Misty
Music blares from hidden speakers. Purple-hued light covers the wide, open ballroom of sorts in dim colors as bodies move to sensual, thrumming songs that I don’t find even remotely familiar. Men and women alike are all dressed in black–black masks, black dresses, black suits. Some wear hoods to cover their hair, but I can’t tell who's who… I can’t tell who belongs to the order and who’s just an invitee.
A screech of excitement barrels toward us as we edge down a short row of stone steps. Two women in black masks launch themselves at us–Fia and Darby–and I catch Darby at the very moment she wobbles in her impossibly high heels.
“No freakin’ way!” Fia shouts over the music. “We were wondering if you guys got invited!”
“Why didn’t you say anything?!” Georgia gasps, clutching Fia’s face. “We could’ve all gotten ready together!”
Darby bounces up and down beside me, clutching a plastic cup in her hand full of what smells like cheap beer. “Isn’t this great?”
Georgia, Darby, and Fia shout back and forth about our good luck in getting invited, but I’m instantly suspicious. I turn to look over my shoulder at the heavy, wooden double doors we’d been led through to the ballroom of some ancient underground… castle? Temple, more likely, but still.
The men who’d escorted me and Georgia here are gone. I would have noticed them stepping past us into the depths of the party.
If they’re not here, where did they go?
“They have like… anything you want to drink. Wine, beer, the hard stuff.” Darby ropes her arm through mine and begins dragging me into the fray while Fia drops into conversation with Georgia, our little group splitting the crowd.
But I don’t make it to the tables of food and drink resting along the far wall. Distracted by the music and dancing, my friend’s don’t notice me slipping my arm from Darby’s grasp. They don’t notice me wading back through the crowd, my chin tilted toward the massive domed ceiling, to the ancient, candle-lit chandelier made of hundreds of silver shards. No one notices me slipping through a darkened archway leading off the ballroom and into a dimly lit corridor.
I try to keep my footsteps as light as possible as I pick over broken cobblestone, resting my hand along the wall. I test every door I pass. Some are unlocked, but the rooms within are empty and dark. Some doors open to nothing but stone rubble and the smell of mildew and dust. Other doors are locked tight, but their handles are… warm. Warmth and a metallic taste coats my tongue each time I try to yank open the locked doors.
I’m not dumb enough to ignore the taste of magic in my mouth. I’ve grown up around magic.
“Spells,” I murmur to myself, smirking with excitement. This is going to be great, I can already tell. This place must be where the order regularly meets, tucked deep below the teeming campus sprawled above it. Maybe the locked doors house staircases that lead to specific entrances in the old buildings scattered across campus? The library, the dormitories, the halls and meeting spaces… I’ve been living here for almost three years and researching the strange, magical history of Eastonia, and my kind, all while a secret society has been lurking below me.
I turn a corner to another long, dimly lit hallway. It’s uneven, the hallway curving slightly as I follow it on silent feet. It takes me a while to reach the end because of my new heels. I don’t want anyone to know I’m here. I don’t want them to hear me coming.
What I’m hoping to find is a meeting room or a library of some kind. Somewhere the order would keep their secrets about membership and their history.
But instead, at the very end of the hallway, I find an open door.
And then I find Nathan, my boyfriend of two years, bending a young woman dressed in black over a desk.
I stand numbly just a few feet away from the open door as the woman’s fingers travel up the back of his neck to where his mask is tied behind his head. He grunts, mumbling praise under his breath while she writhes beneath him.
My lips part in surprise, but I stifle any noise about to fall from my tongue as he throws his cloak back, revealing his favorite TU crewneck sweatshirt, his joggers, and boxers pulled down to his knees. Sloppy. He’s always been sloppy. I watch him thrust into this total stranger without even using protection, and now I’m… sick to my stomach.
I whirl, not bothering to hide the click clack of my heels on the cobblestone, and sniffle with absolute, unfiltered rage. Not heartbreak. Not rejection. Fury.
I have no idea where I’m going, but I end up in a web of crisscrossed corridors that I don’t recognize. Frustrated, I choke out the first breath I’ve remembered to take since catching my boyfriend red handed with his pants down in a grimy alcove and bend at the waist to try to fill my lungs with much needed air.
“Misty,” I whisper to myself. “You idiot. Grandpa was right about him all along.”
“You shouldn’t be here.”
I freeze. At first, I think it’s the voice in my head, but as I straighten, a shadow comes into view, followed by its owner.
He’s tall. The tallest man I think I’ve ever seen. Taller than Ryan and my Uncle Ryatt, I think, which is wholly uncommon, and honestly, startling. He’s wearing a black cloak and a mask that covers half of his face, only his chiseled, clean shaven jaw visible through the shadows dancing over his profile.
The buttons on his all black suit glint in the dim light coming from torches along the walls around us.
I take him in, my gaze doing a thorough sweep of his outfit, and spot a serpent cast in silver, or white gold, hopefully the latter, eating its own tail. He wears it as a cufflink.
He tucks his arm behind his back when he notices me looking at it.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he repeats, his voice deep and full of smoke.
“I don’t know where I am,” I admit, not bothering to hide the pained bite in my voice as I straighten up fully and rest my hands on my hips. I have to crane my neck to look up at him as he steps closer. “You’re part of the order, aren’t you? Why aren’t you at the party?”
“Why aren’t youat the party?” he echoes.
