Young Writers Society

Mireya had a secret: she wasn’t actually very good at fancy parties.

Could she dress up nice for an occasion? Yes. Could she be sociable and outgoing with people? Yes. Could she be her dazzling, alluring, fun self? Absolutely yes. But damn, rich people were so uptight sometimes, and it was kind of awkward to be bubbly and exciting around people with the personality of a wet sock.

She scanned the crowd with raised eyebrows, spotting dozens and dozens of people talking who were dressed in stunning outfits, surrounded by glamour and wealth, and appeared to be having no fun at all. A few people were dancing to the string quartet played for the ballroom, but their movements were stiff and unnatural. Most smiles looked fake, and the laughter even more so. A little baffled, she glanced at Dawn, who she was trying to keep up with as she drifted through the crowd.

“Do the Houses always throw lame parties?” she whisper-hissed.

“Yes,” Dawn said emphatically. “It’s not their fault. Well— I mean, they don’t try to make them bad. Serious plans go into this event. But politicians in general tend to act pretty boring, and this is just the result of sticking five hundred of them in the same room.”

“Is no one happy to be here?” Mireya asked. “I thought this was supposed to be like, a big birthday party for the Houses. Is there a banner that says “Congratulations on fucking up Aphirah for another year, have some cake’?”

Dawn pressed her lips together in what Mireya hoped was a suppressed smile. “No banner. There is cake, though.”

“What flavor?”

“It’s always been vanilla.”

Mireya made a grossed-out face. “Saints, if you’d told me twenty-one hundred and forty years ago I’d be creating a terrible government that celebrated its disastrousness with plain cake, I would’ve just made myself supreme leader and banned vanilla cake.”

Dawn barked a laugh, then clamped her mouth shut and forced a serious expression over her face, like she didn’t want to show amusement to this kind of humor here in case anyone was listening. Whatever. Mireya had made a pretty Heir laugh at her anti-authoritarian joke during a government party. She’d be basking in that achievement forever.

“Dessert catering choices aside,” Dawn said. “This is less of a party and more of a formal event, but that doesn’t mean it’s always uninteresting. At least one bit of drama will be stirred up here tonight.”

“Drama besides the maniac trying to restructure the world’s entire magic system here so it’s all useless?” Mireya asked.

“Besides the maniac,” Dawn confirmed. “We don’t need Sparrow to start problems.”

If not for their purpose here, Mireya would’ve absolutely been invested in that. Hell, she would’ve gone around trying to start more drama all by herself just to make all these aristocrats shaken. Then she would’ve found Cyrin and gossiped with him while watching from a distance—

Mireya’s heart shattered a little over again. Saints, she couldn’t go minutes without her thoughts going back there. He’d been so frail when she’d seen him last.

She took a deep breath and shoved the memory aside.

“See the man in dark green over there?” Dawn suddenly asked, indicating someone ahead of them with a tilt of her chin.

Mireya’s gaze flicked to the man in question. He was tall, with a sharply sculpted face, warm tan skin, neat black hair and dark eyes that seemed to pierce through each person his gaze settled on. He wore a suit so deep green it looked like a shadow and stood to the side of a grand staircase, watching the rest of the party coldly.

“Yeah,” she said. “Man, he looks fun.”

Dawn huffed quietly. “That’s Shane’s uncle, Flint Hawking. He’s in charge of the House of Courage. And yeah, he’s very stiff. Don’t get in any arguments with him.”

Mireya distantly remembered the time after Gwen Hawking’s death, when the House of Courage revealed the hidden identity of its former Heir— who would take Gwen’s place— to be her brother Flint. The news hadn’t seemed to surprise anyone, but from what she’d heard from fellow anarchists, though, the transfer of power disappointed them. Gwen and her husband Ray had been beloved for being in touch with the people of Aphirah, advocating for their needs, and Flint seemed to be heading back the way they’d came. It was no shock that he, like most politicians, would be self-serving, but… Well, she could see why this one hurt.

“He’s also probably incredibly mad at the five of us for disappearing,” Dawn added. “I hope he doesn’t find Shane.”

Mireya winced. “Hopefully Shane finds someone to tail before he can be found.”

“That,” Dawn agreed. “I think I saw him go to the other end, so he might escape Flint’s notice.”

Mireya searched the crowd. They were over to the side, out of the way of the ever-shifting mass of guests, and had a fairly complete view of the party. Still, she couldn’t see anyone of Sparrow’s undercover as a guest.

“Is your House leader here?” she asked.

