Sample from Project Train
* To give you an idea of what I’ve got up my sleeve, please enjoy the excerpt below from my future WIP! *
Attending the opera is not his favorite pass time, but it’s better than attending his own wedding.
Grateful for the intermission, Daesun stands and stretches his arms above his head, wincing when a tight muscle refuses to budge. He isn’t surprised; his whole body feels rigid from the Last Battle. Perhaps it was not the best idea to escape the castle on the same morning he returned home.
But his father didn’t give him time to process his own nuptials, much less time to recover from the war.
He is better off on the Veiled Express, heading for the other side of the continent where he can start a new life.
The door to the cabin clicks open, and a woman slips into the opera box with her back turned to him. The muddy cloak she wears is yanked tight around her head as she spins around.
Daesun wears the same dumbstruck expression that she does, no doubt.
A loud knock on the door causes her to jolt, and she hurries to sit in the elegant chair next to him. She stares straight ahead at the crowded theater before them, not sparing him another glance.
He parts his mouth to question her, but another voice breaks the silence.
“Pardon me, sir, but did you see—aha! There you are, you weasel!” booms a man in the train’s uniform.
Daesun’s eyes flit between the red-faced conductor and the woman with a quivering lip.
“Are you calling my wife a weasel?”
Blubbering, the conductor glances between the odd pair—a man dressed like a noble and a woman dressed like a commoner—and shakes his head.
“Good. Then could you please shut the door? The intermission is ending,” Daesun says against the muted swell of the orchestra tuning their instruments.
Huffing, the man bows his head and vacates the opera box. The room is sealed again, and the magic takes hold, releasing the sounds from the far-away theater as if they have been uncorked from a bottle.
Settling back into his seat, Daesun laces his fingers together and rests them on his lap.
“Why did you do that?” the woman asks measly.
“Do what?”
“Save me.”
“Well, you looked like you were going to cry. As if all your hopes were withering away.” He rolls his head to the side, meeting her brown eyes with the ghost of a smile. “So I stepped in, as any gentleman would do.”
A cherry-red flush highlights her cheeks. She faces forward. “I see. Then you have my gratitude.”
The strings and drums begin their dastardly tune, filling the space with a dire mood as the curtain parts. The story continues—a story Daesun has seen before, performed by his fellow knights in dull times—and entrances his new acquaintance.
Leaning forward with parted lips, the woman’s cloak falls off her head, revealing frazzled curls of mahogany and a loose ribbon keeping it all together at the back of her neck. Her honey-hued skin glows from the lanterns hanging off the wall, and her splattered freckles shimmer like stars.
Daesun clears his throat and turns in time to see the hero enter the stage.
“Have you been to the opera before?” he asks, taking note of how moved she is by the choreographed sword fight. If only it was so easy for a sword to deny its very purpose of bringing death.
“Never.” Glancing back at him with furrowed brows, she asks, “How is this here? The theater, I mean. One moment I was in the Upper Cars of the train, and the next…”
“It’s a new amenity—at least, that is what I was told. The magic in this car lets you see and hear the capital’s esteemed performances. To the people below…” Daesun’s gaze rakes over the nobles fanning themselves in the ground rows. “We are nothing but empty boxes, reserved by the Veiled Express.”
“Fascinating…” she mutters, eyeing the small room they are crammed into. “The Lower Cars only have seats. No magical cabins for entertainment.”
She must, indeed, be a commoner then. The Lower Cars are for those able to purchase the cheapest tickets on the train, and the Upper Cars are for those who could afford the most expensive.
Daesun, as a runaway prince who snagged his inheritance, can afford whatever he wishes.
“Were you sneaking up here?” He smirks. “Is that why the conductor was chasing you?”
Pursing her lips, she gets to her feet. “Thank you for your hospitality, but I must be going now.”
“Wait.” Daesun holds up his scar-ridden hands—a gesture he was taught never to do as it meant he would have to drop his weapon first. “I meant no harm. Please, feel free to stay.” He glances at the stage, then offers an apologetic smile. “The story gets better from here.”
It is perhaps only a few moments before the woman sits back down, but it feels like a lifetime to Daesun. He had been wallowing in his loneliness—in his defiance of loyalty to his father—in his spontaneous decision to give up the only life he ever knew—until she graced him with her presence.
As the troubled voices of the characters ring out, she asks, “Did the hero win the fight?”
“He did… but he regrets ever fighting in the first place.”
“What was he even fighting for?”
Daesun takes a breath into his lungs and holds it there, hoping that the pressure building up in his chest would make the facts easier. “A lost cause.”
The opera is more familiar to the prince than he would like to admit.
For the next hour, they sit in silence and watch the performance unfold below. The small gasps and hidden sniffles from the woman lighten his heart. To find someone so empathetic with a fictional narrative… It brings him hope that the world isn’t defined by its selfish rulers, after all.
Perhaps he, too, can find an identity other than the deadly one his family has given him.
“Is that it?” She looks at him in desperation, clutching her hands close to her chest. “Is that how the story ends?”
“Afraid so,” Daesun replies, an amused smile curling at his lips. “Why? Does it bother you not to know what happened to the princess?”
“Of course it does! She deserved a life. She deserved to live beyond what her kingdom condemned her to.”
He pinches his brows together. The excited murmur of the theater’s crowd makes it hard to be heard, but he asks, “What do you mean?”
The princess’s character was introduced towards the last act, but from everything Daesun witnessed, it seemed that she was the most privileged. She sang from her glass balcony and was doted on by her loved ones, never forced to witness the war-torn fields just outside of her kingdom.
“The girl has obviously been trapped in her tower her whole life. When her brother comes to tell her about the hero, she sings of joy but cries with sadness. She wanted him to win, because then…” The woman breathes in deeply and stares at the hands in her lap. “Then she’d be freed.”
“But the people revolted,” he says, eyeing the crowd dispersing in the theatre below. “They stormed the castle. She was likely freed then.”
She smiles at him for the first time, but it isn’t one of gladness. It’s one of bitterness. “Her whole family was sentenced to hang. Do you really think she could’ve avoided such certain fate?”
The magic of the compartment fizzles out. The window of the car returns to a view of the outside, the setting sun breaking through the trees flashing by.
“Fate is only certain if one lets it be.“ Daesun stands and dusts off his coat jacket. He knows that his fate, however certain his father thought it was, is in his hands now. And he won’t ever give it back. “Would you like to continue our rouse in the dining car? Watching such a long opera has made me famished.”
His new companion washes her gaze over him twice—no, thrice—before standing to her own feet. She’s just barely shorter than him. “If I play your wife… everything I order will be on your tab?”
“Naturally. What sort of husband would I be to let my other half starve?”
“And what kind of benefit do you receive from such a lie?”
A fair question. As the opera played out, Daesun couldn’t help but notice how inconspicuous he would look with a woman on his arm. The runaway prince is expected to travel alone, after all.
“Your company,” he answers truthfully.
She raises a brow.
“Just your company.” Daesun puts his hands behind him and steps back. “It’s a long journey without anyone to talk to, is all.”
The woman bites her thumbnail before yanking her own arm down. “And if I decide that I’d rather return to the Lower Cars?”
“Then you can.”
She holds out a hand hesitantly. He takes it, hoping she doesn’t mind the scars scratching at her soft skin.
“What is my husband’s name?” she asks quietly.
“Daesun,” he replies. “And my wife’s?”
“Neph— …Nephie.”
“Well, Nephie.” Daesun turns to unlock the cabin doors. “To our uncertain fates we go.”