I said to Roki, “We should go inside and dry our feet.”
He smiled. “Whatever you say, Kaelyn.”
I led him past the sitting rooms, the kitchen, down the long hallway and up the back stairwell to the second floor.
“I’ve never been up here,” Roki said as we walked. “We’ve always stayed downstairs, in the dining room or in the parlor, where your parents could keep their eyes on us. Where are we going?”
“You’ll see,” I said. My heart was hammering in my chest. I was more nervous than ever as we neared my room. It seemed like the right thing to do and the right time to do it. Me and Roki, alone in my bedroom. I’d never known a boy I felt so strongly about. For that matter, I’d never had a boy in my room. Everything felt so … fated.
I pulled him through the threshold and stopped, turned to look into his eyes.
Roki made a loud gulp as he looked around. “We’re in your bedroom.”
“I’ll get some towels to dry our feet,” I told him, only half aware our feet were already dry.
I went into the adjoining washroom and came back with two fluffy white towels. Roki was seated on the edge of my bed. He looked out of place. Everything in my room was colorful, blue sheets and blue drapes, cute outfits hanging on hooks in the smaller closet, and makeup scattered on my vanity. I wondered how long it had been since Roki last ventured into a girl’s room. I wondered if he ever had. It seemed unlikely to me that such a handsome character hadn’t, even if he was still so young.
“Here.” I passed him a towel.
“Thanks,” he said with a laugh, “but my feet are already dry.”
I looked at mine and burst out laughing, mostly from awkwardness. “Mine too,” I said.
And that was when something happened, something powerful and indescribable. We both stopped laughing and regarded one another. The air thickened. Heat rose from an unknown place and overtook me. He parted his lips to speak, then stopped. Magnetism was drawing me to him, my hand to the flaxen scruff on his chin. It was soft, inviting. I said, “Roki …” and he shushed me with his finger to my lips.
Now his hand was at my cheek, caressing my skin. I thought, This is it. It’s what I’ve been waiting—no, yearning for!
“Can you feel it?” Roki said, his voice low and deep.
I nodded, swallowed dryly. “Yes.”
He was leaning toward me. I could hear his shallow breaths. I touched his chest through his shirt, felt the hard contours of his pecs, ran my fingers down his sculpted abs. I was in awe of his perfect body. His eyes pierced mine and then glanced at my lips, as my fingers slowly rolled over the stubble on his chin and jawline. His lips were getting closer. Electricity prickled through me, and I leaned in to meet him—
“Kaelyn! Kaelyn, where are you?”
I jolted in surprise, pulled away from Roki just as my lips brushed against his. “Is that my brother?”
Raad’s voice sounded again, booming through my open doorway. “Kaelyn, are you here?” His footsteps thundered and shook the house as he searched for me.
I looked at Roki. “He shouldn’t be here until tomorrow. I … I …”
But our moment had passed. Roki’s panic was clear on his face. He looked scared, like he had been caught doing something he shouldn’t have been doing.
I touched his knee. “Don’t worry. Raad’s my brother. It’s okay if he sees us together. We’ve done nothing wrong.”
Before I could say more, Raad exploded into my room. “Kaelyn,” he said, short of breath and totally wild. He looked different than I remembered. He was grown, burly, menacing. The Aska training had turned my brother into a fierce man.
“Yes, brother. I’m here. What is it? Why do you look so panicked? Shouldn’t you be at the—?”
“It’s Mama,” he said, and the blood drained from my face. “Something terrible has happened.”
Instinct maybe, or maybe the strip of mourning sackcloth wrapped around Raad’s left bicep—either way, I knew what he was going to say. I could feel it, could see the devastation in my brother’s tanned face. Already tears were welling in my eyes. I fumbled for Roki’s hand but couldn’t find it.
Raad took ten huge steps into the room and knelt in front of me. The tragedy was clear in his eyes, and I didn’t want to see it. I gawked around the room but couldn’t find Roki. He had vanished. But to where? And how?
Raad took my hands in his. I thought he was crying, but how could that be possible for an Aska warrior? Only something truly horrific could make an Aska cry.
“Kaelyn …” Raad was sobbing into my hands. “Mama’s dead.”
That was when I fainted.
Chapter 3
I was alone in the darkness of my apartment, a stack of unread books and tea beside my sofa. The visin embedded in my wrist was emitting a projection, a square holographic screen in front of me. I was crying softly. It was the hundredth, maybe two hundredth time I had watched the video in the past year. It always made me cry. There was something so final about seeing the mausoleum Raad had helped construct, the polished white stone seeming to swallow her casket as the funeral procession carried Mama’s remains into the structure.
Then there were the faces I recognized in the news footage. I was there, veiled in black and crying. Always crying. And there was Papa, hardly able to keep his composure. Raad was inside the mausoleum with Mama’s casket. The other clan leaders were outside, dressed in their own ritualistic funeral attire. Ava-Shondur in leather, Ava-Surrvul in dark green fur, Ava-Krug in white garments, Ava-Nurlie in full-length purple and gold silk, and Ava-Lodden in elaborate sisal.
The only person missing was Roki. It made me mad when I remembered he hadn’t come. He had avoided Mama’s funeral just
