The soil of her love was rich enough that her heart bloomed flowers, so beautiful I didn’t dare pick one. While I hesitated, the buds began to wither and close. And when at last I reached for what was offered, I
found the flowers bowed in death. —AN ORANGE WHO LOVED A PURPLE
CHAPTER 59
It’s nearly 1:00 a.m. when I finally return to the Green Dormitory. Before heading to my suite, I stop at the info center, still clutching Vincent’s fraternity cap, which is stiff with dry blood. At the counter, a Pinkie blinks out of standby mode. I hand over the cap and ask that it be sent to Vincent’s parents. They’ve lost both their sons, all their children. My chest aches at the thought of that grief, but I can mourn only one loss.
Vincent died for something. For someone. He died trying to give his brother a second chance at life, and in a single day, William threw it away.
He turned Vincent’s gift into something shameful when he attacked an unarmed Edmund, driven by vengeance, grief, and blind fury. The act was caught on at least a dozen Bonds, likely replaying across campus already.
Now that shame will stain Vincent’s memory. Vincent died so William could live, and William used that life to destroy all the honor his family had left.
I ride the elevator to my floor, so tired I let my head rest against the wall as the car ascends. I smell like blood, wet sand, and yesterday’s sweat. I want to shower, then sleep away the confusion and pain that cling to me like dead skin. But when I push open my suite door and shuffle into the salon, I find I’m not alone.
Edmund is asleep on my sofa, his head bowed forward. He’s still in his Fraternity uniform, his hair tangled at the top, his face crusted with ash and blood. He sleeps like a stone, the only sign of life the slow rise and fall of his
chest.
I don’t bother wondering how he got in. He’s a Blue. For all I know, he came through a hidden door behind my lavatory wall. But the fact that he’s here must mean Rosamund isn’t seriously injured.
I move with quiet steps until I reach the sofa. Even in sleep, his face shows no peace. It’s marked with deep, tired lines, as if he’s finally collapsed from something that’s been grinding him down for weeks. My eyes drift over the face I once loved, the one I still love despite what he did to me. All I want is to let him sleep, to rest as he did that night in the hovercar with his head in my lap, knowing I was beside him.
Yet it’s clear he didn’t come here for that. He came to tell me something, hopefully to explain why he offered me Bliss and why he turned into a completely different person when he did.
I bend toward him, carefully withdrawing his saber from my scabbard, and as I push it into his hand, he snaps awake and catches my wrist. His eyes open wide, blinking in the light, then lock onto mine.
“Loredana,” he says, easing his hold on my wrist.
The way he’s looking at my face, as if he’d resigned himself to only remembering it, makes my chest hurt. “What are you doing here?” I ask.
“I said I’d find you.”
“Why?”
“Because I wanted to—”
“No.” I firmly pull my arm free. “Not why you came, Edmund. Why did you try to make me take Bliss? Was that your revenge? And if you couldn’t forgive me then, why are you here now?”
He glances at the saber in his hand, as if suddenly realizing he’s holding it, then slides it back into the scabbard on his hip. The sofa creaks as he stands. “I gave you Bliss because I knew you wouldn’t take it.”
“That makes no sense.”
“It wasn’t supposed to make sense. It was supposed to make you hate me —enough to never talk to me again.”
I frown, not following the logic. “Why? Because of Charles?”
“No.” Edmund shakes his head, his brow furrowing with regret. “Charles wasn’t the reason. He was an excuse that came at the right time. If it hadn’t been him, I would’ve found another.”
A twinge of pain reverberates through me as I realize there can be only one reason left. “So, it’s because of what you said in the elevator, then?
Because I couldn’t tell you I loved you, too?” My hand curls at my side, half in frustration, half in the effort not to reach for him. “Edmund, don’t you know I wanted to say it? That the only reason I didn’t was because I knew I’d killed your cousin?”
“Yes, of course.” Edmund draws closer, his boots leaving a trail of sand and blood on the carpet. “I didn’t know what to think at first, but I understood as soon as I saw the video.” He stops beneath the chandelier, its light enhancing the strain in his face. “I meant what I said in the elevator, Loredana. I still mean it. But I also realized I never should’ve said it, because that wasn’t love. It was me taking what I wanted.”
“What do you mean?”