“I needed some fresh air,” I lie, and he smirks, glancing back and forth. There’s no fresh air down here. None at all. It smells like damp stone and dust, but his scent breaks through it all. I can smell his aftershave–clean and brisk. A hint of woodsy, spiced cologne on his clothing, and beneath that, his skin. A scent that’s his–and his alone.
He smells good, and for a moment, my inhibitions slip. “Do you want to have sex with me?”
He stares at me. At least, I think he’s looking at me. I can’t tell beyond the mask, but his lips part in surprise before pressing into an amused smile. “No.”
“Well,” I huff, sniffling. “No worries. I’ll find someone else.”
I pull back my hood and untie my mask, letting it fall into my hand before wiping away smudged mascara from my undereyes.
He continues to stand there, silent and still like a statue.
I glance up at him, wiping my smudged fingers on my cloak. “What?” I growl, sniffling again, feeling utterly pathetic.
“Why are you crying?”
I sigh, then laugh bitterly. “Because I just found my boyfriend, one of your brethren, fucking someone in your creepy, underground lair.” More tears spill over my lashes, further smudging my makeup. It was a waterproof mascara night, for sure. “And now–” I laugh, tears spilling down my cheeks. “Now I’m asking a total stranger to fuck me just to feel something other than how I feel right now.”
He tilts his head to the side in a curious stance. “How do you feel right now?”
“Like killing him,” I admit, and it’s the truth. “Like breaking his fucking neck.”
“Why don’t you?”
I narrow my eyes at him. “Because that would be murder.”
He purses his lips. “So?”
“So? Murder is bad.” I stare at him for a moment, feeling uneasy in his presence for the first time, but here I am, in the underground, standing in front of an order of Arcane Umbra member. This has been a dream of mine since I first heard whispers about them when I was a freshman. I might not get this chance again. I blink the tears away and dry my cheeks. “Is that what this is? A sex and murder party?”
“No,” he says, amused. “Not tonight, at least.”
“Then what’s the reason? The order is so secretive. Why invite students to a party, go about the whole secret invitation and mask process? Why have everyone use a different entrance?”
“You’ve put a lot of thought into this.”
“These catacombs stretch all over campus, don’t they?” I edge a step toward him, unable to shut my mouth. “They stretch everywhere–to the Firestone temples lost in the sand outside Serpentia and Oasia, right?”
“They do,” he says, his wide mouth and full lips twitching into a smile that he quickly lets fade. “But these aren’t even the catacombs.”
“Then what is this place?”
He lifts a shoulder in a shrug. “Old facets of the campus, back when it was a castle housing whatever Alpha reigned here. It’s easy enough to access.”
I stare blankly at him.
“Are you disappointed?” he edges, smiling again. It’s a cocky, smooth smile that makes me think he’s probably drop-dead gorgeous behind his mask. “Did you think you’d come here and find out all of our dirty little secrets?”
“What are your dirty little secrets?” For some reason, that question causes that smile to fade, his mouth pressing into a tight line.
“You’re not going to find what you’re looking for here. You should stop looking, actually. It’s pointless.”
“How do you know what I’m looking for?”
“You’re a protohistory student.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because you stupidly took off your mask,” he replies, stepping forward, coming to a rest a mere foot away from me. “Princess Mystica of Crescent Falls, is it? That’s your name?”
“Misty,” I correct, thankful for this distraction but also feeling rather small in his shadow. I can’t look into his face–his mask–without my neck feeling like it’s about to snap. “And who are you?”
“That doesn’t matter,” he rasps, but then footsteps sound in the hallway nearby, followed by hushed male voices.
He stiffens and turns ever so slightly toward the noise.
“Put your mask on,” he commands in a low, serious voice. “Now. Do not take it off again.”
“Why?” I mumble as I raise my mask to my face. I’m moving too slow for his liking, apparently. He lets out a sigh of frustration and snatches the mask from me, tying it to the back of my head tighter than necessary.
“Pull up your hood to cover your hair.”
Two masked figures come into view. They stop to stare at us at the very moment I pull my hood up. The masked man stares them down. He’s standing close enough to me for it to feel intimate, and my heart rate spikes as he leans down, caging me against the wall.
“What are you doing?” I hiss, pressing my back against the wall, but the words are stolen from my tongue as his lips crash into mine–hard.
My head bounces against the wall. I hiss a breath in pain, but his hand cups the back of my head and then he’s… deepening the kiss, chasing my tongue with his and I’m… kissing him back. His mouth is warm and perfectly fitted to mine as he holds us there, his free hand sliding into my cloak to clutch my hip.
“Who is that?” one of the men asks.
“Fuck if I know,” his companion laughs then says loudly, as if to get our attention, “Someone’s who’s about to miss the meeting with the Umbra Mortis if he doesn’t get his ass to the rectory in five fucking minutes!”
Their footsteps begin to retreat, but the kiss isn’t stopping. I clutch his cloak as he leans his body against mine, sighing breathlessly against his mouth. He groans as his mouth leaves mine to trail kisses along my jaw as my arms rope around his waist.
But the second I lay a hand on his back, he hisses in pain and pulls away.
We stand there for several seconds staring at each other, panting.
“Are you hurt?” I ask as reality crashes down around me. I just kissed a total stranger. I kissed a stranger after finding out Nathan cheated on me. I kissed a stranger at an Arcane Umbra party.
His lips, slightly swollen from kissing me, part, something silent passing between them, like a prayer.
Then, he says, “Go back to the party, then go home, Misty.”
He turns on his heel and stalks away.