Sapient Salvation 1: The Selection (Sapient Salvation Series) (3 page)

“I can handle him,” I said.

Lana had never approved of my relationship with Court. I’d always told myself it was because she was overly protective, but that had probably just been my way of rationalizing her misgivings. And, I realized, it was also my way of ignoring what I didn’t want to see.

I lifted my chin, drew a deep breath, and opened the door.

Court offered a tentative smile when he came around the corner of the house.

Why hadn’t he gone to the door and knocked like a normal person instead of creeping around looking for me in the windows? Coward.

I crossed my arms and regarded him in stony silence.

His gaze roamed my body. His smile widened and heat grew in his eyes. “You look . . . you’re beautiful, Maya.”

Yes, I know. My mother already told me.

When I didn’t respond to his compliment, his smile faltered a bit. He ran one hand up and down the other arm as if to ward off a chill, though it was still muggy and hot. I rather enjoyed seeing him squirm a bit.

He cleared his throat and looked off to the side. “Farrah was . . . she isn’t . . . she doesn’t mean to me what you do,” he said haltingly.

“You had
sex
with her, Court. Often, by the familiarity between the two of you. And with the obvious expectation that you’d be doing it many more times in the future.” My heart raced with anger and hurt.

“No, no, you’re not seeing it right. I had—I did that with her because I don’t care for her the way I care for you. With you I wanted to wait. Just like you always said, so it would be special.”

My pulse surged even more at his admission and the feeble reasoning for his betrayal. “In the meantime you were simply using her to satisfy your needs?” I asked.

He brightened and started to nod. Then his eyes widened, and he drew back a little as he took in my horrified reaction. “I don’t . . . um . . .”

“So you would have stopped after we were married? Because then you wouldn’t need her anymore?” I softened my voice and gave him a completely fabricated look of hope. “You’d be completely faithful to me and never touch another woman again? You’d be with me and only me until the end of your days?”

His mouth pulled down in a sour look before he could manage to stretch it into a too-wide smile. “Uh, yes, of course.”

Lifting a hand, he stepped toward me. When I didn’t back away, he moved closer and brushed my cheek with the backs of his fingers.

For a moment I felt myself weaken, felt the pull of Court’s beautiful face cloud my mind. A spark of desire lit up deep inside me.

“I’m saving you because you’re special. You’re the best of all of them, Maya.” His voice actually trembled a little.

Any desire I’d felt fled from my body.
Of
all
of them? Exactly how many were there?
I wanted to scream.

Instead, I leaned toward him and looked up from under my lowered lashes. “If you really mean that, meet me here tonight after the Selection. Late, after our parents have gone to sleep,” I purred.

He grinned broadly. “I will. I would love that.”

He stooped for a kiss, and it was all I could do to keep my fists firmly clamped under my elbows. I sidestepped and gave him a playfully admonishing look. “Not until tonight.”

I turned to the door and, after one last coquettish glance at Court over my shoulder, went inside.

Lana wore a sly grin. “Whatever you have planned, he deserves it ten times over.” She tipped her head innocently toward her basket of cord dyes.

I allowed myself a chuckle and knelt for the cobalt. Later, I’d offer Court a special glass of wine.

My heart still ached, but a new energy surged through me. I felt as if I’d started to expand beyond my old self, as if the too-small cocoon that had encased me for as long as I could remember had suddenly become noticeably tight, and I’d begun the process of emerging, raw and tender, into something new.

*

The ceremony pavilion was nestled on a plateau tucked against a range of foothills at the edge of town not far from our house. Rand’s family owned a tiny rattleclap car, and Rand had given up his seat to my mother so she wouldn’t have to walk the mile or so uphill to the pavilion.

Rand, Lana, and I walked slowly, trying not to kick up dust on the road, and the deliberate pace gave the long line of citizens and white-clad Obligate Elects a somber, processional feel.

Lana and I strode with our elbows linked, and drew many glances. People’s eyes often seemed to want to linger on us when we were together, especially when we were dressed alike. Seeing a matched pair seemed to strike people as interesting or odd, I supposed. And for the ceremony we were a perfectly matched pair, dressed alike and made up with the same hairstyle.

