Though the guillotine waits to claim my head, its blade shall fall as a mercy—a kindness I shall welcome with open, trembling arms. For, to live among one’s fellow creatures bearing such disgrace, branded by dishonor so absolute, is a fate far crueler than death.
—CONVICTED FORMAL AGREEMENT BREAKER, NAME STRICKEN FROM RECORD
CHAPTER 44
DAY ONE: I surface in the Belvoir Infirmary. Overhead, white lights blur into halos, and through the haze, I see my legs wrapped in cold, heavy gel. Charlotte leans over me, her hand pressed to my forehead, her face twisted with worry.
“D-Don’t let them tell my parents, Char,” I rasp.
Her mouth hardens, as if she thinks it’s a bad idea, but she nods. “I won’t, Lore.”
My eyes drift groggily, catching the gleam of marble floors and brass panels. I’m in the high-citizen wing of the hospital, far beyond what my monthly allowance can cover. “I—I can’t afford this.”
“Don’t worry.” Charlotte’s fingers stroke my temple soothingly.
“Edmund, Jack, and Dickie are paying for it.”
She pulls back as a Pinkie steps in and adjusts a node at my temple.
“Stabilization underway,” the robot drones.
I fall back under.
DAY TWO: I feel an itch beneath my skin, as if something is moving where it shouldn’t. When I force my eyes open, weak and dizzy, I see my right leg sealed in clear gel, while the left is wrapped in a scaffold of glowing lines.
My Bond tracks every stage of the process. I try to speak, but my tongue slurs the words. My eyelids slip shut again, too heavy to lift.
Somewhere nearby, I catch a faint scent of daffodils. Vincent’s voice reaches me first, saying that Dickie and I are two of only five people to have survived falling into the Luminescent Lake without a Rippletone, and that he’s rooting for me. Then William speaks more softly, admitting he lost twenty civil credits and that he’s sorry.
Everything fades.
DAY THREE: I wake to a deep, stretching sensation in my thigh, as if something is being built beneath the surface. When I look down, I see new muscle fibers forming, fragile threads climbing along the scaffold of my left leg.
At the foot of the bed, Harrison and a Grandmaster liaison officer watch me. Harrison twists his cap, folding and unfolding the brim as if trying to steady himself.
“Miss Waldsten,” the liaison officer says, “Grandmaster University requires formal consent before contacting your family. Would you like us to inform your parents of the incident?”
“Miss Waldsten is not currently in a condition to authorize external communication,” the Pinkie surgeon interjects.
“I think your parents deserve to know,” Harrison says. “Loredana, let me call your father.”
“No.” I try to sit up, but pain tears through me, dropping me back against the bed with a gasp. “Harry, please. Don’t tell them.”
The Pinkie steps past them and checks my vitals, its fingers tapping through my chart. “Twenty-three percent,” the robot mutters.
I black out before I can ask: twenty-three percent of what?
DAY FOUR: Edmund is at the door when I open my eyes. He’s rubbing his neck, his face worn at the edges, as if he’s been sitting beside me for hours. I try to call out, but no sound comes. He disappears down the hall.
A groan escapes me as heat rushes through my legs. My right leg is whole, but the left is still rebuilding, thickening with layers of new tissue beneath a glowing mesh.
“Vascular flow restored,” a Pinkie says nearby.
My toes spasm. Then I go still.
DAY FIVE:
Dickie’s voice startles me awake. I turn and realize for the first time that he’s been in the bed next to mine all along, separated only by a partial wall.
The Pinkie surgeon tells him he’s cleared for discharge, but Dickie insists he’s still unwell and unfit to return to lectures. Then, as he shouts for a hospital food attendant, something moves.
It’s my left leg. The shape is back, swollen and still healing, but real. I see it. I feel it. And then I feel nothing.
DAY SIX: I wake to fire. Nerve pain lances through my leg so sharply it tears a gasp from my throat. A visor presses over my eyes, blocking light and muffling sound. I try to move, but the pain cuts deeper, and my body shudders.
A needle slips into my arm. My Bond pulses behind my temples, flaring red, then fading. Somewhere nearby, a mechanical voice speaks.
“Scar suppression at seventy percent.”
“Stop. Please.” The words scrape out weakly. The pain is too much.
Then a warm, steady hand folds over mine. I recognize the shape, the weight, and the gentle pressure of its thumb as it brushes the inside of my wrist.
“It’s all right, Loredana,” Edmund says, his voice slightly hoarse. “I’ve got you.”
