Page 35 of Sparktopia
When we arrive at the dining hallit’s already packed with people. I can’t sit with Clara—traditions—but she’s sitting in a private elevated balcony, just like I am, and we are directly across from each other. Just like we were last night in the ballroom.
She seems to know I’m here, but I only get one small wave. Both Clara and Gemna are too busy consoling poor Haryet to pay attention to anything else.
Dinner is a long, boring affair and no one seems to be in the mood to party like they were last night. Of course, last night their Extraction Master wasn’t dead—at least in their minds—and the eighth girl had not been called into the tower yet.
At nine o’clock, once the feast is over, the people sitting at the tables on the floor of the dining room begin migrating out and over to the God’s Tower event center where the gala will be held.
The Maidens and myself will enter the gala last. I will dance with Haryet for at least thirty minutes while Tau City’s elite class watch us, whispering and murmuring. Then I will hand her off to Mitchell and everyone will dance. Including me, including Clara. All the Maidens will dance with every man in the room and I will dance with every woman. Clara and I might get three minutes with each other.
But it’s OK.
I keep telling myself that. Over and over again. It’s OK. Because she’s mine and I’m bringing her home with me tonight. She is spending the night with me tonight. I don’t care what the Matrons say or how much they threaten her, or me, for that matter. I will have my night with Clara.
You never know, it could be my last. Who could predict the whims of a god we’ve never even seen, let alone understand?
Once it’s my turn to leave the dining hall and make my way over to the gala, I go through the motions. I say all the right words to all the important people as I walk, and then, once I enter, wait for the applause to end while acting humble and unassuming. Then I meet up with Haryet on the dance floor so the gala can officially begin.
When I take her hand in mine, I realize it’s shaking. But then, when I place my other hand on her hip, I realize her whole body is shaking.
I’ve watched my father console all the others who came before Haryet, so I know he talked to them. Probably in that deep, soothing voice of his. Something I didn’t inherit. And even though the Maiden always looked on the verge of a panic while he danced with them, they held it together. I don’t recall a single one of them crying.
What was that Maiden motto again? Poised, polite, pretty? Something like that. At any rate, that’s what the Spark Maidens going into the tower always looked like to me. Textbook examples of… well… Spark Maidens. All brainwashed up, as Mitch might say.
Haryet is not holding it together. I am not my father and I have no words—none at all—that could possibly console her.
I am sending this woman to her death tonight. In less than three hours, she will be gone.
Forgotten, except as a name in a list in a history book. If any more of those are written, that is. Which seems precarious at the moment. Because the god is dying.
I haven’t told Mitch what the Council said yet. They told me not to tell anyone, ever, but there’s no chance of that—I tell Mitch everything. But so much has happened in the last few days that the dying god isn’t even at the top of my list.
“Finn?”
I look down at Haryet. Despite her red and swollen eyes, she still looks beautiful. She’s so petite that she tips her chin all the way up to meet my gaze. This changes the shape of her face as I look down and makes her softer. Younger. More vulnerable. Which is not the look I need right now. “Hmm?” I ask.
“If I live?—”
“Haryet—”
“No, just listen. If I live—I mean, if I’m alive on the other side—I’ve decided to send a signal back. I don’t know how, but I will. I made a promise to myself when Lucy Fisher went in that, if this ever happened to me, I would figure out what is going on. I hadn’t thought about that in a while, but… it’s all I have left, ya know? And so now I’m going in and that’s my goal. Live, number one, but also find answers. So that neither Clara nor any Maiden ever again will have to feel the way I feel right now. Iwillfind a way to tell Clara.”
It’s a dumb thing, I think. But I don’t say that, of course. I just nod. “If anyone can do it, Haryet, it will be you.”
And maybe I do have a little bit of my father inside me after all. Because this seems to finally set her at ease. Her shoulders drop, she lets out a long breath, and she presses her lips together as she forces herself to be stoic despite the large tears still rolling down her sweet cheeks.
She steps in closer to me and my arms automatically tighten around her. Then her cheek is on my chest and my chin is resting on her head.
I don’t know if she closes her eyes, but I do. Because I can feel it. I can feel something bad coming.
Things are not going to go smoothly during my tenure as Extraction Master.
My three minutes with Clarabegin at precisely eleven twenty-seven.
She falls into me. Head on my shoulder, arms wrapped around my back, gripping me tight. While I cross my hands at the small of her back in a possessive way.
I didn’t want to watch her dance with all those men, but how could I not?
I didn’t want to be jealous of them, but how could I not?
