Page 7 of Of Daggers and Deceit

“I love it.” Her fingers reached out to lightly coast over it, and my heart could have burst out of my chest. I truly felt like this was some of my best, most intricate work yet, and hearing that she loved it made me feel proud.

Her opinion was the one I valued most.

She cleared her throat and bent down to pick up her drawings quickly. I hadn’t realised I had been staring at her until that point, and I quickly brushed my hands over my thighs before picking up my markers to put them away. I felt bold right now, powerful, even.

I didn’t want her to leave yet, not when I felt like moments like this meant progress. So, I piped up before she darted from my reach.

“Raya,” I began, but she cut me off.

“I’m going to keep working on this drawing. I want to get it done before the next eclipse,” she blurted before opening the door and hurrying away. For some reason, that made me smile, watching her go. I knew I’d ruffled her feathers. I knew her incredibly well, whether she cared to admit it or not.

What I knew now, without a single doubt, was that Raya would fall in love with me this year. Because if I had nothing else, then at least, I would have her.

RAYA

These next few months were going to destroy me.

Especially if Bodhi continued to persist with unnerving me. It was a precarious line I was walking here, because I loved Bodhi. He was the only true friend I had here in the Haven, but I could never allow myself to fall in love with him, not if I wished to keep the one true friendship I had.

My head fell back on a groan to survey the stars above me, which usually offered me comfort. They made all my problems seem infinitely smaller because everything seemed so expansive and hopeful when I looked above. The top of the tube line was my favourite place to view them, my private little escape when everything seemed too much. It was peaceful here on a night when it wasn’t operating its semi-circle around our city, dropping off Alphas to their various jobs in the Outer Ring and transporting goods.

Tonight, Bodhi had tested me, even more so when I viewed the beautiful image which now marked the back of my thigh. I’d fled like a coward the moment he’d finished it and asked what I thought of it.

I swear, I could still feel his touch against my skin, how my body still tingled at the reminder of it.

I shook my head. Absolutely not.

The Haven wasn’t big enough to even consider a relationship with him. What if it ended badly?

I would have to live in a house with an ex-boyfriend, with no friends, and that would be awkward for my mother, who looked at Bodhi like her own son. I couldn’t do that to her or him or me. I didn’t want to be alone.

It wasn’t like if I felt ashamed that I could leave either. The Outer Ring simply wasn’t big enough, and I wasn’t welcome in the Inner Ring because I wasn’t an Omega and my power was considered a problem.

I tapped my feet against the metal roof as I sighed. It was too big a risk. I couldn’t do it. Every other female in the Outer Ring would laugh at me in this moment; they would have seized the opportunity with both hands and pursued him relentlessly because he was beautiful in every way.

In many ways, they already did. This was partially why many didn’t particularly connect with me—because I’d glared at all of them.

Repeatedly.

I knew I was a jealous person, and I had no right to be at all.

He wasn’t mine and couldn’t be.

I shifted my position away from the uncomfortable metal protruding into my back to catch sight of a particularly bright star.

“I wish I had freedom of choice. I wish my family and I had a better life than this one. One filled with so much…more.” I whispered my dreams to that same pulsing star, hoping that one day, these same dreams might come true. Sometimes, everything just felt so hopeless.

I lay there for some time after, breathing in the crisp night air long after all the lights flicked off in our ring, the only illumination left in the Haven coming from the residents inside the gated rose hedge.

My eyes fell shut, and I exhaled a long breath. In moments like this, I could feel peace, when I shut the world out and quietened, listening only to the sounds of nature around me.

Soft and rhythmic. That was how everything appeared to me in nature, how I perceived the stars as they seemed to pulse to the song of the universe. I tried hard to convey this in my art, to capture their essence exactly as I experienced it.

But it never stood against the magic of seeing it in person.

Blinding, shockingly bright light illuminated beyond my eyelids, disrupting me, and I gasped, shielding them just as that terrifying, horrid siren commenced its awful screech.

More lights flicked back on throughout my ring as one by one, the siren beckoned the residents forward. Everywhere I looked, a new light flicked on, then another as the Alpha residents of the Outer Ring responded.

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