My muscles relax. My breathing evens. The pain doesn’t disappear, but it recedes, pushed back by his presence. I hold on to his hand until the sedative pulls me under again.
DAY SEVEN: There’s no pain when I wake, only a strange weightlessness, as if my body is drifting above the bed. I lift my head slowly, careful not to disturb the nodes at my temples. Both legs are there. The right is fully healed beneath a film of gel, while the left is bound from hip to ankle in medic-grade weave.
When I focus and will my left foot to move, it obeys.
The sedative feels lighter today, clearing some of the haze. I’m alert enough to see the glow of my Bond interface hovering in my vision, showing several messages and missed calls from my parents. They’re worried but not panicked, which means they don’t know about the piranha attack. Harrison didn’t tell.
I reply simply: “I’m all right. Just busy. Exams are coming up.”
As I close the inbox, my vision starts to blur again. It lasts long enough to
catch a blinking alert in the corner of my Bond screen, five days old.
Death duel challenge between Miss Loredana Waldsten and Miss Irene Hussey: pending. Activation deferred until trial proceedings conclude.
I sink back into the pillow, meaning only to rest for a moment, but sleep takes me. I don’t wake up again.
The Pinkies stop administering the sedative, so when I wake the next morning, I’m fully alert. Still, I keep my eyes closed.
Dickie’s voice drifts from beside my bed. It’s quiet, stripped of jokes, and that alone tells me something’s off. He’s carrying on a whole conversation with me, exchanging words as if I’m responding.
“…anyway, yeah, you saved me. Big time. Real full-brass stuff.” The mattress dips by my elbow as he leans closer. “And since you’re begging me like that, fine. I’ll say it. We’re friends. Not like I’ve got any more than Ed, Jack, and Lady Charlotte, but still.” He sniffles, then clears his throat. “You didn’t let me go under, Loredana, and… well, I think my folks would’ve liked you.”
Dickie’s hand finds mine. It’s warm and clammy, as if he washed it but forgot the towel. He kisses my fingers lightly, then lets go.
“All right. I gotta scram now. Pinkies say I’m fully upright, so I’m getting the boot. Forceful discharge, or whatever. Exams are tomorrow, you know.
Hope you wake up before then.”
The urge to open my eyes grows stronger, but I hold back. I know that if I do, Dickie will either backpedal or crack a joke, pretending none of it happened. And I want to keep the moment exactly as it is.
So I wait, motionless, as his footsteps fade down the hallway. The buzz of something mechanical follows him out, a sound familiar enough to make my
eyes snap open.
Dickie’s airplane.
He got it back? But how?
My fingers scrunch the bedsheets as my thoughts jump to Dad’s daffodil brooch. It’s probably lost at the bottom of the Luminescent Lake. Dickie’s plane floats, while mine would’ve sunk straight down. Gone. Maybe forever.
I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to push the thought away, when the door
swings open and Charlotte enters, carrying a full load: digital photographs, fresh clothes, the Florence Engine, and small knick-knacks from my suite.
When she sees me, her grip tightens on the bundle, as if in shock. Then, slowly, her expression softens, and a trembling smile climbs through it like
sunlight.
“Lore…” she breathes. “You’re awake.”
“J-Just for a few m-minutes,” I rasp. My throat is raw, my mouth too numb from meds to form clear words.
She sets everything down on the sofa near the door and moves toward me slowly and cautiously, as if afraid she might hurt me by getting too close. Her hands hover for a moment before she leans in and finally touches me. Her arms wrap around my shoulders, barely making contact at first. I can feel her restraint, the way her whole body wants to crush me in relief but won’t.
“I m-missed you, Char,” I whisper, laying my head against her.
She pulls back to look at me, her eyes fluttering with tears. “I missed you too. Every fucking minute. We didn’t know if you could hear us, but we came. All of us. At least for as long as the Pinkies allowed. Visitors only get eight hours a day, so we started doing shifts.”
“I-Is Edmund coming today?”
“He was already here, as long as he could be.” Charlotte swipes at her eyes with the edge of her sleeve and nods toward the clock, which reads 2:00 p.m.
I sink into the pillow, wishing I’d woken earlier.
“Edmund said that Sergeant What’s-His-Name from the yacht stopped by
while he was here,” she adds.
“What for?”
“The sergeant wanted to know if you were awake. Asked if you’re pressing charges against Irene. Again.”
I twist the sheets between my fingers as I consider what such a trial would entail. Of course, I want to press charges again, but if I do, Edmund’s and my relationship won’t stay private. Irene will expose it and parade it through Grandmaster, twisting the truth with rumors and gossip. If that’s not enough, she might even leak the story to the press herself. Evidence wouldn’t matter much; an accusation alone would be enough to damage my reputation and my family’s honor.
