The Last Days of Lorien Read Free Page A

to the sounds coming out of her mouth.
    I was transfixed. I’d heard about her performances, but nothing could have described what she was doing. Some things you just need to see with your own two eyes.
    Now it was almost over. I had been so absorbed in watching Devektra from my exclusive spot in the VIP balcony that the past hour had flown by like minutes, and as the music began to slow, taking on a baleful tone, and the lights shifted from bursts of pink and orange to long, undulating waves of purple and green, I knew it was coming to a close.
    She held the song’s final notes at a delicate volume. Her left hand twirled gently, caressing the air and twirling the sound out into the crowd.
    Then her voice rose to a roar. The sound pummeled my chest, so hard I felt like the noise could hollow me out. Then, suddenly, she slammed her fists together and the club’s lights surged into an overwhelming blast just as the noise disappeared, as if sucked out of the room by a vacuum.
    I staggered against the railing, blinded.
    As my vision slowly came back, I could see the people in the audience below me rocking dizzily on their heels. Like me, they were dazed but satisfied.
    “That was incredible,” I said, finally capable of speech. But when I turned around, Mirkl, who had been watching the show with me, not saying a word, was already gone.
    Turning back to the stage and dance floor, I saw Devektra already halfway to the front door, with Mirkl and the rest of her entourage silent behind her. They were leaving.
    She’d mentioned they’d all be going to another club called Kora for an after-performance party. At the time the mention had felt like an invitation, but it looked like Devektra was on her way out without giving me a second thought.
    I bolted down the stairs, down the hall, and through the crowd, desperate not to lose her. I forced my way through, squeezing between people. I heard a few people snap at me as I knocked into them, but I no longer cared about anything except finding Devektra.
    I finally spotted her as I reached the entrance. She was standing outside the Chimæra with her entourage, and she turned back to the club and saw me, giving me a mysterious smile. I didn’t know what it meant, but I knew I had to find out.
    “Excuse me,” I said, pushing past a couple, making my last dodge for the door.
    “Sandor?” My heart sank as I felt someone grab my arm. I knew that voice. There was no point trying to run. It was Endym.
    “I thought I saw you earlier,” he said.
    “Some show, right?” I said, praying Endym would let this slide. After all, he was here too—and he sounded like he’d had more than a few ampules since I’d last seen him.
    “Incredible,” said Endym. “Best I’ve ever seen her.”
    “So,” I said, hopefully. “Any chance we could just forget you saw me here today?”
    Endym smiled back at me. “None at all.”

CHAPTER 3
    “If I weren’t so disappointed, I’d be impressed.” Principal Osaria was flipping through papers on her desk outlining my misdeeds, reading out charges as she went. “Charge: Tampering with the Truancy Register. Suggested punishment: expulsion. Charge: absences more than ten per semester. Suggested punishment: expulsion.”
    She looked up at me. “Ten’s just a provisional figure of course. We’ve yet to sort through the Register’s data logs to get a precise estimate for how many classes you skipped.”
    “Ten’s about right,” I admitted.
    “That better not be sarcasm,” my dad said in a tired voice from the monitor on the wall of Osaria’s office, where his face crackled in by remote feed. My mother sat silently beside him. They were at their vacation home on the beaches of Deloon and couldn’t be bothered to make the two-hour trip to the capital to witness my expulsion in person.
    “What does this mean, exactly?” my mother asked. As if she didn’t know. I’d been warned before. Cutting school and sneaking into the Chimæra was one