Everyone was made to see the world, but some of us were made to see it
from the sky. —ERNEST PREW
CHAPTER 32
In early March, an angry blizzard blows down from the northwest peaks, stripping the campus flowers to naked stalks. For nearly a week, the streets are buried under so much snow that the Pinkies only plow the routes to the Lecture Halls. Benjamin Bogart calls it “the last cold front before spring,” bright and chipper, as if he’s announcing a holiday, but few of us manage to smile through our chattering teeth.
The streets empty out. Students stop studying in the rose gardens and on cafe patios, and even the horn-heavy beats from the nightclubs fade. Most of us only venture out for class. The rest of the time, we hole up somewhere warm and pretend it’s spring.
For Charlotte, Jack, Dickie, and me, that’s Edmund’s suite. It becomes our hideout, the kind you tiptoe through at first, too stunned by the grandeur to sit without worrying you’ll leave a mark or a wrinkle. From floor to ceiling, it shines brighter than Vivian on her date nights with Harrison. The crown molding curls in hand-carved flourishes, and the hearths crackle with tidy red flames that never spit or smoke. Pinkies glide in and out of hidden doors, delivering trays of velvety espressos and replacing dirty ashtrays without a word. Meals appear like clockwork on gold-rimmed plates in a dining room that smells faintly of cigars and fresh beeswax polish.
When the snow falls sideways and the wind claws through the chimney flues, we draw the drapes and turn up the jazz in the bar. Music sounds better in here, somehow realer, as if it’s being played live just down the hall.
Sometimes I tap dance with Charlotte; other times I shoot pool with Jack or play video games with Dickie. All the while, I do my best to avoid Edmund.
I’ve always been good at lying. Dad says I could bullshit my way past President Reeve’s security detail. But hiding how I felt while thanking Edmund for the seashells, telling him the pretty pink one I saw was among them, took enough effort to hurt. My feelings for him keep growing, tangling inside me like a wild, unruly tree I never meant to plant.
By now, the roots feel too deep to tear out.
So, instead of trying to kill my feelings, I redirect them. I slip into the exercise room in Edmund’s suite, pull on a pair of boxing gloves, and square up to the heavy bag hanging from the ceiling. Without a thought for form, I throw a hook that lands with a thud, sending the bag lurching sideways. The chains shriek overhead as I hit it again and again, my guard dropping carelessly between blows.
I pivot late, twist too far through my hips, and throw another cross that rattles up my arm and into my shoulder. The bag swings wildly, crashing back into my chest, but I meet it head-on, my fists slamming into the worn leather to drain my energy and leave me too tired to think about Edmund.
It doesn’t work.
Why shouldn’t I be allowed to feel this way?
I understand that some love is impossible. A bird can’t love a fish. But Edmund and I are a design choice rather than a law of nature. The system deliberately engineered this distance between us. It took power it had no right to take and made decisions about our lives it had no right to make, dividing us by blood color and calling it order. Edmund up there. Me down here. As if love cares about high and low. As if desire checks our Blood Rings before it burns.
I know I’m not the first. I know others have stood exactly where I am now and paid for it with their reputations, futures, and lives.
The thought makes my fists hit harder. Each punch carries the same reckless fire that rages through me whenever I think of Edmund. It started with his kindness, the way he can be as gentle as a horse nuzzling your hand unless provoked. Then it spread to his rougher side, the wild, fiery energy that got us off on the wrong foot when we first met on the Regal Express.
And now it’s reached his face. His body.
I’ve been attracted to men before. I had a crush on a slightly older Green at my fencing club when I was sixteen. But never like this. Seeing Edmund walk into a room is enough to set my heart pounding as if it’s trying to give me away. Looking isn’t enough anymore. I want to touch his hands, the thick,
dark hair that falls over his forehead, and feel his body pressed close to mine.
Most of all, I want to touch his face. I imagine tracing the hard curves and lines, feeling the warmth of his skin under my fingers.
Just thinking about it makes my self-control stagger.
I hit the bag harder and faster, my punches losing all rhythm as sweat stings my eyes. I swing long past sense or form, until the impacts blur and all that exists is noise and motion and the raw, violent need to do something with what’s inside me.
Finally, when my arms ache too much to lift, I peel off the boxing gloves and collapse onto a weight bench, wiping sweat from my face with a towel.
