Page 34 of Immortal Longings
Though August keeps onward in his stride, he turns to look at her.
“Just one guess?”
“Black eyes, left the palace about seven years ago. Any names come to mind?”
No response. But it’s clear that he knows exactly who she’s talking about.
“He’s asked me to team up with him for the games,” Calla continues. “I’m going to do it.”
August’s brows shoot right up. Even in this stranger’s body, his dark eyes swallow up his face, widened in disgust.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Unless you have a convincing reason against it,” Calla adds promptly. “What do you know about Anton Makusa that I don’t?”
“Quite a bit.” There’s a pause as August looks forward again. Calla would wager that he’s calculating how much to tell her, giving just enough information to satiate her curiosity but withholding the rest. August isn’t one to play too much of his hand for no reason. All royals are the same. No free niceties.
“But I suppose there is one matter Ishouldshare. There weren’t many other children in our palace, you know. Anton and I ended up very good friends despite our difference in age.” A heavy drop of rain strikes his umbrella. It moves down the side like sludge. “Years later, we grew so tired of San-Er that we tried to leave it together.”
Calla knows that they were friends, of course, but this part about their mutual escape plot is new. The rain starts to splatter harder, and she sticks her hand out from under the umbrella to catch the droplets. If this drizzle can get past all the awnings and clotheslines looped from window to window, it must really be coming down.
“And that’s how Otta fell sick?” she asks. When the news traveled into the city, it only described a conflict with King Kasa.
August shifts his grip on the umbrella, shielding Calla’s hand from the rain with an annoyed tut.
“Anton, Leida, and I,” he says when Calla begrudgingly returns her arm to her side, “were planning to raid Kasa’s vault and flee into the countryside with money and false identities. Leida could bypass security through her mother; I could gain access to the innermost rooms. Had we been successful, it was a scheme that would make us richer than the victors of the games.”
“Sounds foolish.”
“I know. We backed out.” The umbrella teeters to the side as August loses his grip on it. He moves his hand and rights it again. “Anton wanted to bring Otta along. Leida and I thought it was too dangerous. We were going to regroup and draw up a new idea after the school year, but Anton and Otta got impatient. They went forward with it themselves.
“The two of them getting together was a train wreck waiting to happen. Both were obsessive and all-consuming enough on their own—put them in collusion, and at the first sign of danger, it’s their lives over everyone else’s. You remember Otta, don’t you?”
The memories are fuzzy now, but how could Calla forget? Where Calla and August chatted politely by the children’s table, Otta was laughing too loud and pretending to knock over a teacup so a servant would sweep it up. Where August once offered to give Calla a tour of the guest wing while the adults were busy talking, Otta got in Calla’s face and asked her not to touch anything, lest she leave grubby fingerprints.
“The royal guard caught them in the middle of their scheme. Otta fucked up—I don’t know what was going through her head, but she tried jumping into one of the Weisannas, and it didn’t work. She tried again and again, a different guard each time, and kept getting shoved back into her own body. I would have been surprised if shehadn’tcaught the yaisu sickness.”
“Otta is still alive, is she not?” Calla asks, though she already knows the answer. They saved her in time—or rather, they put her on life support and froze the onset of the sickness, though Otta Avia has not since awoken. “You’re keeping her alive.”
A sudden laugh from August, which surprises Calla so much that she almost jerks away. She hides her twitch by turning to face Galipei and finds shock in his expression too. Prince August does not laugh. Even made in mockery, the sound is incongruous with his expression. The sound has enough venom to blister.
“We washed our hands of her years ago,” August says. “Antonis the one keeping her alive.”
Calla stops walking. August follows suit, though he has already stridden two steps away, and now Calla is without the cover of his umbrella. She feels the dirty rain hit her neck and slide under her coat into her camisole, growing sticky against her skin.
“So that’s his motive for the games,” she says. “He cannot possibly afford to keep her at the hospital like that all these years.”
“He’s been in touch several times, asking for money,” August confirms. “He knows his own criminal status, and that he’s not supposed to bother the palace. But he does so anyway, because Anton Makusa does not care for the rules.”
Calla’s mind is still whirring. “What’s the point? There’s no coming back from the yaisu sickness. Does he think she might wake up?”
“I doubt he thinks much at all,” August replies. He tilts his head to summon Galipei. In response, his right-hand man hurries forward, boots splashing into the puddles, slathering mud up his black trousers. “He can’t let go of her, and we have to suffer for it.”
Calla raises a brow. “How romantic,” she says wryly.
“It’s the very opposite of romance.” August turns away and starts to walk, Galipei close behind. “Collaborate with him if you want. But don’t be surprised when he stabs you in the back.”
“You can help with that, no?” Calla calls after him. “Hey—”
