The Emperor of Evening Stars by Laura Thalassa
Chapter 19 The Final Wish
May, 7 years ago
Tonight, magic is thick in the air around Peel Academy. It coats my mouth, and if it had a flavor, I would call it young excitement.
Ah, nothing like being on the cusp of youth. Mine was shit, but I have a healthy respect for the age.
Down Callie’s hall, girls are squealing, and you could kill a man with the amount of perfume that saturates the air.
“Holy fuck,” I say, materializing in Callie’s room. “It’s a warzone out in your hallway.”
I stride over to her window, peering outside. Across the campus students I see moves about tuxes and evening gowns, all of them heading towards Peel Castle.
“What’s going on tonight?” I ask.
Everyone glitters just a bit brighter under the stars tonight. It’s my favorite kind of magic, the kind that is purely organic. No spells needed. If I were back in my own kingdom, it would saturate the night, increasing my own power. As it is, I feel it stir inside me. Human magic and fae magic are not terribly compatible, but there’s enough of it in the air that it affects my own power.
“May Day Ball,” Callie says.
There’s something in her voice that has me turning to her. She sits at her computer chair in boxers and a frayed T-shirt, half her hair in a topknot.
“Why aren’t you getting ready?” I ask.
“I’m not going.” She pulls her legs up to her chest.
“You’re not going?”
She’s trying hard to keep her face neutral. “No one’s asked me.”
I want to laugh. I never asked her to bargain with me, or spend her evenings with me, or weasel her way into my life and heart, but she still did all those things.
“Since when do you wait for permission?” I ask. “And also, how is that possible?”
I mean, teenage guys think with their eyes and their dicks, and Callie is beautiful the same way the sun is bright. She burns with such exquisite intensity it sometimes hurts to look at her.
“How is what possible?” she stares at her knees.
“That no one’s asked you.”
She lifts a shoulder. “I thought it was your job to understand people’s motives.”
I fold my arms. I want to slap myself upside the head. For all my understanding of people’s motives, it’s taken me until now to realize what I’ve missed.
Despite Callie’s uniqueness, she’s still a teenage girl. She wants to be carted to some dance and swept off her feet. She wants one godsdamn day to show all her peers that she is so much more than they assumed.
She wants us to be real, if only for a night.
I can give her that.
“What?” she asks, seeing me staring.
This is a bad idea. A high school dance means rubbing elbows with lots and lots of teenagers. It means exposure. But I want her to be happy. Always happy.
“Do you want to go to the May Day Ball?” I ask.
“I don’t see how that matters.”
That’s what she says, but now that I’m looking for it, there’s a whole slew of subtext there. She wants to go, even though she doesn’t think she’s a normal girl who has normal dreams.
“It does matter,” I say. “Now, do you?”
Her lips part, but she can’t say that this is exactly what she wants.
My sweet siren.
I close the distance between us and kneel. My wings ache with the need to reveal themselves. Each day it gets harder to keep them hidden, and tonight is the worst night yet.
Going to blow my cover.
Right now it doesn’t matter. Callie’s eyes are huge, and I love this. I take her hand in mine.
I begin to smile. “Would you, Callypso Lillis, take me to the May Day Ball?”
