WE BECOME THOUGHTLESS

thirty-eight | sinners and saints

(a/n: yes, i will be imagining fabia as taylor swift. i'm in love with that woman.)

It was going to be a good today, Tris was certain of it. He woke before the sun was up and propped his chin up on the single window in the advena sleeping space, right up on his tippy-toes. The room was buried into the earth, and his face was level with the ground from where he peered up at the sky.

It faded from dark blues into richer yellows, casting warm light across the spotting of clouds. Behind him, Tris felt the first stirrings of movement. The kitchen workers had left earlier that morning, but the field workers would be stretching their overworked muscles and working the cricks out of their necks, ready for the day ahead.

If he was lucky – really, really lucky – Lady Fabia would call upon him today. Tris was bristling with nerves. He had a feeling that she would.

Marc lurched to his feet and went to stand in the spot next to him, wiping the sleep from his eyes. Another advena, whose stocky frame was too big and clumsy to fit anywhere other than an open field. "You're up early, Tris."

"Well," he started. "I have a feeling about today."

Marc whistled lowly. "A feeling, 'aye? What's it telling you?"

"Something's going to happen." Tris nodded, turning his head to look at him properly, still wiping his eyes with the edge of his palms. The skin was peeling at the tip of his nose and soft skin below his eyes after a particularly nasty sunburn. "It's going to be magical."

And when he turned back around to watch the last few moments of the day's sunrise, Tris couldn't help but imagine the Lady's face, watching him fixedly over the top of her canvas. Blonde coils of hair framing her heart-shaped face. Cupid's bow lips pulled between her teeth.

Yes, it was going to be magical.

Marc was kind enough to give him a fresh apple from his own basket before Tris was able to slip out an hour later. The Villa was bursting with movement by the time the sun was fully risen, the kitchen especially, which he was chased out of by an angry advena woman with her apron all screwed up around her waist.

He was particularly careful around the Villa's corners, where he peered around the edges and prayed that the clearing was empty – the guards would pull him by his ear and demand that he go off into the fields with the other workers, and as food buddies, both himself and Seb would be punished for it. The food supply would be cut, and Seb would give him the silent treatment for the next week.

So, of course, Tris was extremely careful.

The Villa was beyond grand. All sweeping, white arches wrapped up in vinery, marble columns and intricate mosaic. Field workers needed permission in order to go inside – they didn't want them leaving muddy tracks on their clean floors, did they? – so Tris was forced to peer in from the outside, hoping to catch a glimpse of her.

And not just the Lady; everything else, too. It felt like a different world entirely, a stark contrast to the grassy fields and dirty clearings, advena toiling away under the hot sun. The Villa was clean, and white, and luxurious.

But it belonged to the Aldines, a rich and well-known family among high Chrysosian society, and the Aldines typically didn't like it when their advena snooped around and avoided work. Tris was made acutely aware of this fact by the sound of a throat clearing behind him.

Halfway through a bite in his apple, he swerved around and came face-to-face with Felix de Aldine. Both Fabia de Aldine and her brother were strikingly similar, with the same shock-blonde hair and unblemished skin, matching brown eyes and soft jawlines. For a moment, Tris could only stare. It was startling.