Edmund falls quiet, every movement controlled, yet within the stillness of his body, his desperation surfaces like a dark, red focal point. His eyes flick to my mouth, then back to mine, miserable. “If this were only about what I wanted, I’d take you now and never let you go. But I can’t do that to you. I can’t take your life from you when all I can offer is myself.”
I stare at him, stunned, until devastation hits me with the full force of a crumbling wall. He’s talking about marriage and children, the kind of future we could never have, no matter how much we wanted it.
“Edmund,” I say, breathless, “what makes you think you aren’t enough?”
He tilts his head, genuinely startled by the question.
“You, better than anyone, should know how this works,” I say. “I can’t just marry someone and have children for the sake of it any more than you can. If it were that simple, you’d be able to marry Irene. But it isn’t. And do you know why?” My voice wavers as I become painfully aware of how fast my heart is beating. “Because those things only mean something when you love someone.”
The lines on his face deepen, as if my words have only heightened his conflict. “It’s more than that, though, Loredana. There was an execution the other day—a Purple and a Green sentenced for being Vulgars. I’d never put you in that position or try to push you that far, but it made me realize how much I’m taking from you by being with you.”
“You’re only taking what I’m willingly giving you.” I unclasp my hands, unable to hold back any longer, and press my palm to his chest. “You said you didn’t take it lightly when you kissed me. Well, I didn’t take it lightly either. I knew it came with risks—ones that look worse when you’re watching people die for being Vulgars—but I don’t care.” My throat turns
heavy and sore. “Do you know what I wanted from you, Edmund? All I wanted was to give myself to you and hear you say yes.”
“Loredana, you say that now, but what about tomorrow?” Edmund closes his hand over mine. “What about years from now, when I’ve taken all your youth? When you’re not married, but your sisters are? Even if I never marry, that won’t be a problem for me. But you—as a low-citizen—do you really want to go through life without that protection?”
He’s right to ask. Even I can’t deny that giving up marriage as a low- citizen would be a loss. The three thousand civil credits are the smallest part of it. Marriage boosts the value of every credit you have, so an unmarried person might lose ten civil credits for skipping a mandatory execution, while a married person would lose only five. There are pages of benefits written into the law, so many that low-citizens build their entire lives around marriage, and the average age for marriage is twenty. Even my testimony against Irene for trying to kill me would carry more weight if I were married.
I know all of this. I’ve always known it.
And still, none of it changes how I feel.
“If you knew how much I love you, Edmund,” I say, “you’d never ask me that.”
“Loredana.” He tilts my chin up toward him, as if pleading for me to understand. “It’s because I love you that I ask you that.”
The lightness of his touch pulls me closer despite myself, reminding me of what first drew me to him: the knowledge that while one of his hands can be fierce, twisting a saber through an enemy, the other always moves gently, lifting a shield over those he loves.
“Edmund,” I say, “if I told you I want to be with you, despite all the risks,
would you still walk away?”
“No.”
The certainty in his tone catches me off guard. “Why? Why would you
change your mind?”
“Because twice was enough.”
“Twice?”
He swallows, and his hand slips from my face in a slow, fractured motion.
“I thought you were dead from the piranhas. Then again, last night, when the Rangers attacked. I can’t do it anymore. I can’t waste another second feeling like I’m losing you. I’ll go mad.”
The desperation in his expression—flickering like a fire he tries to
extinguish, only to flare up elsewhere—makes me wonder if he already has. I lift my hand to brush his cheek, hoping to steady him the way he’s done for me so many times, even when my sadness ran so deep it felt impossible to reach. Edmund leans into my palm with a low breath, his eyes half-closing, as if the noise in his head has finally gone quiet. My fingers move up to his hair, still matted with rubble and blood, and gradually, I feel him begin to ease. I think about what he said, about how he was ready to let me go because of what he couldn’t give me, and I understand now more than ever why Jack and Dickie love him so fiercely; why Irene fell for him while engaged to Charles; why Rosamund clings to him as if they were conjoined.
Because I feel it, too. I feel as if Edmund has made my heart grow flowers, as if it can’t beat unless I’m close enough to hear his. But that’s what makes this moment unbearable. When I ask myself now if there are any barriers between us, for the first time, the answer is yes… and it’s not for a reason I ever expected. I don’t care that he’s a Blue, or that we can never marry and have a family, or even that loving him might mean endless pain in pursuit of a life that, as Mom warned me, can only end in loss. What matters is that Edmund still hasn’t made a choice. He hasn’t taken a side. There’s a wall between us, one that will only rise higher when Dad runs for Governor of the Rainbow District, and my family gets dragged back into the spotlight. I won’t be cowering or hiding like I did this year. I swore I’d change, and I will. I’ll stand up and fight like Dad does. And I can’t pull Edmund into that
fight unless he chooses it himself.
