreading around my face. In front of Luke’s bed, I slide my hips dreamily from side to side, watching his eyes zip-zag across my body like heated lasers, his fingers stilling around the red apple. I grab hold of the mattress edge and dip my body low. On my return, I shake my hair free and make a beeline for Luke, crawling across to him on all fours. He’s stopped breathing, just staring at me in awe, as I press my lips to his.
Apple zings across my tastebuds, and I kiss him thoroughly, his slick, slack mouth opening to give me more. He’s hardening beneath me, and I don’t know when dancing turned intothis, but I know that Luke needs it. I know Luke needs a massive distraction from his current reality.
He grabs hold of me, pulling me closer and deeper, the only thing separating us the bed sheets. I like it. It feels playful, teasing, fun. Luke’s hands slide up into my hair, stroking the gentle wave that frames my face, and his gaze is serious as he drinks me in. “You’re the one good thing from this past year,” he says, the weight of his attention a powerful force. Despite the heat and heaviness of it, I meet the flames burning in Luke’s eyes without missing a beat. “I don’t know if I can call this my annus horribilis if you’re in it.”
My lips twitch and don’t stop. It’s a big romantic statement, and yet… “Finlay would totally make a joke out of that.”
Luke glowers. “Because Finlayisan annus horribilis,” he says dryly, and the both of us descend into the stupidest, freest kind of crying laughter, the type where we end up not remembering the reason why we started laughing in the first place. It’s a release, a bursting bubble of tension, and I find myself sagging on top of Luke’s tear-soaked chest, full of love.
We lie like that for an age, me snuggling into Luke and breathing him in, Luke stroking my hair distractedly, picking up strands and watching them fall.
“Maybe we should go downstairs,” Luke murmurs, his handsome face in profile against the white pillow as he gazes glumly at the door.
“You’re ready for that?”
“I can’t avoid it my whole life.” He sounds brisk, practical. “Better to tear it off now.”
“You’re allowed time to grieve.”
Luke grows silent, his fingers still toying with the strands of my hair. “I just need things to be normal,” he says quietly, “so I can pretend…” He swallows, his lips pursing as he glances away from me. “That way I won’t have to focus too hard on what they’ve done, or on how I’m technically now an orphan… because otherwise I’ll spiral.”
My heart clenches. Luke’s pain is in his tone and in his words, in the slick gloss of his deep brown eyes. “You’re allowed to do that, too,” I tell him, but he shakes his head.
“I’ve been trained to lead a country. I’m battle-ready for crises. This is another, like any other,” he says, but despite his strong words, I don’t believe him. I know he’s trying to convince himself. “Death is normal,” he adds, “and for us there was always a chance that something like this would happen.” Logic. He’s using logic. “I grew up hyper-aware of my family being a high-profile target for political extremists. Break-ins, ransom attacks. So many must have been thwarted when I grew up, when we still had teams of security. Every night, wondering if today would be our last together. It’s finally happened, as perhaps I knew deep down that it would. It was entirely expected, and I should have predicted something like this after the ritual, had I not been too stubborn to deny what happened at the loch.”
I swallow. The way he talks, always duty-bound and self-possessed, seems deeply unnatural to me. But his mention of the ritual stills my breath.
“You expect to die.”
It’s a simple comment, one with enormous gravity. The peace of the chiefs’ dorm seems to turn spikier.
Luke’s eyes slide across to mine. “Wouldn’t you, after today?”
I say nothing for a long time. I’d been willing to die, once, as an escape. Luke is prepared to die because of who he is.
“Have I ever told you about my recurring dream?” he asks softly. When I shake my head, he explains, “Every night, I go to sleep, my eyes are closed, and then…” He stops, deliberating. “Bang.”
In the quiet of the dorm, my breath hitches loudly.
“Every single night, I dream of getting shot in the head. I thought my time was up when Lochkelvin was attacked. I’ve been on borrowed time ever since.”
“That can’t be true,” I whisper. “There must be a way out of this.”