In moments like these, I almost felt as if my twin and I were of one spirit, moving through the world in separate bodies but synchronized with each other on some ethereal plane.

Rand walked on my other side, moving nearer to me when we spotted Court and his family join the procession. Court twisted, and out of the corners of my eyes, I saw him spot me and felt his gaze linger. I turned toward Lana and mumbled something inconsequential to her, pretending I didn’t see Court’s searching look.

With Rand close enough that the back of his wrist occasionally brushed mine, I couldn’t help comparing him to Court again. The past year and a half it could have been me and Rand getting to know each other, talking and laughing.

But I’d had eyes only for Court.

I looked up at Rand, waited until he turned to me, and then held his gaze. “Thank you for giving my mother your ride to the pavilion, for walking with us, and for offering to escort me tonight.”

Thank you for always being there . . . even while I was a girlish idiot.

The look on his face was like the sun bursting out after a day of rain. “Of course.” He glanced at my sister. “I’d be glad to escort both of you, that is if Lana isn’t already taken.”

I elbowed my sister. “She always refuses escort.”

Lana turned a soft smile toward Rand. “I just didn’t want to get attached before my final Selection Ceremony. It always seemed bad luck . . .” she trailed off with a guilty grimace, realizing what she’d said.

An awkward silence grew between the three of us.

I heaved a deep sigh. “Lana, you’ve always been the smarter of the two of us. From now on, you are in charge of all of my important decisions.” There was no bitterness in my voice, but a pinprick of pain pierced my heart and I couldn’t help a glance at Court.

Lana’s tinkling laugh broke the tension. “I’m just cautious. You’re far more courageous than I am.”

I tipped my head toward hers until our temples touched, and squeezed her arm. I couldn’t imagine how anyone could survive without a twin.

As the slope of the road steepened, the purples and blues of the evening sky colored the hills. The alabaster ceremony pavilion—a circular structure with tiered seating surrounded by tall columns—stood out starkly against the darker backdrop of the foothills.

A hush seemed to descend over the thick line of people moving up the road.

My thoughts turned to Belinda, the Obligate who would be offered to the Selection from our clan. She’d been born during the same half-year as me and Lana, and though I didn’t know her well I could picture her heart-shaped face, pale blonde curls, and delicate hands.

This would have been Belinda’s last Selection ceremony before she was free to marry and build a life of her own. Instead, she would be entering the competition in the overlords’ city of Calisto. If she survived the competition, she would be rewarded with a slave position on some other world—not much of a reward, but certainly better than death during one of the competition’s challenges. If she emerged the overall victor, she would join Lord Toric’s harem and live out the rest of her life in luxury and service to the Lord. But no matter what the outcome, she would never return home.

I sent up a prayer to the overlords and the stars above, asking that Belinda be filled with strength and courage. And another prayer for her family, for making such a profound sacrifice.

There were many bowed heads around me, and I guessed that others were silently reciting similar prayers.

As if those battling far overhead had sensed our prayers, a silent explosion lit high in the sky. I stiffened as I watched fiery debris streak through the atmosphere.

My heart jolted at the sight of the flames streaking toward land, even though I knew any debris that didn’t burn up would hit the protective shield and bounce away or slide to the ground outside the protected zones.

The invocation went up around the crowd. “Praise the overlords, praise Lord Toric.”

I joined in, repeating the phrase three times.

If not for the protection of the overlords, we on Earthenfell would have perished many hundreds of years ago as alien races fought to claim our planet. The battles in the skies have raged for centuries, but the overlords have kept us safe, fighting our enemies so we could live in peace.

We had no deep love for the overlords and did not worship them, but we knew that without them we’d all be dead. And so we always praised them.

I shivered, imagining how vast and terrifying it must be up there beyond the shield. I sent up another prayer, one of protection for the overlord fighters who tirelessly fended off our enemies.

When we passed under the arch to enter the pavilion, I scanned the section our clan was assigned until I spotted my mother sitting in the third row.

“I see Mother,” I said to Lana. I looked up at Rand. “Thank you again for allowing her to ride with your family. I’m not sure she could have come otherwise.”