“Loredana,” he says quietly.
He meets my gaze with such tenderness that even my soul seems to respond. I don’t know what I did to deserve it, but I do know this: if Edmund ever used even a fraction of the resolve that he’s looking at me with now to stand against the injustice of his own kind, I’d belong to him forever.
“I’m sorry for lying to you,” he says, “and for hurting you. But if, in spite of it all, you still love me, I’ll say yes.” He takes my face in his hands, and for the first time, it feels like he’s not looking past me at someone he mistook for me but at who I am. “I’ll honor you. I’ll protect you. I’ll be loyal to you.
And I’ll love you, if not publicly, then at least openly in front of my family.”
I lean into him, every part of me burning with the desire to ask him to do it. If I loved him even a little less, I would. I’d tell him to cross the line for me, to choose the low-citizen side the way President Reeve did.
But I can’t.
I know that if Edmund stood up against his own kind—his own family— only for my sake, it wouldn’t last. Over time, he’d look back on that decision with resentment, the kind that might destroy his love for me. He has to choose to fight against high-citizen injustice because he believes in it, because he knows it’s right, and because he has the will to bear the cost. I don’t know when, or even if, that will happen. But seeing him hesitate on the Sailing Strip, caught between Greens and Blues as they charged, made one thing painfully clear: until Edmund chooses a side, I can’t choose him.
I understand he needs time. I know it’ll be as difficult as choosing one half of himself over the other. But for as long as it takes, I’m willing to wait.
In the meantime, I need to give him a reason why we can’t be together. A reason he’ll understand.
“Yes, Edmund.” A tremor of emotion runs through me as I press my cheek against his chest. “I still love you. But…” I pause, struggling desperately for the right words. “Do you know what a Section Twenty-Seven
is?”
A pause. Then, “Yes. Why?”
“A few days ago, someone tried to kill me by sabotaging my civil credits.
I don’t know who it was, but by the time it stopped, I was only three credits away from execution.”
Edmund goes completely still, as if caught between thought and instinct.
A darkness settles over him, fear submerged beneath the heavier force of fury, as his hands fall away from my face. It reminds me of the footage from the Tangerine Tree, at the exact moment before he charged, his mind already ten steps ahead of his body, choosing violence with chilling clarity.
When he speaks, his voice is too calm, as if every word is holding back a roar. “Not even most Blues have the power to pull off a Section Twenty- Seven. And they can’t be stopped unless…” His voice trails off, and his eyes
drop to my thumb.
I know what he’s searching for.
“Yes. I have an Aegis,” I say. “But it’s hidden.”
He catches my hand with a sudden, precise movement, pulling it closer to inspect my Blood Ring. “You made a deal with a Blue?”
“No. Not exactly. I don’t know which Blue owns it. The price for the Aegis was a job—a government assignment.”
“What job?”
I shake my head, frustrated at how much I have to explain while being
able to reveal so little. “I can’t tell you. But I wasn’t blackmailed into it. It’s something I want to do, something good. The problem is that, after summer, when the job starts, I have to stay away from Blues. All of them.”
The words seem to strike him physically; his face falls, as if he can’t imagine that kind of limit. “We can meet in secret, then. Like we did before.”
“No, Edmund.” I lift my eyes to his, pleading for him to understand. “This is too serious. It’s the kind of job where, if I mess up, a lot of people could die. If the wrong people even saw us smile at each other, it would be over.”
He rubs the back of his neck, looking even more confused. Then, slowly, I see the realization dawn on him. There’s only one group that would burn a low-citizen alive for just talking to a Blue: the Heretics.
“How long will the job last?” Edmund asks.
“I don’t know. A few weeks or months. Maybe the whole year. But until it’s done, the only time we can talk will be for legal reasons, like Irene’s trial.”
He shifts restlessly and shakes his head, still struggling to accept it. “Who asked you to do this, Loredana? If you tell me, I can—”
“When it’s over, I’ll tell you,” I promise. “But right now, I need you to trust me. Remember what you said: that you want to keep me safe, but you won’t use my safety as an excuse to stop me from doing what I think is right.”
