Voiceless Bird

Chapter 23

|| Day 7 The Winners' Ceremony ||

Going To Be

"You're supposed to pick it yourself this time."

I shook my head in a firm 'no' and Robin ran a hand through his hair, clearly frustrated. I wasn't going to pick my dress for another ball. Why couldn't we wear our formal uniforms, like we did for the Introductions?

The Winners' Celebration was a ball held in honour of the students that had made it to the Grand Final of the Aureas Tournaments. Namely, Robin and I and the two other pairs that competed—and won—in the semi-finals.

"Number between one and ten." Robin commanded, eyes narrowed at me.

I shrugged and gazed at the different assortments of dresses in front of me. We were in my wardrobe, standing in front of the surprise dresses that had greeted me in the morning.

He sighed and closed his eyes. I felt a little bad for piling all the Aureas Tournaments stuff on him but then again, he was the one who was so into it. I suppressed a wince when I realised what his dedication to the tournaments had cost Meraella.

With his eyes still closed, Robin spun around in a circle. I jumped away from him in surprise, eyes wide. Had he gone mad?

Coming to a dizzying stop, he raised his hand up and pointed towards one of the dresses. It was a simple but striking deep red dress, a colour that I had literally never worn before as it was too noticeable. I preferred to hide in the background, hopefully behind someone else.

"Looks like your dress has been decided." He smirked at me and inspected the red dress. I rolled my eyes at his arrogance—that hadn't even been a good method to decide. He could have ended up pointing to the other end of the wardrobe or even worse, with his head split open on the ground.

I tried not to grimace at the dress—or lack thereof. I didn't even have to try it on to know that it showed a substantial amount of... skin. The other dresses varied in different colours and styles but the red one was by far the simplest—of which I was thankful for.

"The official ceremony starts at six, but it's held in the Golden Palace so get down to the carriages at five, got it?"

Robin's words stopped registering after "Golden Palace" as my mind slowly caught up.

The Ceremony was held outside of the Academy? Not only that, it was held in Dracai, the one place where I had thought I would never visit.

Robin snapped his fingers and jerked me out of my thoughts, "Did you hear me?"

He had said to get down by five... or something, right?

"Get ready before five." Robin's superior and commanding tone irked me, but I nodded anyway, hoping that he'd hurry up and get out of my room.

He strided out and I gave a breath of relief. Finally.

Turning back to the various dresses, I contemplated this 'getting ready' thing. I wasn't quite sure what I was supposed to do. The Academy had done everything previously and now that I thought about it, I had never actually put on a fancy dress by myself.

I separated the red dress from the rest and took a long look at what would be my skin buddy for the whole night.

The material was plush and smooth and— now that I took a closer look at it, the colour of blood.

Great.

I was wearing what looked like a bloody velvet curtain. The dress stared back at me and I felt guilt creep in. Apparently, I was feeling guilty for insulting an article of clothing.