The Pledge (The Pledge 1)

When I realized I had no other option, I gathered the glasses and went back into the crowded dining room.

“Have you decided what you’d like yet?” I asked in smooth Englaise.

Again, Sydney didn’t bother disguising her toxic tone, and I felt my resolve slipping. “I’d like to eat somewhere else. I don’t know why we can’t eat somewhere less . . .” She looked up at me before I had the chance to drop my gaze, and our eyes locked momentarily. “Shabby.”

My cheeks burned, and I tried to tell myself to look away from her, but I couldn’t. It was the right thing to do. It was respectful. And it was the law. She wasn’t speaking to me; I wasn’t even supposed to understand what she was saying.

But I did.

My hands were shaking as I set the glasses on the table. Water sloshed over the sides, splashing the candle’s flame and making it sizzle and then sputter out.

Sydney squealed theatrically and jumped up from her chair as if I’d just thrown the entire glass of water in her face. She glared at me, her mouth gaping in disbelief, and when I glanced down, I could see tiny water droplets on her snowy white blouse.

“Idiot!” she shrieked, and this time I understood perfectly. Everyone did. “She looked at me,” she accused, making her statement not to me but about me in a voice so loud that the entire restaurant could hear her now. “Did you see that? She was looking right at me when I was speaking Termani!”

Her father—the man with the smiling eyes—tried to calm her, slipping into the Counsel tongue of Termani to soothe his daughter. “Sydney, calm down—”

“Don’t tell me to calm down, that moron practically assaulted me! Something needs to be done. She broke the law. I can’t believe you’re not outraged. I can’t believe you’re not already calling for a hanging.” She dabbed frantically at the nearly invisible splash marks with her napkin. “Mother, do something! Tell them that this—this imbecile should be turned in!”

This time I did gaze downward while I pretended not to listen to things she was saying about me, most of which should never have been spoken aloud in any language.

Panic paralyzed me, and my throat squeezed shut. I dared a quick look around me, with only my eyes. Brooklynn stood frozen, staring back at me, and behind her, all three of the men sitting at her table were watching me. For a moment, my gaze locked with that of the third man—the one Brooklynn had been intent on making notice her. His eyes were dark and intense, focused solely on me as he leaned forward now, no longer disinterested.

I grimaced as I heard my father rushing out through the kitchen doors to see what all the commotion was about. I turned my eyes his way, and recoiled as I met his stare, knowing that I’d made a mistake.

A deadly one.

“I’m sorry,” I said aloud, to no one in particular.

“What happened out there?” Brook asked, rushing to my side and squeezing my hand so tightly that the blood was cut off from my fingers. “What was she talking about? You didn’t look, did you?”

I stared at her, unable to speak, or even to breathe. Still.

Out in the restaurant, I could hear the girl’s mother, her voice calm and even—very diplomatic. My father had fallen silent, and all other sound in the restaurant had ceased. I wanted to hear what she was saying, but the closed doors—and the blood rushing past my ears—made it impossible.

Brook clutched my hand even tighter as she looked at me, her eyes widening, searching my face for answers.

Suddenly the woman stopped speaking, and we both turned toward the doors to wait.

There was a long pause, and I thought my heart might explode. Each beat was painful as I told myself that this wasn’t happening, that I hadn’t just made such a grievous misstep. Surely I couldn’t have forgotten. My parents had worked so hard to teach me, to instill the importance of never, ever mistaking one language for another. And to never, ever break the rules.

And yet, here I was. Waiting to see if I would die.

Brook’s fingers laced through mine as the door swished open, and my father’s solemn face regarded us as we stood there, his eyes falling to our intertwined hands.

My mother had taken Angelina outside until a resolution could be reached, one way or the other. She didn’t want my sister to hear what was being discussed.

“Well.” Brook exhaled, her voice pinched. “What did she say? What did they decide to do?” Her nails cut into my palm.

My father stared at me, and I could practically hear his disapproving thoughts and sense his disappointment. But it definitely wasn’t a look you gave someone on her way to the gallows, and I felt my breath loosening from the knot in my chest.

“They’re not turning you in,” he stated flatly, and I wondered if he even realized he was still speaking in Englaise. “They think the girl might have been mistaken, that she was upset because you spilled water—”

“But I didn’t—”

His hard glare stopped me from trying to defend myself. Don’t you dare lie to me, he told me with that look. And he was right. I fell silent, waiting once more.

“You were lucky, Charlaina. This time no one realized—” Now it was his turn to stop short as he glanced at Brooklynn. Brooklynn, who knew nothing of what I could do. At last he sighed, and when he spoke again, this time in Parshon, his Bs tihon, hisvoice was softer. “You need to be careful, girls.” And even though he addressed both of us, I knew his words were directed solely at me. “Always be careful.”