09 | the sins of the father
If Alec Adair knew one thing, it was that school waited for no man. Especially not Arcadia Village School.
Once again, he tightened his plaid tie and straightened out the folds of his jacket. Large soy hazelnut latte? Check. Green plastic notebook stuffed full of papers? Check. Half-eaten chocolate bar? Check. Now all that remained was to wait for Rythicaen. Where the hell was he, anyway?
He’d woken up, the same as usual, made himself his coffee, then Rythicaen’s (obnoxiously sweet vanilla whatever). Technically, they weren’t supposed to have a coffee machine in the dorms, or really, any food at all, but Rythicaen had never been one for following the rules. Besides, Alec needed coffee, and it hadn’t taken much to hook Rythi on caffeine and from then, getting him to buy the machine had been easy. Anyway, it was way better then what the cafeteria had. Alec had gotten up to shake him awake, but Rythicaen wasn’t in his bed, nor anywhere else for that matter.
Now the latte was almost gone, and Rythicaen’s coffee was cold. Alec grabbed his cell phone, an ancient thing with a keypad, purchased at a convenience store with what money he made from his library assistant job on campus. Upon opening his chat with Rythi, he was greeted with row after row of his frantic text messages from this hour.
where r u???
no seriously where?
come on u know u can’t be outside past curfew
i’m making ur coffee now if u don’t come back I’LL DRINK IT i sw2g
i’m actually nervous now WHERE R U???
He tapped out another message, this one in all caps, a few times hitting the delete button nervously, so it took him much longer to send the message than necessary.
WHERE THE HELL R U?! CALL ME!!
When no response came within ten minutes, he groaned, than ran his hand through his white-blonde hair. Then, of course, he had to go back in the bathroom and brush it again until it was just so. Alec was a big fan of just so. Rythicaen always made fun of him for it, but Rythicaen wasn’t going to be valedictorian in two years.
Alec was the second shortest person in the honors program. Yep, the only person who he could feel superior to (in the height department) was Tina “Teenie” Galhaut, who was barely four feet tall and probably weighed about as much as Crustiez’s Famous Potato Bagel if you took off the bacon. This might have been because he had skipped two grades, but he wasn’t becoming a giant any time soon. He was ghost-pale, with white-blonde hair and large blue eyes, which, as of late, had made him a figure of some interest to the female population, especially Mira Seidan. Little did she know Alec had been disinterested in her since the fourth grade, after a certain brown-eyed someone had found his way into their class. Oh, Mira was smart and sweet and the president of the Future Doctors club, but she was no Rythicaen Dunavain. Who was?
Rythicaen, or rather High Lord Rythicaen, was the grandson of the current High Lord of the Rublex Galaxy, and the son of Milos Dunavain. As nobility went, the Dunavains were perhaps not the richest, but of an old, proud line. With a pedigree like that, Rythicaen might have turned out horridly stuck-up, but within weeks of moving to Arcadia Village (which had somewhat of a reputation for being snotty to new students) he had achieved widespread popularity for his geniality, good looks, and charm. It had been love at first sight. Rythicaen was smart, if not quite such a good student as Alec, and kind, in a way many others weren’t at first, even if Alec was just a poor kid on a scholarship. This was so weird that Alec assumed he just wanted answers for some test or the other, but that was just Rythi, who wore thrift-store flannel over his uniform jackets and taught Alec constellations, who carried a sketchbook everywhere and bit his lip when he was nervous. He was fearless and brilliant and Alec was in love with him. Even if they were roommates.
Arcadia had a strict no-dating policy (to keep their standards up, allegedly, but everyone knew it was just another way to control tyr students). People got around it, as they always did, with such things, but there was still the rule about homosexuality to contend with. And plus, Rythicaen’s dad was…violent.
Alec had always been an emotional person. Little things drove him to tears, but Rythicaen had always been supportive. But there was only one time he had ever seen Rythi cry, and that was after dealing with his father, nursing a black eye and a bloody nose, and muttering with clenched teeth, “I hate him,” between angry sobs. It was not a memory Alec was about to forget. After all, if anyone could unbalance Rythicaen Dunavain, they must be a true monster.
So when the door to their dorm slammed open, and Rythicaen stalked in, hands jammed in pockets, black-velvet cheeks streaked with tears, Alec leapt to his feet and demanded, “What’s wrong?”
Rythicaen stared at him in tortured silence for a while, then croaked out, “He’s dead, Al. My father is dead.”
••
They sat together in the dorm, not caring for the moment that they were late to class, and Alec’s academic rival, Kai Zadaña, was probably going to make fun of him for it later, and in a hoarse voice, Rythicaen explained how it had happened.
Allegedly, some terrorists had penetrated the defense systems of the Rublex, and they had killed all the leaders, the exception being one duchess who was younger than Alec, by all accounts. It sounded like an action movie.
“I just don’t know,” Rythicaen said hopelessly. “how I’m supposed to feel. On one hand, he was an asshole, but God, he was my dad, right? I mean, what do you do with that?”
Alec said nothing. His own dad had walked out on them not long after he was born, and his mom died when he was ten. His mom had been an angel, and his dad had been absent, not abusive.
“Why did they take the Rublex, Al? Why would they do that? I mean, it’s small and pretty low on resources, not super rich. I just wish I understood some of this.”
Alec put his arm around his friend, squeezing him tightly, but his mind was a million miles away, as Milos Dunavain died in the Rublex.