Pursued by Presley Hall
Nadia
Pirouette, pirouette, pointe, pirouette, arabesque, jete, jete—
I’m never as happy as when I’m in the little studio that Lucy set up for her pole classes, practicing ballet.
There’s nothing on Kalix like leotards or tutus or even pointe shoes, but I modified a pair of wide-legged loose linen pants into above-the-knees culottes to dance in, pairing them with a top that wraps over my breasts and is tied at my waist. For pointe shoes, I found a pair of leather flats and reinforced them, stiffening them and layering them with materials that Lucy helped me find. It took three pairs of ruined shoes and hours of frustration and tears before I finally managed to make them work, and I can’t stay on pointe long in them. But it’s enough to at least let me feel some connection to the world that I once hoped to excel in.
The door opens as I finish another sequence, humming aloud to Swan Lake as I move through the exercises.
“Don’t mind me,” Lucy calls out, walking into the small room. “I just forgot something, that’s all.”
I pause, smiling at her as I come down to rest flat-footed. She glances over at me with obvious admiration.
“I always wished I could do ballet,” she says, pushing her long blonde hair out of her face. “I never really had the body type for it though.” She grimaces, laughing. “Boobs get in the way, you know? I was much more suited to pole. But I always loved the grace of ballet.”
“Pole dancing is impressive in its own way,” I tell her, sinking to the floor to start cooling down and stretching. “You need real upper body strength to do all of that. Some of the moves those girls do—”
“I can’t jump across the room and land on my toes, though!” Lucy exclaims, laughing. “You know,” she adds, “you should come to one of my pole classes. I bet you’d love it, and it would be really fun to have you there. We could try to incorporate a few ballet moves into it too, and have you show the other girls some of the things you’ve learned. I know we’d all love that.”
I flush immediately, glancing away. My heart jumps a little at the invitation—I like the idea, even if the thought of pole dancing or trying to teach anyone ballet steps makes me nervous. It feels like something I should try, like an opportunity for growth and change. But as always…
“My sister probably wouldn’t really approve of that,” I mumble, hating the words as they come out of my mouth. It makes me feel like a child. But I don’t want to upset Brielle, either. She tries so hard to take care of me, and she always has. I don’t want to seem ungrateful. “Thanks anyway.”
Lucy gives me a knowing look, and I can tell she understands at least a little of what’s going on without my having to say it.
“I’m not pushing you to do anything,” she says gently. “But just keep in mind that you can be your own woman, Nadia. You don’t always have to listen to what your sister says. You can choose for yourself.”
I know deep down that her words are true. Of course I can choose for myself. I’m twenty years old, an adult. But I also know that Brielle is just looking out for me. And sometimes I wonder if it’s not wiser to do what she suggests. Maybe she really does know better. It’s hard to trust my own judgement after everything that happened with Kevin.
But I don’t say any of that to Lucy. I like the vivacious blonde woman, and we get along, but I don’t know her that well. It’s too complicated to explain to someone who doesn’t know everything about me and my sister, and I’m not prepared to go into my entire backstory. I don’t even know if she’d want to hear it.
“There’s a feast at the palace tomorrow night to celebrate Zatir’s return,” Lucy continues, moving smoothly on to a new topic as if she can sense my discomfort. “Tycran told me a little about him. I guess after his men were killed in battle, he became this sort of lone-wolf, space-pirate kind of warrior, fighting single-handedly against the Orkun’s allies and damaging their trade routes over the past three years.”
My eyebrows shoot up, my jaw falling open a little. “Really? Wow.”
“Yup.” Her eyes sparkle with excitement as she grins. “Pretty incredible, right? Anyway, you and Brielle should drop by the celebration! It’ll be fun. Everyone is going to be there, and the food alone is a good enough reason to attend an event at the palace. It’s amazing. Will you come?”
“Um… maybe. I’ll see if Brielle wants to go,” I promise, smiling weakly back at her.
But I have a sinking feeling I already know what my sister is going to say.
* * *
“I don’t thinkit’s a good idea.”
Brielle leans against the countertop in the tiny kitchen in our pod, her arms crossed over her chest as she shakes her head.
I have to struggle not to sigh loudly as frustration bubbles up inside me at her very predictable response.
She’s just trying to take care of you. She’s just trying to take care of you, I repeat in my head.
“Why not?” I challenge, a little surprised at myself for asking at all. But I remember what Lucy said, that I can do what I want. That I don’t always have to listen to Brielle. I don’t want to cause problems in our little household, so I don’t think just running off to the ball, so to speak, is a good idea. Maybe I can convince her, though.
My sister scrunches up her nose. We have similar features, although she’s blonde and tan while I have dark hair and pale skin. But our blue eyes are almost the exact same shade. “Everyone’s going to be there,” she says. “It’s going to be loud. Overwhelming. Probably a lot of drinking—”
“It’s at the palace, Brielle. I think everyone will be pretty respectful, considering the king and queen will be there. I’m sure it’ll be very tame.”
