| 𝐅𝐄𝐀𝐓𝐔𝐑𝐄𝐃 𝐨𝐧 𝐖𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐩𝐚𝐝𝐒𝐡𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐒𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬 |
The Dark is dangerous. The Dark is deception.
And the Dark is the only thing she wants.
What would you do if the only beautiful thing in the world was the one thing you couldn't touch...
Sometimes little Anya just wanted to be a lightyear away from everyone and everything. To float among the stars, surrounded in the swirling blue free fall of space, spiraling into the infinity of the galaxy. Alone with her ever-expanding thoughts, she would map the possibilities of the universe with her eyes, derive the equations of the stars with her mind. Artists saw the colors of a nebula; poets saw the brilliance of a thousand lights against the black; Anya saw the numbers that held the world together. If physics was her second language, mathematics was her first. She was one of the most natural Arithmes that Domdva Station had ever seen.
Too bad then that she was born for something entirely different.
The chrome of Domdva Ballroom glittered with the white light of a hundred floating glow-orbs. Anya gaped as ballerinas glided through the anti-grav chamber in costumes their body could never support in standard conditions. In a little throne below her aunt's—or above, if a dancer was silly enough to orient themselves opposite of the tsarina's chosen down—Anya tracked their trajectories. There flew the evil sorcerer with a constant velocity of one meter per second. Too easy. There twirled the swan princess, hands above her head and spinning with an impressive angular acceleration. Anya counted and calculated, wondering how many rotations she might get in a minute. But then the enchanting prince caught her and ruined Anya's experiment, so her eyes flicked to find something new in the ever-moving ballet—
"Anya!" her aunt hissed.
Anya's eyes snapped up. "Yes, Aunt Khrishta?"
"Oh. Now you see fit to answer me."
Anya winced. Sound always faded to the background when her Arithme nature got the better of her.
Khrishta's clear grey eyes regarded Anya. Her aunt's spiked silver crown drew out both the dark beauty and crystal-cut sharpness of her features, and Anya squirmed under the weight of her gaze. Khrishta's mouth twisted. "If you weren't the end of the Domdva line, I think I'd abandon you to the peasants, little daydreamer." Her gaze turned back to the room. Anya followed her eyes to a handsome man sitting in a box across the ballroom. "Sometimes I think I still might."
Anya's eyes stung, but if she cried, the heavy mascara her nursemaid had applied to her lashes would run sticky down her cheeks. So, she took a deep breath, looked back at the ballerinas, and tried her best to see them as faces and stories rather than velocities and equations.
She might wish she was among the stars sometimes, but she would do her best to prove she belonged here.
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"Are you nervous?" Lada asked as she plaited Anya's hair. On her vanity, her tiara stared at her from its cushion as if reprimanding her for planning to leave it here today. The station jolted, lights dimming for a moment, and Lada dropped the strand in her fingers. "Sorry, Your Highness," she murmured.
Anya waved it away. Terrorizing servants was the other nobility's job. Anya had nothing but respect for this kind, dedicated girl, no matter how many meteors were knocking the station nowadays and causing smudged makeup and messy braids. People shouldn't have to apologize for problems they didn't cause. "We don't have anything to fear. The Arithmes have the situation under control."
