Page 30 of Immortal Longings
One of the apartment doors on the third floor is wide open, its interior dimly lit. Calla adjusts her grip, stepping in warily. She passes a ragged couch, then a miniature adjoined kitchen. There’s a bedroom to her left, as small as a closet, crammed with objects.
Anton is hiding in the apartment. She can sensepresence, feel with certainty that someone else’s qi is within jumping distance.
Calla enters the bedroom. And the door slams closed after her, dropping her into darkness.
“Hey!”
“Wait! Hear me out, hear me out,” Anton shouts from the other side.
The handle doesn’t budge when Calla gives it a push. Locked. What kind of sicko has a door that can be locked from the outside?
“I’ll hear you out,” Calla says brightly. She shoves her sword through the door, and Anton yelps, startled by her blade piercing clean through. “I’ll hear your pleas when I skewer your—”
“Princess. I can help you.”
Calla pauses. Being addressed by title does not necessarily take her by surprise, but it’s still strange to her ear. “You recognized me? We never met back then.”
“How do you knowmyname, Princess Calla? I’ve done my research too.”
Irritation and flattery battle for a hand in her response. He sounds smug for making the discovery; still, if he put the pieces together after their encounter, he paid attention to details that the rest of San-Er has overlooked for five years.
Calla yanks her sword out of the door and examines the steel. “Shouldn’t you at least buy me dinner before trapping me in your bedroom?”
“Calla. May I call you Calla?” He ignores her mockery, his voice getting closer to the door. “You and I are the most likely victors of these games. I have a proposal.”
“Oh?”
He clears his throat. “We team up. Take everyone else down and get to the end faster.”
Anger flares hot in her stomach immediately. She barks out a laugh. “It is so typical of a palace brat to think cheating the games is that easy.”
“Who said anything about cheating?” Anton shoots back. “Collaboration isn’t against the rules.”
Indeed, there are essentially no rules governing the games. Players can do whatever they like, but the thought of collaboration is absurd, because first and foremost, collaboration requires trust, and trust gets you killed in San-Er.
“You’re asking for trouble.” Calla rests her sword against the wall, where there’s already an indent. “Give the palace a reason to disqualify us, and they’ll take us both out.”
There is a moment of quiet on the other side of the door. Then: “Princess, there’s already reason for them to take us both out. We won’t be giving them trouble—we’ll give them the entertainment they want. It is a worthy exchange for letting us stay at the top.”
Calla purses her lips. The outlaw and the exiled, teaming up as allies—it’salmost a laughable thought. But he’s right on one thing. A collaboration will catch the attention of the reels for sheer entertainment value. If they play nice otherwise and keep their identities concealed, King Kasa may just allow it.
“Why are you trying to get to the end so fast?” Calla asks plainly. “Are you in such a rush?”
“Yes,” Anton replies without a hint of hesitation. “I’m impatient and tired of how slowly the games are moving.”
It has only been a few days. Some rounds in previous years have gone on for months. Curious, Calla turns and starts to peer around Anton Makusa’s bedroom. Her eyes have adjusted enough to catch most of the details: the pictures on the walls and the papers on the desk. He was the one who locked her in here. He only has himself to blame when she goes poking through his things.
“By your logic, we will end up as the final two in the Juedou,” she says, walking to his wardrobe and idly browsing through the shirts hanging there. The games open with the Daqun and end with the Juedou, both in the coliseum. Every year, the Juedou is turned into a spectacle, the coliseum lit up as a true arena, lights glaring down on the final two players as they battle to the death. “But only one of us can win.”
“Are you afraid you can’t win against me, Princess?”
Calla picks up her sword again and returns to the door, shoving it through a second time. Anton shouts a curse.
“Listen,” he says, an edge to his voice now. Though he cannot see her, Calla smiles, finally liking where this is going. There’s a hardness to his tone, a sense of ferocity that has been whetted into a weapon.Thissounds more like someone who could be a victor of the games. “You’ve seen my kill numbers. My ability to jump. You know that I’m an asset to have on your side. We can work together, then break our alliance at the end. Only at the end.”
A book on his bedside table catches Calla’s attention. When she leans over and flips it open, angling the first page into the light coming through the window,there’s a photograph of a boy with black eyes and a girl with the same. She doesn’t recognize the boy, but it has to be Anton’s birth body, the image captured at the Palace of Earth before he was exiled. The lean shoulders and messy hair suit him. Anton Makusa was born the tousled sort of beautiful, tall but always slouching, perfectly set features obstructed by a heavy frown.
The girl to his side, however, Calla recognizes immediately. Her tiny nose and perfectly brushed hair. Her calculating smile, invariably scheming away at something.