“Vivienne? Certainly,” Dawn said, her gaze darting around the room. For a moment, the look in her eyes turned concerned. “I haven’t seen her yet, but she’ll be in purple or black.”

“Like twenty percent of the people here.”

Dawn huffed faintly, but there was something that sounded uneasy in her amusement. “Right.”

Mireya had to take a moment to contemplate—for the first time, really—how odd it must be for Dawn and the other Heirs to return here. To her, dramatically breaking the law happened a few times every week. But the Heirs had all practically abandoned their posts to chase a dubious lead, in unthinkable conduct for a government official, and now they were attending a House event as if they’d never left. When this was all over, what would they have to do to regain the respect they’d lost? Would they face any repercussions? Mireya knew if they did, it likely wouldn’t be there. Not at a celebration. But once their superiors got their hands on them privately, she had the feeling that it wouldn’t be a heartwarming reunion.

She would’ve expected to feel nothing at this thought. But strangely, a tingle of worry for them settled over her.

“Are you—going to be okay after this?” Mireya asked hurriedly, before she could change her mind about voicing the question.

Dawn blinked, turning back to her with a distracted look in her eyes. “Hmm?”

“Just… you know,” Mireya said, lowering her voice and waving her hand to indicate the room. “Is anyone going to try to get back at you and the others? After what you all did to help us?”

The grimace Dawn made betrayed the fact that she’d been thinking of this just now, too.

“Almost certainly,” she said. “We shocked a lot of people, and I’m surprised no one has marched up to me yet to shout at me for how irresponsible we were.”

“Maybe it’s because I’m so scary and intimidating,” Mireya suggested, standing up straight to her full height of five feet and four inches.

She’d meant to make Dawn smile, or at least lighten the mood, but she had no visible reaction to the joke.

“That’s just… something we’ll have to worry about later,” Dawn said, a little tightly. “On the bright side, this will be under wraps because our status as Heirs isn’t public, so this won’t make the news or cause national backlash. But that is about all we have going for us.”

Mireya felt a flicker of worry again, but for a different reason this time.

Right. Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to make light of everything. This was a difficult situation for Dawn, and Mireya didn’t know if Dawn had really forgiven her for the outburst she had yesterday. The memory of the tears in her eyes instantly made her heart sting. Some moments, Dawn seemed to have forgotten about it. But sometimes, like now, she could feel this invisible tension springing up between them, impossible to go unnoticed and nearly as difficult to address.

If Dawn had any hard feelings, though, why had she said that at the entrance?

“But you’ll be safe afterwards,” Mireya pressed. “Right?”

“Oh, we will be,” Dawn said, and there was a little more certainty in her voice this time. “They can’t hurt us. They can make our lives difficult, for a time. But remaining safe is sure to happen.”

“Good,” Mireya said, and she meant it.

She couldn’t help but think about what would happen if that wasn’t the case, though. If there was a safe place she knew of, she would’ve offered it to her, but she didn’t have those. Only safe people. But one of them was dying in a hotel room a mile away, and the other was…

Shaking her head clear of that thought, Mireya checked her communicator’s map. Clarity’s location had moved—and it was still moving, the pin slowly blinking as it moved along a road. A road which ran along the eastern side of the palace.

“She’s on her way,” Mireya said hastily, internally cursing herself for not looking at her location sooner as she grabbed Dawn by the wrist and started guiding her that way.

Dawn had a bit of a false start, as she was caught off guard and Mireya really didn’t have the force to drag her along, but she quickly caught on and followed after her. “How far out is she?”

“If she’s in a car, probably a few minutes,” Mireya said. “I think she is, with the speed she’s moving at.”

“Why are we going this way?” Without looking around, she could hear the confusion in Dawn’s voice. “The entrance is over there.”

Mireya clicked her tongue. “Some people don’t like the front door, darling.”

“What?”

“She’s going to sneak in.”

“No, I mean—” Dawn cut herself off. “Don’t worry about it.”

…Shit. That had slipped out, hadn’t it? Mireya hadn’t been meaning to say that aloud, but now that she had, she was oddly tempted to commit to it.

Without slowing down, she nevertheless took the moment to look back at Dawn, meeting her gaze with seriousness as she switched from holding Dawn’s wrist to holding her hand.

“If we get another moment here,” she said. “I plan on asking you to dance.”

She had to look ahead again because she was close to bumping into another guest, and she didn’t get to see the expression on Dawn’s face. But Mireya thought it held a smile from her tone when she answered, “I plan on saying yes.”