I decide it’s better to wait and focus on the Speakeasy trial, the one charge unrelated to Edmund. If Irene is convicted there, she’ll be arrested and
executed, and she’ll no longer be able to hang Edmund’s grandfather’s flight jacket over his head like a noose.
“I want to,” I say. “But I’m going to focus on getting better first.”
Charlotte slides onto the bed next to me and pulls the covers over her legs, as if we’re back in my room at home, before all this. Just the two of us, shoulder to shoulder, binge-watching bad soap operas and tearing them apart line by line.
“The last week’s been a shitshow,” she says, sniffing. “You missed a lot.”
“Like w-what?”
“Well, for starters, Edmund called off his engagement to Irene.”
A breath slips into me, so shallow it barely counts. Then another comes, sharper, like a gasp, and something deep inside me—knotted so tightly I’d long since stopped trying to loosen it—finally unravels. I feel the relief in my stomach, in my throat, in the way my jaw unlocks effortlessly. Then the rush hits, a slow, spreading warmth blooming from my chest to my face. I can’t stop it. I don’t even try. My eyes sting, not from pain but from the unbearable release of a pressure I never dared hope would lift.
I turn away, but it’s already too late. Charlotte has seen everything.
“Lore…” she says softly, laying a hand over mine. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. I just—” My voice breaks. “When did he call it off?”
“On the yacht, while we were loading into the helicopter. Turns out there was a clause in their formal agreement. Irene wasn’t allowed to hurt Jack or Dickie. And when she almost got Dickie killed, that was it. Edmund ended it right there.”
I remember how Irene’s face went pale while Edmund was shouting at her on the deck of the yacht, like the air had been punched out of her. Now I
know why.
“So… Edmund’s f-free?”
Charlotte chews her lip. “Well, not exactly. Edmund says Irene broke their agreement and is filing a formal breach-of-contract claim. But Irene says she never meant to hurt Dickie, so she’s contesting it.”
Irene has no choice. If a charge like that sticks, it will affect more than just her. The Husseys would lose it all, their name, influence, and legacy. There’s no crawling back from dishonor like that, not even for Blues.
“Irene’s taking it to the courts,” Charlotte says. “All the way.”
I pause, my throat raw, and force the words out. “D-Do you think E- Edmund will win?”
“I don’t know. But it doesn’t really matter. Irene’s gonna get nailed for trying to kill you the first time.”
I push myself upright, and pain twinges through my leg. “H-How are you s-so sure?”
Charlotte frowns, confused at first. Then her eyes widen. “Oh, shit. You
don’t know, do you?”
“K-Know what?”
“It’s why we were so distracted on the yacht, Lore. Why we didn’t notice Irene sneak above deck to attack you. Because the verdict came in.”
I freeze as I read the fragile hope on her face. “The Blues were convicted?”
“Yes. And the execution…” She swallows. “It’s tonight.”
I spend the hours before the Blues’ execution getting fitted with a leg brace.
Like it or not, I have to go to the first-year Lecture Hall tomorrow morning to take my exams. If I miss them, I’ll lose credit for every course and be forced to repeat the entire year.
While I sit on the edge of my bed, with two Pinkies fastening the brace over my leg, I think about the way Edmund dove into the lake without a second’s hesitation, risking himself for Dickie. For me. He’s already used up his visitor hours for the day, so I haven’t told him I’m awake. But it’s hard to wait until tomorrow, and to recall the feeling of his hands when he’s not here to touch me for real.
The leg brace is padded but still uncomfortable, combining stabilization and regenerative technology. The system syncs with my Bond and sends real- time data to the Pinkies. It helps me walk. It heals me as I move. Still, the Pinkies say that once I finish my exams, I need to return to Belvoir Infirmary for three more days.
By late afternoon, my voice begins to come back. It’s still hoarse, but I can now form complete sentences. Charlotte and I spend a few hours studying for tomorrow’s exams, our Bonds connected as we sit in the corner of my hospital room. We try anything to keep our minds busy, anything to distract ourselves from the looming execution.
Still, no matter how hard I try to focus, the execution hangs over me like a
corpse from the ceiling fan. I keep preparing for something to interrupt it: a legal delay, a jurisdictional challenge, a solar flare, a comet. Something will come screaming in at the last second and wipe it all off the board.
Because in the Civilized World, there is no justice. Not when it’s the Blues on the chopping block.
