Chapter One-Thirty-Five: Under the Sun

"Join you in the hall? I need to leave; there is an emergency. We can dance next time."

I dismiss with ease, but he nears me.

"Next time when?"

Marko asks with a smile as his hand grazes the paintings on his way to me.

"During your next...thing?"

"Oh...you won't have moved or fired half your staff by then? Are you certain that I will not get a response from the league saying you are halfway across the globe? Or on a diplomatic mission or task force somewhere?”

He stills to turn his gaze to a silver polished vase shimmering beautifully under the bright chandelier lights.

“‘Next time’ when Alba."

"I can't...I can't do this right now."

"Of course, you ‘can't’; running is, after all, what you do best, Alba.”

His slow walk toward me resumes.

I hate the way he punctuates his sentences with my name as if to stress his disappointment in me.

Yet another feeling I do not need clogging me.

“Another time, Marko. I need to-”

“To what? to go? And then what? I spend another year and a half waiting