Chapter 43

The jubilant dancing is the worst.

Women pick up their skirts and dance with the men, smiles on everyone's faces. Tonight is meant to be a neutral holiday that all take part in and enjoy. One night of peace and it's about to go to the Hells.

They look so happy and free that I envy their carfree slurs. What it must be to lose one's inhibitions and just let go, surrendering to the beauty that life has to offer.

I wonder what it's like to be free of burden and knowledge.

I almost snicker at that. Knowledge. What do I know? Apparently nothing seeing as I hadn't even noticed that Leander and Draven were together until I accidentally saw their private moment pf soaking each other in. To tell the truth, I hadn't fully swept through their minds.

It had been careless and perhaps stupid, but I wanted to get to know someone for once. I didn't want to know Leander, Aaliyah and Dravens history all in one look. It would have taken the joy out of any twisted sort of friendship we may have made, built on lies and deceit as it would have been.

I watch as they carelessly succumb to the wine and merriment. I watch as the crowd stands as one. There are no games tonight. No, tonight is the universal cease fire on all sides.

If Ravenna Nivirah could be neutral two days out of the year, anyone can. People of different houses lean on shoulders and drink out of the same wine glasses, stained with various colors of lipstick as many are.

Leander leans into my ear, he's to my right, "Lushes. The whole lot of them are filthy lushes and gluttons."

My lips twitch up. It's no concern that the expression has blown my cover. No. The few people looking at me most likely think that Leander just laid out the way he tortures his victims. They think that I am taking a cruel delight in what Leander has just said.

Aaliyah leans into my ear next, not really close, but close enough to crush my ear and tickle my skin. "That crown is perfect for tonight. I'm glad you wore it." I nod at her in agreement.

Hopefully mom wouldn't be disgusted looking at me as I am now. I may hate her, but I love her in my own way as well. She's still my mom, no matter how much her neglect had hurt me. I still want her approval. I want her to take pride in that fact that I'm her daughter.

I look up to the ornate chandelier. It's my favorite in the whole castle. It's spotted with diamonds and lit by sun-benders. It reflects the truest form of beauty and I need more of that in my life. It fits the room, too.

The violins pick up their pace as the song speeds up and the crowd gets rowdy, well, not rowdy, just really excited. A little unruly, perhaps. Their feet move faster in the giant circle that has formed at the center of the floor.

If I could paint this, I would title it Joy. Just one word. Simple. Full of delight. Just like the scene depicted before me.

I didn't know that such magnitudes of happiness existed before tonight. Before I saw this dance floor. They have long forgotten about my formidable entrance. They are lost to the euphoria of the night.

We say nothing. We do nothing. We are the spectators to this joy. We are not part of it. The four of us stand out. We stand together. We are in a world of our own. Joy does not grip out hearts, decadence and extravagance do not wow us into drunken stupors.

The walls of the room are simple and mostly barren, aside from the velvet draperies and occasion dramatic painting by an artist. One depicts a pianist, caught up in the passion of his music. Another is of a dancer doing a twirl in the air.

There are others, of course, but those two are my favourites. They truly capture the beauty that comes with passion and unadulterated rapture.

It shows how those two lives have lived, lost and gone, but will forever live on because their passion was contagious enough to touch millions of lives.

The doors of the ball room have long since creaked closed.

We are here and yet not here. We are about to win, while losing just as much.

As many times as I tell myself that all of them deserve to die, I know it's not true. They were once just like me. They weren't always cruel incarnations and shadows of their former selves. At the very core, there is always something that resembles human.

My legs itch to run, but they stay firmly slung over the throne arm. A glass of red bordeaux wine sits idly in my right hand. I twirly the stem of the glass, rake my lips ever the rim, and take the occasional sip.

My lips leave no mark on the glass. I imagine that to a stranger, I look odd. Me, the fifteen year old- in appearance only- girl. My black hair, but an ink spill in the room of merry color, my blood red lips that look far too old for my young face, my dead eyes that carry far too much weight to be fifteen.

I am aware and yet unaware of the room around me. I don't pay attention to it and yet I know every detail of it. I have marked it a thousand times while not meaning to.

I am the outsider in my own home.

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