And yet the hours slip by, the minutes, the seconds. Time continues pulling us toward it until, eventually, the lights in the hospital room dim and the holographic television screen floating in front of the wall powers on.
Charlotte and I sit together on the edge of the bed, wrapped in a heavy,
nauseating silence.
Today is Sunday. Bloody Sunday.
But it doesn’t feel like it.
There’s no live orchestra, no Benjamin Bogart hosting in a velvet suit, no fireworks trailing sparks across the sky. Instead of a real executioner, two Pinkies stand motionless at the center of the execution platform. The robots are modified for this task alone and will be decommissioned and destroyed afterward. President Reeve doesn’t want martyrs on either side.
The broadcast drones glide across the platform, where two guillotines stand side by side beneath a pale wash of light. The curved blades catch reflections from the surrounding amphitheater, tossing back fractured shards of wide-eyed faces.
Businessmen. Politicians. Celebrities. Heads of syndicates. All of them are seated, dressed in their finest, yet their glamour is dulled by dread. No one claps or cheers. Not even a whisper disturbs the air. Everyone sits frozen, as if unsure which expression is safest, because no one thought this day would come: that a Blue, let alone two, would stand trial, that the high-citizens would be held accountable, that the blade, for once, might tilt upward.
The entire Civilized World watches now, waiting to see whether justice appears with a painted smile or, tonight, finally reveals its true face.
The camera pans to the Green level. I sit up taller on the bed, breath catching as I spot my parents in the front row. Mom grips her chair with one hand and tugs at her pearl earring with the other. Dad leans in close, whispering something that makes her release the earring and lace her fingers with his instead. He smiles at her encouragingly, then lifts his gaze off- camera, high enough for me to know exactly where.
He’s looking at President Reeve.
Dad swallows once, yet in that motion I see the weight of decades, the
stubborn, unwavering faith of a man who believes that, despite how rotten our world is, there’s still enough good to make it worth fighting for. And tonight, all of Dad’s hope, every last piece of it, rests on Reeve.
The two Blues who tried to assassinate the president are led out unshackled, each flanked by a dozen Coppers. Their skin is pale, but their faces are dry, free of sweat and tears. They walk without resistance, eyes scanning the amphitheater as if still waiting for the hand that was promised, the one meant to pull them from the fire. These two Blues weren’t acting alone. Everyone knows it. They were hired to kill Reeve, given orders by even higher Blues, and promised protection.
Now, they’re wondering where it is.
Still, even in their final, quiet panic, neither gives up a name. Like Hillaire always says, Blues don’t break. They stick together, even to the bloody end.
At the guillotine, both men are asked for their final words.
“I will die on my feet,” says the first.
The second man doesn’t speak. He lifts his hand in a two-finger salute toward Reeve, then slowly lowers the index finger, leaving the middle finger
raised.
The cameras cut to Reeve’s reaction.
He stands alone at the railing on the fourth level, nearly seven feet of quiet authority, his face lit by the spotlights like a newborn sun. Beside him, a live double-headed eagle lets out a shrill, keening cry as it ruffles its dark wings on its perch. Reeve rests one hand on the railing and slowly lowers his gaze to the Blue. Reeve’s expression is calm, yet it burns with a resolve deeper than hatred, stronger than vengeance. Tonight, his eyes reveal a man who’s already seen the end of the abyss and will not look away.
The feed shifts to the execution platform, where the two Blues now stand before the guillotines. Their heads and wrists are locked in the lunette, yet both still stand, still proud.
Two Pinkies approach, one to each guillotine, and hold their hands over the release levers.
All at once, the amphitheater rises in a single, soundless wave. Blue, Green, Orange, Purple—every level stands. And so do Charlotte and I. Off the bed, hand in hand, we stare at the screen, our hearts clutched tight.
The cameras refocus on Reeve as they wait for his signal. He pauses, fingers curling lightly on the railing, and for the briefest moment, the sadness I so often see in him breaks through. A flicker of pain crosses his face,
revealing a grief that looks as old as it is deep, a longing for peace just beyond reach. And he seems to see it down there, not in the Blues but in the
place they’re going.
Reeve nods.
And the blades fall.
The feed pulls back so quickly it stutters, as if the moment is too blistering to hold. The Pinkies turn away from the guillotines, and as they walk to the edge of the platform, one leaves footprints of blood. The smear is impossible to miss, stark against the pale marble, a trail the whole Civilized World sees.
For the first time in history, justice runs blue.
And forward.
Into the unknown.