He looks past me and squints, as if recalling the moment. Then he drags his hand across his face with a sigh. “I remember.”
I lean into his chest. “So… you’ll wait for me?”
His smile comes faintly, as though he’s forcing it into place. “Yes, Loredana. I’ll wait for you.” Then he pulls me into his arms, strong and sudden, as if we’re back in that elevator before the first piece of us broke. His hand cradles the back of my head, and his cheek presses against my hair. For a moment, the world fades away, as if its war is raging everywhere but here, everywhere but inside of us.
When Edmund finally speaks, his voice is close to my ear. “Will you send me the record of that Section Twenty-Seven? I’ll look into it.”
“Yes,” I whisper, hugging him tighter. “Thank you.”
We hold each other long enough for me to become aware of the filth on my skin: dirt and sand, old sweat, blood dried stiff in my clothes.
“I’m sorry, Loredana,” Edmund says at last. “But I have to get back to the hospital.”
I know he needs to check on Rosamund. “Of course. I understand. But…”
My mouth quivers, and a sting wells behind my eyes. “Edmund, I don’t know how to say goodbye.”
“Good. I don’t want you to.” He cups my chin gently and leans in to kiss me, but I pull back at the last second.
“Edmund, I’m dirty. And the blood isn’t mine.”
His eyes drift over me, then down to himself, as if only now realizing he’s covered in blood, too. With a shrug, he scoops me up and crosses the salon.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
“To wash it off.”
He carries me into the lavatory and nudges the door open with his boot. At first, I think he’s taking me to the sink, but then he ducks into the shower, flips on the nozzle, and steps in with me beneath the spray. Warm water streams over us, soaking our clothes, running downward in rivulets of dirt and blood that swirl into a dark pool at our feet.
I tip my chin back, blinking against the water, and catch his grin through the downpour. The sight is another drop of sadness in my heart. It only occurs to me now how much I’ll miss him, how much I already do, knowing
this is our final touch.
“Tell me again, Edmund,” I whisper.
“Tell you what?”
“That you love me.”
He leans down toward me, his hands gentle as they wipe the dirt from my face, neck, and hands. “I love you, Loredana,” he says. “But it’s not enough to tell you. Give me time, and I’ll show you.”
He pulls me out of the spray, one arm wrapped securely around my back while the other brushes my wet hair from my eyes. My boots squeak on the wet floor as he tilts me down against his arm, dipping me beside the open shower door. And there, folded into him, he kisses me, slow yet unrelenting, as if it’s meant to be a promise.
I loop one arm around his neck and draw myself closer, my other hand sliding along the line of water dripping down his cheek. With every moment that carries us nearer to parting, his grip tightens, and his mouth presses harder against me, water rushing over us as if to douse the fire that only grows hotter between us. His heart pounds against my chest, his breath uneven as it mingles with mine and trails down my neck. Wherever his hands touch my body, they leave a mark, like trails of fingerprints across my skin,
pieces of himself that will forever be mine. All I can think is that if we managed to find each other in a world like this, then I was wrong. Maybe we’re not cursed. Maybe fate doesn’t hate me after all.
The moment lingers, a fleeting blaze of daylight in the night, until at last, Edmund tears himself away and carefully sets me on my feet. His hands pause on my waist, as if taking in my shape one last time. Then he steps out of the shower, water streaming off him, and drags a towel through his hair before handing it to me. His chest still heaves as he says, “That wasn’t a goodbye.”
He smiles again, though this time, there’s less light in it than sadness.
Then he turns toward the door.
“Edmund.” I step out of the shower and call his name before I realize what I’m going to say. “I’m sorry for what I said to you in the rain. I shouldn’t have called you that. I didn’t mean to see what happened with your mother, either. I was out on the balcony, and… I didn’t know she was coming.”
Edmund stops, shoulders stiff, caught midway in the turn. Then he nods.
“Why do you let her do it?” I ask softly. “Why don’t you stop her?”
His eyebrows draw together, and his face twists with the same pain I saw when he stared at his bloody, ruined reflection after his mother left. “Because there’s less horror in losing my own blood than in losing those I share it
with.”
He walks out.
I wait until his footsteps fade and the suite door closes before I drop the towel and step back into the shower. Slowly, I lower myself to the floor, sitting directly beneath the spray. Not to wash away the blood and dirt, or even to hide the tears sliding down my face. But to feel the warmth, as if Edmund were still here, still holding me.