The training isn’t a release. I don’t want Edmund any less. I’m just exhausted, so spent that there’s barely any energy left to think about him.
So, I make a habit of it. Whenever resisting Edmund gets too difficult, and I reach the limit of my ability to be in the same room with him, I slip into the exercise room and punch the bag until my heart pounds harder from exhaustion than it does for him.
All the while, I remind myself that blue is the sky and green is the grass.
We exist together in the same world, but we are never meant to touch.
Aside from boxing, I spend much of the week exploring Edmund’s suite while we’re trapped there by the blizzard. It’s enormous, nearly as large as Waldsten Mansion. On my first day of wandering, an embroidered day robe loose at my waist, I discover that almost all the doors are sealed with biometric scanners. On the second day, the sauna and exercise room are left open. On the third day, I find an unlocked music room hidden behind what looks like an ordinary stretch of wall, where instruments rest in velvet cradles, most untouched except for an accordion that Jack plays only when Charlotte asks him. On the fourth day, I end up in the library, where old volumes still line the shelves. I stretch out on the windowsill and leaf through histories of the Shield War until my calves go numb.
At this point, I’m starting to wonder whether Edmund has seen me wandering and whether he’s the one leaving the rooms open. The thought is comforting, as though, for once, my curiosity is welcome. But the feeling only lasts until the fifth day, when my curiosity takes me a door too far.
It’s Saturday. The storm is finally beginning to break, but the wind still rattles the windows, their panes so thick with ice that the view of the Guillotine Yard is distorted. Charlotte is asleep in the salon, curled under her favorite fox-fur coat. Dickie, who’s still licking his wounds after the Orange girl turned him down for a date, disappears into the library to lose himself in Highball, an online card game he swears is more addictive than Bliss. Jack and Edmund are dueling in the fencing room, their styles so distinct that I can tell exactly whose blade strikes at every clash.
After boxing until my knuckles hurt, I wander across the north side of the suite, still sweaty and drinking heavily from my canteen. I pass the exercise room and the sculpture gallery, which also functions as a virtual-reality chamber, then down the west corridor, where the lights dim with each step.
And that’s where I find it: Edmund’s bedroom door, unlocked and ajar, with a beam of light slanting across the hall.
When I place my fingers on the handle, I can almost feel the suite gather itself and tense around me. I know I shouldn’t go in. Mom says prying leads to regret, if you’re lucky, and to ruin, if you’re not. Then another voice cuts through hers, insisting that if Edmund wanted to keep the room private, he
wouldn’t have left the door open.
So I step inside.
The room is blank, almost jarringly so, like Edmund walked through once, nodded at the walls, and let his Pinkies handle the rest. Dark wood panels rise to meet a vaulted ceiling, distant somehow, as if it’s forgotten how to echo sound. The velvet curtains hang half-parted, letting in a narrow wash of light that reveals nothing apart from how spotless the floor is. In the center, the canopy bed is made so tightly it looks embalmed. Along the walls, portraits peer out in stilted silence, the same kind of decorative filler you’d find in a jazz club. Despite the lavish furnishings, the room feels deeply impersonal… all except for a single detail.
In the far corner, on a raised platform, stands a life-size statue of Ernest Prew. The Hellion. And it’s much more than a slab of bronze.
The statue is dressed in Ernest’s uniform, though, apart from the badge and boots, it’s not the one he died in. There are no bullet holes in the tunic, so I surmise that most of the clothing came from another uniform Ernest wore during the Shield War, preserved and displayed down to the frayed seams.
I set my canteen down on the dresser and drift toward the statue, my eyes roaming over the scorched chrome of the helmet and the dull glint of the
epaulets still etched with the Vanguard crest. The tunic is torn, its slate-blue wool slashed clean across the ribs. The boots are still scarred with grit, hydraulic stains, and heat-burned leather, as if they were pulled off the day Ernest died and never cleaned.
The technology may be outdated, and the materials may be long retired, but not the presence inside. The statue is the only part of the room that feels alive. As I stare up at Ernest’s face, I see Edmund too—in the proud set of his forehead, in the carved lines of his jaw, in the way the statue stands, chest held high, as if it refuses to yield, even now. I’ve never seen a photo of Ernest when he was young, but I realize that Edmund shares more with him than a last name.