“How do you know? You’ve never been to one of these feasts.”
“How do you know it won’t be?” I say just as quickly, crossing my own arms over my chest. “Neither have you!”
Brielle pauses, considering me. I know she’s surprised that I’m arguing back at all.
“Look,” I say in my most conciliatory tone, “I just want to go for a little while. Think about it—the palace. Where the king and queen will be. When would we have ever gotten to go to something like this on Earth? We live in a new world. We should try to explore it, just a little. And if it gets rowdy and you think we should go home, I’ll go. I promise. No arguments.”
She eyes me. “No arguments?”
“Scout’s honor.” I grin at her.
“You were never in the Scouts,” she points out, rolling her eyes as she turns back to the small cooking surface where she’s making some sort of hot sandwich for our lunch. “I get it, though. You want to see the palace and go to the ball. Fine. But we’re coming home at midnight, Cinderella. If not before.” She shakes a utensil at me playfully, although I can see the seriousness in her eyes, the worry. Always the worry.
“We’re in a strange place, Nadia,” she says quietly as she flips the sandwich to cook the other side.
It looks better than any grilled cheese we ever had at home. The Kalixian bread is thick and crusty, and the meat on the sandwich is a far cry from deli meat, fresh and ragged at the edges, plainly cut from some kind of roast. The cheese started out as crumbles, also fresh, and I feel my mouth start to water a little. I’ll happily stay here forever, if only because the food is so much better than sliced deli cheese and macaroni.
“Which is why we should get to know it better.” I accept the sandwich she hands to me, sitting down at the small table as Brielle starts to assemble her own. “We’re not going back, right? To Earth?”
“I don’t know why we would go back,” Brielle says dryly. “The house is gone by now, rented to someone else. I’m sure my credit score is screwed from that. My job probably assumes I’m dead. And it’s not like you—”
“—had a job. Just gigs. You don’t have to remind me.” I push idly at my plate, my appetite gone.
“I didn’t mean it like that.” My sister shakes her head, turning to face me as her food sizzles behind her. “I just meant that you didn’t have a job, or school, or anything like that left behind. You had your modeling gigs, and—”
“—and they don’t want me. Not now that I…” Trailing off, I gesture at myself and the scars left behind from the accident.
“You can’t see those when you’re clothed.” She glances at me. “You could still model, if we went back.”
“I don’t want to go back,” I say firmly. “Do you?”
She sighs. “Not really, no. I think we’re safer here, honestly. I don’t know why we were abducted, but I know that if we went back, we’d be starting from zero. I don’t necessarily trust all of this completely, but we’re in a better position here than we would be if we went back to Earth. So if you’re okay with staying, I think we’re fine here.”
I nod, taking a small bite of my sandwich. It still feels weird to eat whatever I want. When I was striving to be a ballerina and modeling on the side, I had to stick to an incredibly strict diet. Eating something like an entire hearty sandwich for lunch feels almost like a guilty pleasure.
“We’ll go to the celebration, okay?” Brielle gives me a small, conciliatory smile. “And we’ll see how it goes. You’re right. If we’re going to stay here, we need to try to fit in more. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop watching out for you.”
“Okay.” I nod, trying not to show how excited I am. But deep down, I’m jubilant.
It worked!
I finish my lunch quickly, my appetite returning with gusto as I get lost in daydreams about what the feast will be like.
The rest of the day and the next morning seem to drag interminably, every second ticking by at half speed. By the time Brielle and I start to get ready for the celebration in the late afternoon, I’m nearly giddy with excitement.
It’s fun to get dressed up a little, especially since there haven’t been many opportunities for that recently. We both bought something nicer for Sana’s naming ceremony than the usual simple clothes we purchased from the market when we first came. That’s probably what we’ll wear to the feast, since I know Brielle would think it’s impractical to buy something else new, and I don’t want to push my luck.
Besides, the dress that I have is nice enough. It’s a spring-weight wool, still warm enough for the evening temperatures, in a dark blue that brings out my eyes and makes my pale skin and black hair stand out. It’s cut low, although with my nearly flat chest, it’s far from immodest, with a full skirt and stiff collar at the back of my neck that stops just at the sides, framing my collarbones nicely. The sleeves are long and fitted, with black embroidery at the wrists and along the neckline and hem. There were dresses with much fancier metallic embroidery, but they were far too expensive, the kind of thing you’d see the queen wearing.
Still, I almost feel like a princess from a fantasy novel as I gaze into the full-length mirror in our room, turning this way and that. I slip my feet into a pair of leather flats, adding small silver earrings with a semi-precious stone I don’t know the name of that I picked up at the market. They’re a similar color to aquamarine, a few shades lighter than my eyes.
“You should put your hair up,” Brielle says, coming into the room.
