I’ve seen many tragedies in my life, but none as devastating as the fall of a man who is good, who strives valiantly, and who, when he can bear no more, stumbles beneath the weight of his burdens and yields to defeat.
RAFE HARDY, CHIEF OF PRESIDENTIAL SECURITY
CHAPTER 57
Charlotte and I are halfway across the Green Dormitory parking garage when the reality of Harrison’s arrest catches up with me. My knees buckle, wobbling for an instant, before I straighten and press on. I should’ve expected the Blues to demand his head. Even though Harrison ordered the Greens to stand down and charged the Blues alone, the Coppers will still likely charge him with insurrection. They’ll pin every ounce of blood on him, drop a guillotine blade on his neck, and call it justice.
By the time I slide into the hovercar, Charlotte is already in the passenger seat, shouting for me to drive. I’m shaking so hard that I fumble the startup twice before she shoves my hand aside and does it herself. The power core drones as we lift out of the garage, and the sudden acceleration slams us back into our seats. Charlotte grabs my belt and yanks it across my chest, snapping it into place.
“Track Harrison Somerset,” she orders the hovercar’s AI assistant, already tapping the holographic dashboard to pull up the live Grandmaster University map.
The map shows that Harrison is logged out.
My hands loosen around the control stick as I realize I don’t even know where I’m headed. I’m just carving a random, vicious line through the empty campus’s aerial lanes.
Charlotte grabs my wrist mid-turn. “Lore—stop. We need a plan. Who would know where they’re taking Harry?”
I hesitate, wiping sweat from my neck as I run through every name I
know. One comes to mind from so long ago I almost forgot he existed: Sergeant Croft. The Copper I met in the Speakeasy, the one who returned my shield after I lent it to him when most others would’ve hawked it on the black market.
I open my Bond contacts, select Croft’s name, and connect him through the dashboard speaker so Charlotte can hear. He answers on the third ring,
confusion clear in his voice.
“Hello?”
“Arthur. It’s Loredana.”
A brief pause. Then, “Miss Waldsten? I shouldn’t be talking on duty—”
“Harrison Somerset. They arrested him. He’s my sister’s fiancé. Do you know where they’re holding him? Please, Arthur—”
The silence on the other end turns my stomach. I hear Croft breathing, along with the background hum of Copper comms and the clack of boots on concrete.
Finally, he lowers his voice. “I’m about to clock out. Meet me in ten.
West entrance of Headquarters.”
I tear southeast across campus, shoot past a yellow light, and run straight through a red. Charlotte braces herself with one hand on the dashboard, fear visible on her face, but urges me faster.
With most students still shaken by last night’s terror, the streets are nearly deserted, but one hovercar stays close behind, fishtailing through every turn as if determined to keep pace. I don’t bother checking who it is. I push the throttle harder, then descend into the west parking lot of the Copper Headquarters.
Croft is waiting by the curb, out of uniform. He’s dressed in a dark purple suit, collar open at the throat, fatigue carved into the pretty bones of his face.
One look at his shell-shocked eyes tells me he was part of the Copper response to the Ranger attack.
I roll the window down and wave him over. Without a word, he slides in.
When he spots Charlotte, he shifts uneasily, as if her being here is more than he agreed to.
She narrows her eyes. “Don’t worry. I’m Lore’s friend. We met in the Speakeasy. You stepped on my foot.”
Croft nods as if he half-remembers, then speaks to me. “Somerset. They brought him in about two hours ago. He hasn’t been transferred.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means he’s not headed for the Pearl Penitentiary or the guillotine. Not yet anyway.”
“Why would they keep him here?” Charlotte cuts in.
“If they’re holding him in-house, it usually means they’re offering a deal.”
“What kind of deal?” I ask.
Croft rubs his jaw, looking grim. “Above my clearance. But it won’t be pretty. Not if the Coats are working it.”
“The Brasscoats?”
He nods, then clocks the street as if he half-expects one of them to be watching us.
I try to steady myself as my fear hardens into rage. “Thank you, Arthur.” I clutch his hand too tightly. “Truly. Thank you.”
His fingers curl beneath mine, and a flush climbs his neck. Then he straightens, regaining composure as if he’s still in uniform. “I’ll be stationed here next year, too. If you need anything, call. I’ll be around.”
Croft dips his chin once at me, once at Charlotte, then slides out.
By the time the door clicks shut, I’m already dialing Jerome’s number.
The call goes straight to voicemail, so I send a text: “My Grandmaster, Harrison Somerset, was arrested. Do you know anything about it?”