My gaze lowers to the badge I gave Edmund, pinned carefully to the tunic, and a stab of pain shoots through my chest. The badge shouldn’t be there. It belongs on the flight jacket Irene will hand over only if Edmund trades himself in exchange.
As I stare at the legacy of the man Edmund is trying so hard to redeem, the pain rises and spreads through my body like a familiar bruise. I know that kind of love, the kind you’re sure you’d give your life for. But the difference is that I’ve never been asked to prove it as Edmund has. I’ve never been forced to choose.
I reach out and brush the wings with a fingertip, then step back, telling myself it’s enough. I need to leave before— “You shouldn’t be in here, broad.”
I spin so fast my earrings lash against my neck.
Dickie watches me from the doorway, one eyebrow cocked high, like he’s caught me pocketing Edmund’s Blood Ring.
“I can tell,” Dickie says. “I should tell.”
I step toward him, hand extended. “Please don’t.”
“If I don’t, it’s gonna cost you. Big.”
“Seriously, Dickie?” I drop my hand. “You can’t keep one tiny secret?”
“Sure, I could. But as a wise man, I don’t waste my aces.” He leans in, his flame-orange hair flashing in the light. “Highball… you’re gonna play it with me. Twice a week. Until the end of the year.”
The tension slides off me like a wet towel. “That’s all?”
“Let’s see if you’re still saying that after you’ve played, broad.” Dickie jerks his thumb toward the hall. I grab my canteen from the dresser and follow him out.
“This room isn’t for snooping,” he mutters.
“I know.” Mom’s warning about prying is already ringing in my ears. “Do you think Edmund will notice?”
“Doubt it. But his broad will.” Dickie puffs out his chest as we walk, trying to match my height. “Every time she swings by, she combs through this place like a Copper at a crime scene. If there’s even a whisper of perfume in the air, she’ll catch it—and then she’ll beat Ed with it.”
I picture Irene overturning drawers and stripping the bedsheets, tearing the room apart in search of another woman’s scent. The image fits. She offered to spare my life on the off chance I might stumble onto whoever Edmund is cheating on her with. If he really has mistresses, I doubt he ever lets them near his bedroom.
Dickie veers left toward the fencing room, where the clang of graphene still echoes down the hall. Edmund and Jack have been training like war dogs for weeks. Come May, they’ll face off in the Mensur above the Luminescent Lake, with the entire first-year Blue and Green Fraternities watching.
Dickie walks through the door, but I don’t follow. I stay in the corridor and clutch my canteen to my chest, my heart kicking every time the blades ring out. Watching Jack fight is easy. Watching Edmund isn’t.
I missed it the first time, in the video of the duel in the Tangerine Tree.
But now that I’ve seen Edmund fence in person, up close, there’s no denying how familiar his style is.
His advances roll cleanly off the ball of his foot, while his retreats are timed with a deceptive delay to draw out a premature attack. His blade work is pure distance and control, beating in four to bait, then slipping the disengage into octave to land the touch. Rather than brute-forcing his way in, he builds the attack from a shift in tempo, lunging the instant his opponent’s
weight settles on the heel.
I’ve fenced this style before.
Charles Blackwell fought like that.
In the semifinal at the Junior Fencing World Championship, Charles cornered me again and again, cutting the piste in half as if it belonged to him.
He forced rushed parries from me, took the blade before I could even establish the line. I had to claw for every point, breaking rhythm and leaving openings I’d never normally risk. He nearly beat me.
Edmund is quicker and more reactive, with a much longer reach, but the resemblance is still there in the gliding footwork and ruthless efficiency. It
almost makes me wonder if they were trained by the same hand.
So I wait. Eyes closed, hands clamped over my ears, breath held through every strike behind the door.
Because if I watch, I won’t just see Edmund.
I’ll see the Blue who ruined everything.
I wait until the hiss of graphene sliding into scabbards fades before I enter the fencing room. The air is thick with sweat, and so warm that the ice melts from the windows into slushy streaks. Jack is draped over the sofa’s armrest like a used towel, chugging from a half-empty pitcher. Water spills down his chin, darkening the front of his training vest.
“I’m starting to figure out your inside line, Ed,” he says. “Always flirting with six, then cheating on her with octave.”
Edmund gives a short laugh. “Guess I’ll have to find a new girl, then.
Julian always said predictability will get you killed.”
