Page 1 of Sparktopia
CHAPTER ONE
Spark leaks out of my fingertipsas cyan-blue light when I stroke the curve of Finn Scott’s muscled shoulder. It leaves a trace of glow on his skin that takes many more seconds to disappear today than it did ten years ago. We’re in his quarters—in his bed, specifically—hiding from the festival going on outside.
Not really hiding, I guess. What we just did wasn’t wrong and if anyone saw us come in here—or sees us leave—they wouldn’t even blink.
Clara Birch and Finn Scott have been a ‘thing’ for… well, our entire lives. Which totals up to nearly three decades.
But I’m a Spark Maiden and he’s the Extraction Master’s son and I technically still have three months left in service to the tower god before Finn and I can officially and publicly declare our love.
Right now, in bed next to me, he is absently tracing a fingertip up and down my outer thigh. And this simple touch of his is enough to send a chill up my whole body.
“Clara?”
“Hmm.” I sigh the word out with eyes closed, picturing our future.
“You’re the best thing that ever happened to me. I wish we could stay like this forever.”
Now I smile and turn, pressing my face into his neck. “Pretty soon we’re gonna be spending so much time together, you’re gonna get sick of me.”
He chuckles and I hear this happiness as a rumble coming from his chest.
In just three months we will be this close to each other every night. We will make love, and wake up together, and breakfast, and he will go to work as his father’s new apprentice, and I will have babies and turn his quarters into our home.
This new life will be the complete opposite of how I have lived for the past ten years, up on the ninth floor of the Maiden Tower, surrounded by luxury. A celebrity, of sorts.
“We should get going.” Finn’s other hand, the one not caressing my thigh, is busy playing with my hair as he says this.
I moan and turn a little so we’re facing each other. Our mutual smiles are genuine. “Not yet.” This comes out a little bit whiny, but I feel I have earned this tiny objection.
“They’re gonna start missing you.” He’s pulling strands of hair away from my face now. We kiss, letting it linger, well aware that we need to get back to the Choosing Festival outside, but unwilling to break apart.
I sigh, knowing he’s right, but reluctant to give up this time with him. So I stall with more words. “Trust me. I’m not missed. They’re busy with the Little Sisters today. I’m old news now.”
Finn chuckles. “Not exactly. I mean, seven, Clara. It’s… precariously close, don’t you think?”
“Wow.” I sit up a little, blinking at his audacity. Because that was not just impolite, but actuallyrude. “Well, that’s certainlyone way to pull me out of my postcoital bliss. Thanks for reminding me.”
“Sorry.” He offers me a weak smile, then pushes a few errant strands of long, blonde hair away from my face. “I just don’t want you to get in trouble.”
“That’s not why you said that. And I’m mad that you’re worrying about it. There are only three months left, I’m number nine, and the last call was over a year ago now. Whatever crisis the god was having that required so many Spark Maidens, I think it’s been remedied.”
Finn sighs, not quite agreeing, but not willing to say it out loud, either. He’s worried and he wants me to allay his feelings, but he’s looking for something more than what I just gave him. What I just said is the same thing everyone says.
But the truth is, no one knows what’s going on with the god in the tower. What we do know is that seven Spark Maidens in ten years is too many.
The Extraction is a tradition here in Tau City. But it’s more than that. Spark is what the god uses to power the city. Every ten years the Extraction Master ranks the most powerful Spark Maidens in order from one to ten. And on Extraction Day itself, the god calls number one into the tower to take as his own.
Being number nine in the Spark Maiden line-up comes with a whole lot of peace of mind because one is supposed to be the limit. The other nine are Maidens-in-Waiting. We get celebrity status. We live in the Maiden Tower surrounded by luxury. We wear the best dresses, attend the best parties, and have a whole staff of maids and helpers. It’s a fantasy life that every little girl dreams about as she grows up.
If you’re one of the nine Maidens-in-Waiting in normal years there is no need to worry about being called up for Extraction. There have only been a handful of times, in over a thousandyears of history, wheretwoSpark Maidens were Extracted in the same decade.
But this has not been a normal Extraction period. As Finn pointed out, we are on Maiden number seven now. Those bells have rung seven times in the last ten years. And each time one of my friends walked into the tower, never to be seen again.
They don’t return, you see. They don’t come back.
Still, there are only three months left. I’m safe. IknowI’m safe.
And this feeling of safety is elevated because of what’s been happening outside while Finn and I took this opportunity to reunite after months of not seeing each other. Because today marks the first official pre-Extraction Choosing.