She’s wearing a dress of a similar cut, but with a higher neckline, in a dove-grey with white embroidery. I tried to get her to pick out something brighter, but she said she didn’t want the attention. I of course, at the time, took it as a dig at my own choice, but now I don’t think she meant it that way.
I look at my sister as she pins up her own hair, considering. She’s been practically a mother to me for years now, when she should have been enjoying the middle of her twenties, being irresponsible and having fun. But Brielle has never, to my memory, been irresponsible. And I think now she’s used to just being in the background, doing the work that she thinks needs to be done, making sure that everything is safe and okay and taken care of.
Attention, or love, or fun would just be a distraction. Something to make her lose sight of what’s really important, in her mind.
Taking care of me.
“Okay,” I say, glancing in the mirror. I had planned to leave it down—my long, thick, black hair is one of my favorite features. But Brielle is clearly fidgety, and I figure she’ll like having something to do, something she can help with. “You know I’m terrible at putting it up myself, though. Can you give me a hand?”
My sister smiles at that, her face lighting up. She hurries over to me as soon as the last pin is in her own hair, standing behind me and lifting and twisting thick handfuls of my hair until it’s somehow magically in a chignon at the back of my head, rolled and twisted until it lies perfectly and elegantly arranged. Like magic, she produces a pin with a carved bird at the end of it, and slides it in. The bird is carved out of some gleaming white metal, but it has tiny blue gemstones where the eyes are carved.
“I found this in the market the other day,” she tells me. “I don’t know why it was so inexpensive, but it made me think of you. I was saving it for a special occasion, or maybe when you needed cheering up. But this seems like a special enough occasion. Your first party in our new city.”
Abruptly, I turn around and hug Brielle. There might be times when I feel smothered by her, but she always manages to remind me how much she really does care about me.
The walk to the palace isn’t very long, and it’s a beautiful night. By the time we get there, the twin moons are starting to rise in the sky, and I take a deep breath of the clean, fresh air. It’s so different than the air in Boston, and although I miss the smells of the city sometimes, I love this new place. It’s unlike anywhere I’ve ever been before.
As the palace comes into view up ahead of us, a small shiver of nervousness runs down my spine. Every time we come here, I feel more than a little intimidated. Back on Earth, the idea of an invitation to a palace would have seemed completely far-fetched, even if we’d lived somewhere like England instead of Boston.
But here, it’s normal. Khrelan likes to be accessible to his people.
Accessible enough to marry one of the women who came here with us, in fact. It’s a little astonishing to think that one of the women abducted with us is now a queen. But Emma is still as sweet and personable as ever, and if anything, the palace has become even more open since she’s been queen, drawing Khrelan out of his shell. She hosts the other women at the palace often, but of course we’ve never gone, although she’s invited us.
The feast is being held in the great hall, and it’s absolutely stunning. Everything in the palace is a mixture of modern technology and an homage to the natural forests and landscapes, and it’s done beautifully. Everything is carved in the shapes of leaves, vines, and flowers, the wood inlaid with gold and the black carpets embroidered with gold thread.
Brielle catches sight of a group of the other women as soon as we enter and takes my hand, making a beeline straight for them and avoiding the other Kalixians. For once, the men are all fully clothed—even Brele, who seems to have had the hardest time readjusting to the idea of wearing clothes in the city. As much as I enjoy seeing the massive warriors walking around Jocia in only their loincloths, I’m kind of grateful they’ve swapped them for the trousers and tunics that the Kalixians in the city favor. I don’t want to spend the entire night red-faced and trying not to stare.
“I’m so glad you came!” Lucy calls, hurrying toward us both. Even Rose is here, looking tired but beautiful as always. The only noticeable absence is Harper, who I’m sure stayed home so as to not accidentally go into labor in the middle of the party.
Brielle accepts Lucy’s quick hug. She seems stiff at first, but as the women all start to chat, I see her relax just a little.
Maybe she’ll actually have fun tonight,I think. I really hope she does.
A moment later, the wide doors at the end of the hall open, and a tall Kalixian warrior steps in. He’s dressed like the others, with dark brown hair and deep, nearly black eyes. His horns are short, curving toward the back of his head, and as he halts in the doorway and everyone goes silent, I realize with a start that this must be the one we’re all here to celebrate.
Zatir.
He’s unlike anyone I’ve ever seen before, even the other Kalixian warriors.
There’s a cockiness to him, a sort of cool, careless swagger that immediately catches my attention, and although all of the Kalixians are gorgeous, he’s got to be the most handsome one I’ve ever seen. His face is perfect, all sharp jawline and high cheekbones, and it’s complemented by those gorgeous dark eyes and a perfectly sculpted body, noticeable even under the clothing.
I know I’m staring as he walks into the room, but I can’t seem to tear my gaze away from him. It feels as if I’ve been punched in the gut, all the air rushing from my lungs in a heartbeat. A spark of electricity runs up my spine, like nothing I’ve ever felt.
What is happening?