He responds so quickly that I half expect the text’s speed to burn my screen. “Classified, sweetheart.”
I drop my forehead onto the control stick, fighting the sting in my eyes.
“Professor, please. He’s my sister’s fiancé.”
“Ah, so tragic taste in men is genetic. Have you considered breeding it
out?”
“Jerome, I’m begging you.”
This time, he goes quiet for a full, agonizing minute. Then, at last: “Don’t know the details, Waldsten. He’s not with my division. The H-1 Coats handle high-risk citizens—insurrectionists, conspirators, the big charges. Rough bastards. They’ll give him a deal he can’t live with or a blade he can’t dodge. If he’s smart, he’ll take the blade. Sorry, kid.”
I stare at the message until the letters blur. Beside me, Charlotte seems frozen, so still I wonder if she’s breathing at all. “Lore.” She points out the windshield. “It’s Harry.”
I twist around as he steps through the west entrance. He’s alone, but the lack of an escort only shows how confident the Brasscoats are that he won’t
try to run. His Fraternity jacket hangs off one shoulder, torn along the seam.
One sleeve is dark with blood from the injury I saw at the Luminescent Lake, and a fresh bruise is blooming under his jaw, crawling into his hairline. He’s clutching his Fraternity cap so tightly it’s nearly bent in half.
Charlotte touches my arm. “Lore, I’m gonna take a walk.”
“No, Char—”
“Not for you. For him. Harry won’t want me here.”
Before I can argue further, she pulls me into a hug that’s tense, almost desperate. “I love you,” she says. Then she releases me, steps out of the hovercar, and hurries off in the opposite direction from Harrison.
He walks down the sidewalk like a door hanging off one hinge in a windstorm. When his gaze lifts to mine through the windshield, his eyes carry a scraped-out emptiness, the look of a man too broken to carry his own grief.
I wait until he reaches my window before lowering it. He stops and stares at my face for a moment, as if needing to convince himself it’s real, then walks around the front of the hovercar and sits in the passenger seat.
I grab his hand and flinch at how cold he feels, even as sweat beads at his temples.
“Harry… talk to me. What did they do to you?”
He avoids my gaze, unblinking, his hand limp in mine.
“I took a deal,” he says flatly. “I can’t go home. I have to spend the summer in civil rehabilitation. Charleston City.”
“What? But Harry, the wedding. Vivian—”
His shoulders quiver, then tighten like cables straining to hold. “The wedding has to be postponed. I’ll tell Viv myself.”
A sudden choke escapes my throat. “And the charges? Are they being
dropped?”
“Only if I pass.”
“Pass? Pass what?”
Harrison’s eyes drop to the Fraternity cap in his lap, and I realize it’s not his. From the small tear in the green-and-black band, I know it’s Vincent’s.
He runs a thumb over the visor, his hands trembling so badly he almost drops it. Then, with a reverence that feels like mourning, he places the cap on the console between us, as if he no longer feels worthy to touch it.
“Harry, please. Let me call my dad. We’ll fight this—”
He shakes his head once, then again, more forcefully. “No, Loredana. It’s
done. I took the deal and… I chose my hard.”
He reaches for the door handle, but I grab his sleeve, too desperate to let him go. “Harry, don’t—”
He turns back, and when I see his expression, I slowly release his arm.
There’s nothing left in his eyes. No hope or fight, only despair wearing the face of one of the best men I know.
Harrison steps out and shuts the door. I watch him go, shoulders drawn inward, boots scuffing the concrete, his head bowed as if raising it were something only the man he was yesterday could manage. Inside me, something breaks, then breaks again. Whatever path he’s on now, I suddenly get a terrifying sense that it’s no longer leading toward my family.
Not even toward Vivian.
I can barely see past the black spots swimming in my vision as I speed around the Copper Headquarters, scanning every sidewalk for Charlotte. My chest seems to collapse in on itself with worry for Harrison and for Vivian as well.
She’s already waited nine long months to see him. She’s counted down every day, every hour, to see his face. Now she won’t see him at all during summer break. When September arrives, he’ll come straight back here, bound to this machine that grinds up low-citizens whole. She’ll be locked out for another year, waiting by the phone for the man who didn’t come home.
I slam the heel of my palm against the control stick, cursing. In the rearview, I catch sight of that hovercar again, the same one that followed Charlotte and me to the Copper Headquarters. I swerve and hit the brakes so hard my seatbelt bites into my collarbone. The hovercar fishtails, then jerks to a stop, floating alongside me. Behind the control stick is William Lee, his head ducked as if trying to disappear behind the dashboard.
