Mischief in the Stars

The Pacem Ball

The noises around her seemed to be a wash of white noise, and the voices were surrounding her are echoing without actually making sense. Everything was in slow motion. Rory could feel his hands on her, guiding her to safety. She stumbled from shock and pain, Malakai having to catch her before she collapsed. She could hear him calling her name, but she didn't answer.

Dried tears stuck to her face, making her cheeks itch. Rory struggled to focus, blurred tears welling in her eyes. She wasn't sure how they got there, but she found herself in her room back at the castle. She was aware of the multiple ways to get to her room, but she didn't remember walking through any of them. Gasping sharply, Malakai's voice became louder. He sat her on the bed, cupping her face with his hands.

"Rory? Rory! Come back to me!" Malakai shouted with panic inscribed on his light brown skin. She could see the tears in his eyes, and her heart broke for him.

"I'm so sorry," she whispered, shaking her head frantically, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry..."

"It's not your fault! Hey, listen to me! We could not have seen that coming, we had no idea there would be an attack. There was no way to know it was Tempest and not Aurora," he reassured her sternly, stopping her head from moving too much. He inspected her for injuries, he saw a few scrapes. "Are you hurt?"

"Where are the others? Where are my brothers? And Channing? Aurora, oh my... she's dead. She was supposed to live and we were going to figure this all out! She was going to be okay... oh no, Eira! What about Eira? Where's her body? She's dead, Eira's dead..." Rory sobbed out her voice cracking, coming out as broken and defeated. She shakily brought a hand up to her mouth, then she saw the blood coating her light-brown skin. Letting out a labored breath, she inspected her hands- unsure where the blood was from.

"Rory, please! You have to listen to my voice," he demanded slowly, shaking her slightly to snap her out of her shock. "We just killed a whole part of the coven. There is a ballroom downstairs full of people who will want us dead for that! The people downstairs are not our friends, we know that now. Luckily, they have no way of finding out what we just did, right? Let's not forget, we have people we care about down there. We have to act like nothing's wrong!"

At his words, Rory only cried harder, shaking her head furiously. "I can't do that!"

"Yes, you can! You have to. If they think anything is wrong, they will kill everyone we care about downstairs. We have to go put on the best show of our lives down there. Rory, your brothers are down there right now," Malakai informed her. Rory's head snapped up, perplexed. "After that battle, when you were still in shock, we agreed we had to come back here and act like everything is normal. They're downstairs right now with people who will kill them without batting an eye. My brother is here, Rory. The people of Thera are down there right now, innocent people- unaware of what just happened. Our friends are down there. Channing, Iris, Birch. They're depending on us, right now."

"How do I act like my friend didn't just die? How do you act like your friend didn't just die? How do we act like we didn't just kill all those people?" she shouted incredulously, snapping out of the trance she was in.

"We get washed up, we put on our outfits, and we go downstairs. Because you're the future queen, you'll be expected to start the night with a dance, and you can't give any indication that something is wrong," he told her, listing off what was expected of her.

"Eira is dead, Kai. She's gone," Rory reminded him, her voice cracking.

Eira laid in the black rubble of ash,

the snow was surrounding her in a bed of white.

Her swords remained in her hands,