Searching (Radiance)

[Constantine Harroway]

Constantine watched the bar the way one watched television late at night, thumb half-resting on an imaginary button, attention drifting easily from one scene to the next. The platinum blonde woman and the hotel’s owner held his gaze longer than most. Not because anything flared between them, but because nothing did. They were both attractive in entirely different ways, yet the space between them remained clean and untouched. There was no pull. No spark. Nothing even trying to become something.

He tilted his head, mildly amused. For a moment he wondered if they were both gay, but that explanation dissolved almost at once. The owner, Adrian, did not seem interested in anyone. Not men. Not women. Not the room itself. He moved through it like a fixed point, self-contained and uninviting of attachment. Which left the other man at the bar.

Constantine’s attention sharpened there. Just for an instant, he thought he saw a thread pulse between them. A flicker, faint but undeniable. Then it vanished, as if it had never been. He blinked, half expecting the pattern to correct itself. It did not. The strangeness of it set his thoughts turning. A room full of beautiful people, softened by drink and circumstance, and yet nothing truly connected. No lingering cords. No quiet tangles. It felt wrong, like music missing a note.

Then, abruptly, another story unfolded.

A flash of threads burst into being across the room, bright and urgent. They pulsed, dimmed, twisted, snapped, and then reformed in a new shape altogether, as if the pattern itself were reconsidering its choices. Connie leaned forward slightly, interest fully claimed now. The pair were striking together. A handsome man with a reserved air, his thread steady but newly awakened, and the woman beside him...

Oh.

Recognition settled in with a soft click. She was the new American Privilege. Constantine had seen her face often enough in the feeds, polished and sharpened by careful editing. In person, she was still beautiful. That, somehow, made the connection between them even more compelling.

He leaned back in his chair, cosmopolitan forgotten, a slim smile tracing his lips. In all his watching, in all the places he had been, Constantine had never seen threads behave quite like theirs.