Chapter 43: Chapter 43

After hearing the trumpet signalling the start of the debutant ball, Shia went back arm in arm with Prince Danterion to the pavilion’s backstage.

“So what do you say? Would you like to change partners for the night so that we can show the two of them how dashing we would positively look as a couple?”

Shia smiled softy and nodded. Prince Danterion was indeed an excellent tactician as Langrion had told her in the past. Who else could come up with a revenge plan that quickly right after getting hurt?

“Great! I’m going to show you how this game should be played,” he said, kissing her hand.

The prince quickly went to the masters of ceremony to inform them of the change in partnership. Shia looked over to him and realized that Prince Danterion did not seem like a bad person at all - except for the fact that he might be the real Demon King based on what Danry had revealed to her in the library.

Earlier, when Danterion had proposed the plan of switching partners, Shia readily agreed because of two things: first, she wanted nothing to do with Langrey the whole night. Their engagement will be announced shortly after the debutants’ dance, and she could not possibly avoid him by then, but at the same time, she couldn’t cry and slap him on the face like she wanted to. Thus, having another partner, as Danterion suggested, would be their best option. Secondly, Shia wanted to find out more about the Tainted One – the mysterious personality that is also housed in Danterion’s body. If she could find out more about him, and if her hunch was right, she could probably make a better plan on how on to kill the Ancient Evil.

Suddenly, Shia heard a pleasantly odd voice calling her name from amongst the crowd.

“Lady Shia!”

She turned around and saw the brightly lit face of Gavil and the beaming face of Lady Khailis, waving a hand towards her. She saw another face that she positively did not want to see but couldn’t keep away from seeing.

At the sight of her, Langrion’s face lit up. He smiled brightly to her and called her name with such cheer that it was as if he did not kiss another woman a few minutes ago.

Shia did her best to fake a smile towards him as he inched his way to get to her. As soon as he was near enough, he reached towards her hands. “The ball is about to start. Let’s go.”

He tugged at her hands slightly, but she did not budge. Her legs felt like they were made of rocks. Shia tried to act as naturally as she could.

“Um, your highness, there had been a slight change in the line up... You won’t be my escort for tonight.”

His only visible eye suddenly turned crestfallen. “Who are you going to be partnered with?”

Before she could give a reply, Shia felt a hand slip around her waist. She looked towards her right and saw Danterion join in their conversation just in time. “I will be her escort for tonight. We’ll be changing partners, if you don’t mind. Isn’t this fun?”

Before Langrion could say anything back, Prince Danterion swerved Shia away towards the line for the debutant dance.

When they had already walked far away from earshot, he whispered to her. “I see you have good acting skills yourself, my lady. Did you see how heartbroken my brother looked just now?”

“I didn’t. Besides, he has no reason to feel heartbroken,” she replied.

‘If anything, he must be positively thrilled that he could dance with that snake,’ Shia thought bitterly.

Despite her ill thoughts, she smiled lightly towards Langrion’s twin. “Thank you. I appreciate you saving me there just now.”

“Well, you saved me too. I would have possibly broken Edelfina’s knees on the dance floor if we were to be partnered tonight,” he joked, to which Shia laughed heartily.

The masters of ceremonies officially took the stage to present the debutants. The girls and their partners would have to walk towards the stage and take a bow when their names are called. The commoners were to be presented first and the nobles would come last. Once the presentation ends, the debutant dance will commence.

“Did you know the legend behind the debutant dance?” Danterion began to whisper towards her as they inched towards the stage.

“I’m afraid not,” Shia said, whispering closer to his ears. She caught a glimpse of Langrion and Edelfina in the corner of her eye. They were standing just five pairs away from them, and she knew that Langrion was looking right at their direction.

“They say that if you dance with your one, true love at the debutant ball, you would end up with that person forever.”

“Really,” Shia said, sighing inwards. She thought that, perhaps, if Galahad and Freya had tried to dance as partners even in just one of these debutant balls, Galahad would have been a happy man already.

At last, the master of ceremonies called Shia and Prince Danterion on stage. They made a deep curtsy to the crowd and then towards each other. Shia could feel the crowd gasp as they saw who she was partnered with.

“Do you think that legend is true, your highness?” Shia began to ask as they take their spot on the dance floor after their presentation.

“Legend? What legend?”

“The one about dancing with your one, true love at the debutant ball.”

“Ah,” he said. Somehow, Danterion’s voice sounded gruffer. He tilted his head into one side and looked at her in an odd, sinister way. “Of course, I do, deary... Isn’t that why you are choosing to dance with me tonight?”

Shia held her breath as Prince Danterion’s eye color turned from ocean blue into deep violet. He began to flawlessly resemble the man who attacked Shia in the woods some weeks ago.

At the same time, a burning pain came into Shia’s left wrist. She raised it up and saw that the pair of swirling spirals began to resurface in her skin.

Shia turned pale with recognition. “Si-Sirion?...”

******************

Khailis was in cloud nine; She had only been so happy twice in her young life: the first was when she was chosen as the Second-In-Command of the Royal Imperial Guards Coalition at sixteen after winning the swordsmanship competition for five straight years, and the second was right here, as she took her first debutant dance with his beloved, Gavil.

She blushed deeply as she thought of the word ‘beloved.’ She never thought that she and Gavil would turn abruptly from friends to lovers in just a short span of time after confessing to him that she liked him. She could still remember how she attempted to give him a pie laced with truth serum and failed miserably.

Weeks before asking him out, she begged Mage Silas’ to concoct a truth serum, so she could extract the truth from Gavil when she confessed. The Mage gave him a tiny, tiny bottle containing five drops of the serum.