The rage I feel over Harrison’s sentence and Vivian’s loss narrows, focusing squarely on him: William Lee, who tripped on his own reckless pride until it cost his brother his life; whose fatal error forced Harrison to draw his saber against the Blues, unwittingly leading the Greens into a charge we couldn’t win; who lit the spark that dragged us all to this cliff’s edge, where good men fall and nothing catches them.
For one terrible instant, I want to kill William. I want to tear him out of that hovercar with my bare hands and scream every drop of my pain into his face. My fingers twitch toward the door handle, then freeze. I know this is how the high-citizens break us, by turning low-citizens on each other, feeding us crumbs of blame so we never dare lift our eyes to the banquet of rot above our heads.
No more wasted hate. Not on low-citizens. Not on William.
I slam my foot down. The power core screams, the hoverfield shuddering as I rocket away, leaving William staring after me like a ghost.
I keep circling the Copper Headquarters, searching for Charlotte, but there’s no sign of her. She doesn’t answer my calls, and my texts go unanswered. It’s unlike her to disappear, especially after what just happened to Harrison. I roll down the window, letting the breeze cool the sweat on my neck. As my eyes fall to Vincent’s cap on the console, I notice something strange. Next to the cap is Charlotte’s emerald-studded lighter, the one her mom gave her, which she never goes anywhere without. Could she have left it by accident? I think back to the hug she gave me, too tight and desperate, and a low groan rips out of me.
I pull up the live Grandmaster map on the dashboard. Charlotte is logged in, her avatar racing across campus like a bat out of hell, far too fast to be on foot. I zoom out and see she’s headed toward the beach.
My hand stiffens on the thrust lever as I replay our conversation from yesterday: how she said she was done waiting for someone to save her, that she had to save herself, and that if it all went to hell, she’d find a way to take the spider down with her. I don’t want to accept what these words might mean, but I still punch Rosamund’s name into the map. Her avatar appears on
the beach.
That’s when I know.
I slam my foot down hard enough to rock the frame. The hovercar surges left into an aerial lane, taking the fastest route to the beach. A Copper cruiser jolts to life at the curb behind me, its siren howling, but I only drive faster. I blow through a red light, forcing a passing hovercar to veer off course, its horn shrieking in protest. My civil credits are ticking down like water swirling down a drain, but I barely spare the counter a glance. The Copper tailing me is caught at the red light, swallowed by a cross-stream of traffic. I check the Grandmaster map for Edmund, Jack, and Dickie—hoping they’re at the beach, hoping they see Charlotte first and stop her—but all three are
logged out.
Hold on, Char. Please. I’m coming.
Minutes later, I reach the beach, kicking up a cloud of sand as I slam the hovercar to a stop at the curb. The crowd on the shore is a motionless line of bodies, all facing the energy shield, where hundreds of AI patrol jets swarm the edge like a pale shroud, ready to open fire if the Rangers launch another attack strong enough to breach it. The jets’ engines roar until students clap their hands over their ears.
As I sprint across the sand, I use the binocular feature on my Bond to scan for Charlotte. I spot her near the water, walking toward Rosamund with a tall, steady stride. Rosamund and the group of Blues she’s with are still in their Fraternity uniforms, staring at the shield with wide-eyed reverence, as if realizing the value of a bulletproof vest they once took for granted.
Charlotte calls out something I can’t hear over the patrol jets, but it makes Rosamund turn. Her hair is matted, her face streaked with blood and dust, and for a moment she looks startled. Then, slowly, a faint, creeping smile spreads across her face, and she holds out her Blood Ring toward Charlotte.
“No,” I choke, pushing through the sand that drags at my ankles. “Please, no.”
Charlotte accepts the scan and yanks her saber free in a quick, awkward motion. Heads turn as students notice the death duel. Dozens of them move closer, whistling and cheering as they form a ring around Charlotte and Rosamund. A moment passes before Rosamund draws her saber, gleaming poison-bright in the sun.
I push myself faster, my lungs burning as I reach the crowd. Sand grinds under my boots as I shove my way to the front, just in time to see Charlotte raise her saber and swing it at Rosamund’s with a burst of sparks.
“Char, no!” I cry.
Charlotte meets my gaze, the blade casting light across her face. Her grip is firm, though her brows knit in a way that suggests regret, as if she’s asking me to forgive her, because she never meant for me to watch her die.