Edmund grabs a towel and wipes sweat from his body. It streams down his face and shoulders, running in rivulets along his collarbones before soaking into his long-sleeved, padded training suit. His chest rises and falls with heaving breaths, slower than Jack’s but deeper.
The sight of him, slick and panting, makes me wish the room were cooler.
But I’m soon distracted by the fact that his skin is unmarked. There isn’t a single scar. Most fencers, especially those with his level of experience, keep an honor scar to commemorate the duel they consider most worthy.
Jack notices me and tips his head back with a wink, his lip split and bleeding where Edmund’s blade must’ve nicked him. Edmund notices me a moment later as he tosses the towel onto the sofa. He straightens quickly, and a bright smile breaks through the sweat, as if he’s been waiting for me all morning.
I return the smile, meaning only to keep it polite. But I’m too happy to see him, and my smile stretches until it betrays more than I intend.
Jack offers the pitcher of water to Edmund, but Edmund steps closer to me instead and nods at the canteen in my hand.
“You mind?”
“Sure.” I pass the canteen over.
His gaze catches on the daffodil charm hanging from the cap before he unscrews it and drinks deeply. When he hands the canteen back, he looks directly into my eyes, and his finger slowly brushes my hand, from my thumb to my pinky.
My heart races, heat flaring across my skin. Before I can stop myself, I slide my nail lightly along his knuckles. His breath stutters. He flexes that hand as he pulls away.
The moment is brief, probably invisible to Jack and Dickie. Yet I feel locked inside it, pinned by the intensity of Edmund’s attention, his gaze holding me so steadily that I wonder if he’s imagining my lips on his as vividly as I’m imagining his on mine.
“Thank you,” he says, wiping water from his chin.
“You’re welcome.” I clench the canteen to ground myself, because all I can think about is sipping from it, my mouth touching the same part of the rim where his did.
Edmund steps away, flexing his hand again as he moves to the corner. He pulls his suit jacket from the bench and slips out his Altimor watch. He checks the time once, then again, as if counting seconds.
I get the sense he’s waiting for someone. If it were Irene, he would’ve warned us. He always does.
Jack stands, pushes back his sweaty hair, and tosses me a grin. “You up for a spar, darling?”
I keep my tone casual as I sink onto the sofa. “Trust me, it would be quick and boring. I don’t fence.”
“Ha,” Dickie pipes up from the corner, where he’s elbow-deep in a cabinet of gear. “The devil, you don’t.”
I glance over, still calm, but my pulse kicks up a notch. “How would you know?”
“The same way I know Lady Charlotte couldn’t duel a fly in a web, and I’ve never seen her handle a saber. It’s in the way you move, just like Ed and Jack.” Dickie stops rummaging and faces me, a slow, smug grin creeping across his face. “Not wanting to be seen doesn’t make you hard to read, broad.”
My fingers tighten on the armrest, only slightly, but Dickie notices. I drop my hand, realizing those beady eyes—usually preoccupied with food and video games—see everything, especially what I’d rather keep hidden.
“I used to fence,” I admit. “But not anymore.”
Edmund and Jack turn in sync, with the same slight tilt of their heads.
Until now, they believed I’d never touched a saber, and I can feel them rewinding the tape, searching for the frame Dickie caught at first glance.
Edmund slips the Altimor into his pocket with a frown. “Why’d you tell me you don’t fence?”
Shit. I’d completely forgotten I’d lied to his face, saying I never learned because I didn’t like fencing. It’s one of the many lies I’ve stacked so high I can’t always remember which are buried in the pile.
I sit up a little straighter, though every muscle wants to curl in. I had a script prepared in case I ever needed to explain that I used to fence and why I no longer do. Charlotte helped me write it. But the script is another lie, and not a small one. It’s a complete rewrite of the truth. And now that I’m sitting in front of Edmund, Jack, and Dickie, all eyes on me, I don’t know if I have the guts to tell another lie.
None of them is looking at me like they want a story, a Tattletale-worthy scrap of gossip to pass around later. They’re watching me the way you watch someone cross a frozen lake, quiet and tense, bracing for the sound of a break.
“Well…” Dickie drawls, dragging the word out. “We’re waiting.”
The truth presses against my teeth. I want to let it out and finally stop hiding behind the helpless face I’ve learned to wear. I’m tired of the stagecraft, of constantly measuring my words before I speak. More importantly, Edmund, Jack, and Dickie have become more than just blood colors I’m forced to share my days with. I care about them. All of them.