“Of course, Maya.” He gave a little bow of his head, touched my elbow, and then angled off toward his own clan’s section.

I guided Lana through the aisles, past other clan groupings. There was a charged energy in the air despite the hush, and my stomach tightened with nervous anticipation.

When we passed a clan section where a man stood with a bucket in his arms, from which his clan’s Obligate would be drawn by lottery, I shivered. I couldn’t imagine what that clan’s Obligate Elects must be feeling, knowing that after the feast, one of them would have to leave their home forever and go to Calisto with no preparation or training to compete.

Mother gave us a tired smile when we reached the section with the Clan Terra banner. I let Lana sit in between us, and I turned to wave at a couple of distant cousins farther up in the Clan Terra seating who were also wearing Obligate Elect white.

At one time, everyone in a clan was related somehow. But through the centuries, the bloodlines crossed and mixed so much it became too difficult to draw lines between them based on blood relation. The clans later became symbolic groupings rather than family groupings, though most people had at least a few relatives in the same clan.

I noticed the front-most row of our section was conspicuously empty.

“Have you seen Obligate Belinda yet?” I asked Mother in a hushed tone.

She shook her head. “Neither her nor her family,” she rasped, and then coughed a few times.

I frowned. By Clan Terra tradition, our Obligate usually arrived early to the pavilion. Before the ceremony began, all of Clan Terra’s Obligate Elects would line up and file past to offer the Obligate a prayer of thanks and strength. We did that while the lottery clans chose their Obligates by drawing.

It wouldn’t feel right to skip the traditional prayer for our Obligate.

My unease mounted as the pavilion continued to fill. All of the Obligate Elects—young men and women between the ages of eighteen and twenty—stood out from the rest in their white ceremonial garb. There were sixteen clans total, and sixteen Obligates would be offered.

But where was ours?

The sky had deepened to the violet blue of dusk, and the crowd was settling as the last few attendees found places with their clans.

Down on the pavilion’s stage the light bearers had lined up, eight on each side, one for each of the sixteen Obligates who would go to Calisto for our half-year’s Selection.

I watched as Mr. Arsen, the Clan Terra officiant for the Selection seated in our clan’s first row, twisted and scanned our section. His salt-and-pepper eyebrows were drawn together, forming a deep vertical worry crease in the center of his forehead.

I glanced at Mother. She was watching Mr. Arsen, too.

An anguished cry pulled my attention toward the section to our left. A woman about my mother’s age was clutching at a young man who was dressed in Obligate Elect white. The young man stood stiff and still, a stricken look frozen on his face. Nearby, an officiant with a lottery bucket held a slip of paper.

I swallowed hard as I watched the young man look down at the woman who was silently sobbing against his chest.

“This is my duty, Mother,” he said. His voice was strong and clear, but his expression was dazed and his eyes glassy and wide.

Lana tilted her head and then turned to me. “Who was the young man drawn for that clan?”

I squinted, trying to place him. He looked familiar. We’d been in school together; he was a year behind me if I remembered correctly. I didn’t think I’d crossed paths with him since Lana and I had graduated. “He’s younger than us. Orion, I think is his name?”

She nodded solemnly. “Yes. I remember the name. I think he may have ended up in machinery.”

Orion’s sleeves were tight around his biceps as he raised his hands to his mother’s shaking back and bent to touch his cheek to the top of her head. His shoulders looked well-muscled, too. If he had indeed been working on one of the machinery lines for the past year, his job had given him a very fit physique. That would help him when he went to Calisto to compete to become one of Lord Toric’s personal servants.

My heart ached for him and for his mother, who was trying to compose herself but still trembled as she wiped her eyes.

There were similar scenes in the other sections where Obligates were being drawn by lottery.

I inhaled a slow breath and trained my attention on the stage, feeling unnerved. I wasn’t sure why I felt shaken by the scene. It was my fourth Selection ceremony as an Obligate Elect, and I’d attended the Selection since the age of ten like all of the other Earthenfell children. I knew exactly what to expect. Perhaps it was the gouge in my heart left by Court’s betrayal that made everything else feel more raw.