“Make sure you put only a single drop of this in his food, otherwise, he’ll get sick, and he won’t be able to dance with you at the ball even if he had wanted to,” the mage instructed.

Khailis nodded vigorously, and for the next seven days, she practiced baking Gavil’s favourite dessert, apple pie. She faithfully followed the instructions given by the Head Chef at the Rubiyah Mansion, but after failing for the twentieth time (and she wasn’t even exaggerating), Khailis finally conceded to simply buy a perfectly baked apple pie at the store.

On the day that they were supposed to pick their dresses, Khailis asked Shia to go into town without her, and she went straight to Master Manson’s farm where Gavil had been staying since he left Khailis’ residence at fifteen.

Forgetting how the children at Master Manson’s household loved pie, she showed them the truth pie and in less than two minutes, the whole plate was cleared to the last morsel.

“Lady Khailis, why did you bring that pie? Are you going to ask Brother Gavil to the dance,” Alisha, Master Manson’s youngest daughter asked.

“Yes, Miss Khailis. Do ask him! We all know he likes you. He always talks about you and how the two of you met when he was a kitten.”

Despite her failed plan, Khailis smiled. At thirteen, she had met Gavil in the woods one night. While practicing her sword strokes against a rock, she spotted a giant eagle trying to carry off a small, furry animal in its claws. Khailis shooed it away, and when she looked down at the furry animal on the ground, she was amazed to see it turn into a human – a boy with perfectly tanned skin and beautiful, golden brown eyes.

He looked back at her with frightened eyes, and he couldn’t speak. He whimpered to her like an animal, but she knew what it wanted. His arm was badly injured. Khailis went into a slight fit of panic as she thought of how she was going to carry this boy to the doctor.

“Um, mister... Please turn back into a cat,” Khailis said with tears in her eyes. The boy was bleeding so badly that thirteen year old Khailis cried at the thought that he might die. “Please turn back into a cat, so I can carry you,” she pleaded.

“C-cat?...” the boy began to say. His voice sounded weird; it was as if it was the first time for him to speak.

“Yeah, a cat...You know, the one with a small, fluffy fur all over and ears like this, and the one that says ‘meow, meow.’” Khailis said, imitating a feline as best as she could.

As if by cue, the boy’s eyes gleamed in recognition. His body lit up, and he turned back into a small, black cat.

Khailis carried him off to her house as fast as she could. When she was near the edge of their garden, she came across Prince Langrey who was looking for her, so they could play doctor. Perhaps it was by fate as he was carrying some bandages for his game.

“I’ll help your cat, Khailis, don’t cry,” Langrey said. He proceeded to put some salve in the cat’s arm and tried to bandage the cat, imitating how the Royal Doctors would do it.

“See, look, he’s alright now!” the prince said. In truth, the bandage was poorly tumbled all over around the cat, but Langrion did stop the bleeding successfully, and Khailis began to heave a sigh of relief.

“What is your pet’s name?”

“Uh... Gavil...” Khailis said, making up a fake identity for the furry animal who has a human form.

Gavil stayed with Khailis from then on, pretending to be her pet cat, but occasionally transforming into his human form when no one else was around. When they both turned fifteen, Gavil told Khailis that he had to leave after walking on her while she was changing her clothes.

“I can’t stay here anymore, Khailis,” he said. By then, he had already become good at speaking the Human Tongue, as he called it, but he had always had an exotic, suave accent when he spoke that gave him the feel of a foreigner. “I am starting to feel things for you that I should not.”

Khailis was too young then to know what he had meant, but now, she had finally understood. Five years down the line, Gavil grew more and more handsomely, at least in Khailis’ eyes. She had began to feel things for him too that she wouldn’t ordinarily feel towards other men or cats.

With the apple pie all finished by then, Khailis just braved herself and told him the truth.

“I like you, Gavil... I like you a lot. Will you go to the debutant ball with me?”

He looked at her as she turned crimson, the nerve-wracking silence becoming longer and longer. Finally, he spoke.

“My heart had been yours ever since, Khailis Humphrey. It will be an honor to dance with you...”

Now, she and Gavil were finally here, dancing in each other’s arms like in a dream. But just like in a dream, the ending must come, and the ending for them happened to be now.

“Khailis, the summer solstice and my coming-of-age birthday is tonight. I have to leave...”

“But the party just started...”

“I know. I am sorry.”

Gavil had always spoken to her about this day – the day when he would earn his wings and must come back to his hometown in a faraway place that he could not reveal.

The pair left the dance floor and walked towards an open balcony. As Gavil led him past the curtains that separated the balcony from the pavilion, he suddenly scooped her waist closer to his and kissed Khailis passionately on the lips, perhaps for the first and last time.

A tear fell down on Gavil’s eyes when their mouth parted. Khailis wanted to cry too, but she was too speechless to say or do anything.

“Did you know,” Gavil said, “I had loved you since we were thirteen. I had loved you when I first saw you in the woods.”

Khailis eyes went misty. Gavil took out something from the inner pocket of his suit. It was a necklace bearing a small, silver flute, just about the size of her pinky finger.

“This is my gift to you. If you ever find yourself in any predicament, blow on this, and I will come find you. I will go anywhere and find you, I promise.” He placed the necklace around Khailis’ throat.

“When the goddess wakes fully, I will come back for you...” he said again.

Up ahead, Khailis started to notice the cawing of seemingly giant birds. Gavil stepped up on the ledge of the balcony, and in an instant, he transformed back into a large cat – a panther. This time, however, he was not just an ordinary panther since a pair of golden wings had begun to grow from his back.

“See you soon, love...” These were the last words Khailis heard from Gavil as he joined the cawing birds from above and a second before she heard a loud, piercing scream.

“Ah! A cursed one had invaded the ball!”