Total pages in book: 210
Estimated words: 200837 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1004(@200wpm)___ 803(@250wpm)___ 669(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 200837 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1004(@200wpm)___ 803(@250wpm)___ 669(@300wpm)
She got through it, of course. It’s been over a year since Brooke’s bell rang. But it’s horrifying to realize that your life could be over at any time and you have no control at all.
I can’t even imagine what it’s been like to be Haryet this past year. I want this to be over. For all of us. It’s been a good decade, but it’s also been a stressful decade. Probably the most stressful Extraction ever. Never, in the entire history of this contest, has a Spark Maiden with a number higher than two been called into the tower.
Three months.
It feels very far away when the bell could toll at any time.
CHAPTER SIX
The Dance of Sisters is the most stressful part about the Choosings because there are seventy-five girls, plus the boys we’ve been partnered up with. I guess we could just enter in two single-file lines and meet somewhere in the middle—it would get the job of getting us in here and with the right partner done in a much more efficient manner, but this is up-city and what is the point of a gala if you’re not gonna put on a spectacle?
And so the Matron choreographers came up with the Dance of Sisters… oh, hundreds of years ago, probably. Maybe every Little Sister in the history of Tau City kicked off the first Choosing in this manner, I’m not sure. And it doesn’t matter. For this is the way we begin tonight. Eight stairwells deliver lines of exquisitely dressed young men. But the boys closest to us are not the boys we have been partnered with. That’s much too simple for a gala this important.
No, there are many steps to take and turns to make before we will end up with the boys chosen to be escorts for the Extraction. We are stuck with them for the duration.
So I count my steps and focus my attention on the other hundred and forty-nine people dancing, and twirling, and walking across the glossy stone floor with me until finally, a good seven minutes after the young men have joined us, I am staring up at Donal Oslin.
Every boy here tonight is handsome. Just as every girl is pretty. That’s a given. I mean, why spoil the night with ugly people when you have specimens such as us?
But Donal Oslin is a whole other kind of handsome. He’s got dark hair that’s always been a little bit too messy for his status in life. But no one seems to care because this tousled look only accentuates his perfect dimples flanking his charming smile.
And that’s just where the handsome starts with Donal, because even covered by the flawless, sand-colored suit his body is on full display. His shoulders are broad and his chest wide, tapering down into a v-shape at his narrow waist. The shirt he’s wearing under his jacket is so tight the ripped muscles of his stomach make a pattern of hills and valleys under the fabric.
I’ve seen him shirtless. We didn’t practice this dance in suits and dresses. So it doesn’t take much imagination on my part to conjure up a reliable image of what those muscles look like without clothes.
But Donal and I? Not a thing. He comes from an entirely different kind of family than I do.
Well, kind of.
The Oslins run the entire Tower District. Which doesn’t sound particularly advantageous at first glance, since the Tower District is so small and consists only of the God’s Tower, the bell tower, and the God’s Tower event center. But being the Tower District governor, which is Donal’s father’s title, is somewhat akin to being a king. He has final say over everything that happens here. It’s a small kingdom, to be sure, as the only people who live in Tower District are the Oslins, the bellmakers, and the five families who take care of the event center and the grounds. But it’s special and Prince Donal here understands, and uses, this unique station in life to his full advantage.
My family was special like that too, once upon a time. As bellmakers we were part of this small kingdom until the demotion that that got us sent down-city several generations back.
I can’t tell if Donal finds the fact that my family used to live in the Tower District to be a threat or just an unfortunate reminder that nothing lasts forever, but regardless, he hates me.
And he’s not shy about showing it.
At least to me. Donal here is much, much, much too cultured to ever make a scene in public. But he’s got ways of jabbing me with insults so no one ever hears.
His right hand slips town to my waist and his left hand is waiting for me when I press my palm into it. Then we are dancing. He takes ceremony and circumstance all very seriously, so he waits until we’ve found our rhythm, making sure that all the other couples around us are on track as well, before he starts in on me.