I don’t want to lie to them anymore.
But I can’t tell him the truth, either.
So I reach for both.
“I’m sorry for lying, Edmund,” I say. “I didn’t know you back then, and I was embarrassed.”
His frown softens, though he doesn’t speak.
“I used to be good at fencing,” I continue. “But I had a temper, especially when I lost. It got so bad that I flamed out in a quarterfinal. I walked off the piste mid-match and made a whole scene. After that, I was too ashamed to go back, so I quit.”
Jack clears his throat and shoots a look at Edmund, who’s staring at the scar on my chin as if realizing he was right about it being my honor scar. For once, Dickie doesn’t laugh.
I sit there, calm on the surface.
But inside, everything goes numb.
I didn’t lie. Not fully. That first year, I burned too hot, too fast. And I did walk out of that quarterfinal duel. But what I didn’t mention is that Dad followed me. And he wasn’t gentle. He didn’t put a hand on my shoulder or soothe me with gentle words. He shoved the saber back into my hands and said Waldstens don’t quit and that he’d rather raise a loser than a coward.
“You don’t have to win to earn respect, Loredana,” he told me. “You just have to finish.” Then he added that if I didn’t get back out on the piste, he’d force me to take hoverboard ballet instead.
So I did. And I never regretted it.
Until now.
Jack steps closer, rubbing a hand along the side of his neck. “So, you’re
another William Lee, huh?”
“You could say that.”
“I can help,” he says, then lifts a hand as if he doesn’t want to overstep.
“If you want.”
I nod and shove down my guilt. “Thank you, Jack.”
Across the room, Dickie fidgets with his bowtie, his usual swagger dimmed. “Sorry, broad,” he says. “Didn’t mean to put you on the spot like that.”
“It’s all right, Dickie,” I assure him, but my voice feels distant, as if it’s echoing from another room.
I glance at Edmund. He’s by the gear cabinet, rummaging until he pulls a small box from behind a stack of chest guards. He checks inside, then walks back and presses it into my hand with a smile that makes it painfully clear he’s already forgiven me.
“Don’t quit,” he says. “And don’t be embarrassed. I once bit halfway through another fencer’s finger after he flipped me off.”
I force a small, stinging smile, but I don’t open the box. The weight of it feels wrong in my palm, too generous for something built on a half-truth. For a moment, I wish they’d laughed at me and mocked me until I was driven off in shame. That would’ve been easier than this.
“Thank you, Edmund,” I say quietly, hoping the words are enough to make him turn away.
Instead, he leans in, close enough that I catch the musk of his sweat.
“You’re missing an earring.”
My fingers fly to my left ear. He’s right. Normally, I wouldn’t be bothered, but it was one of the teardrop diamonds Vivian gave me for my birthday last year. My mind retraces the day, through every room I entered and every hallway I walked. I’ve been pacing his suite like a ghost for hours.
Edmund checks the time on his Altimor again, then glances at Jack, who’s staring eagerly at a half-empty bottle of whiskey on the shelf as if it’s flirting
with him.
“One more?”
Jack blinks, snapping out of his daze. “Yeah. Sure.”
I slip to the edge of the room and watch anxiously as Edmund and Jack walk onto the piste. They offer each other a clean salute—blade to face, then down—before Edmund switches the saber from his right hand to his left.
They drop into stance, shoulders angled, lead knees bent, and rear heels grounded. Jack takes a high line, sixth or close to it, his blade tilted above his shoulder. Edmund lowers his guard and teases an opening down the middle.
He always does this, always invites the first move, turning the aggression to his advantage.
I brace, telling myself I can watch and that the duel will be nothing compared to the blood-drenched dreams of Charles. But at the same time, I can feel Charles’s ghost groaning beneath Edmund’s boots like a fuse waiting to ignite.
Then, just as Jack feints high and Edmund lunges to take the opening, the buzz of my Bond vibrates against my temples. I glance at the caller ID, already expecting Vivian’s name to appear. It’s usually her these days, calling to thank me again for Coquette. Vivian never forgets what you give
her.
But it isn’t her.
It’s Hillaire.
She’s the only person in my family who never calls first and avoids conversation as if it prematurely ages her. Which means whatever she has to say can’t wait.
