Chapter 17
Quinn
“Don’t do that.” My dad threw a tennis ball at my hand before I could touch anything. “You know you're coming up on your time.”
“God, Dad, you make it sound like I’m dying.” I grinned, but my dad didn’t grin back.
We’d celebrated my twenty-third birthday. I hadn’t gotten a lemon drop this year. I wasn’t sure I would ever again. Our new system of ‘releasing Miss Q’ wasn’t really working.
I mean, it was. Instead of blacking out, I ran around in a forest like a crazy person, but both of us were starting to think maybe the blackouts were better.
Fact and fiction were blurring. I struggled to hold long conversations and often found myself sitting for hours, reliving the highs of my mental breakdowns…
because they were better than real life.
Sometimes, I’d lock myself in the basement and let her be my world. My crazy felt better than trying to be sane. When I was in a delusion, I wasn’t wrong. I existed as a ball of emotions and colors.
“Do you want to go to the forest or the basement?” my dad asked.
My heart skipped a beat. I thought the basement was my secret.
“I’ve known about the basement for months, honey. How could I not? You leave piles of fibers and plastics hidden in corners. All your baby pictures were in an album down there.”
I held my hands together and rocked.
“The album with a green cover. They were the last pictures of you and Mom before cancer took her.”
I swallowed. I remembered. I touched the album, and before I could open it, it dissolved into sheets of plastic, paper, and dyes. I hadn’t considered what was in it.
“You have it all backed up, right?” I asked.
My dad nodded, and my guilt eased.
“I don’t understand how you do it. I set up cameras you couldn’t have known about down there, yet they always stop working during your episodes. There are alarms on the doors to let me know when you go down, yet they don’t go off.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. We’d been over and over this. My other personality was brilliant. If I could only control her, we could rule the world.
“You never talk about Mom,” I said instead.
“She was too good for this world, and she loved us both until her dying breath. There isn’t much more to say.” My dad stood. “Forest or basement?”
“We have to enjoy this weather while we have it.” Everly clung to my arm as we strolled around the courtyard of the Great Hall, straight out of a regency-era romance.
Brit walked just behind us like a bodyguard.
I had no idea how Cayden got Hero away from his sister, but I wasn’t going to question it.
I steered us to the side as another couple appeared, but Everly held her ground. The couple had to move off the path to avoid hitting us, and whispers flew through the air. There were quite a few people out today, lovers and groups of friends.
I looked at Everly a second time. She wasn’t dressed in her trainee uniform but in a lovely dress of light pink and yellow that contrasted with her dark hair. Her makeup sparkled in the sunlight.
I stumbled. “Are we on a date?”
Everly’s trilling laugh filled the air. “The most public one I could come up with.”
“I’m not dressed for it!” I exclaimed.
“Exactly,” Everly cackled. “It’s not proper at all. This is amazing!”
I side-eyed Everly skeptically before smiling to myself. Brit used her physical fists to fight for what she believed in. Now, Everly was using me to stage her rebellion. Maybe all of this was to piss off her twin, but a part of me wondered if it wasn’t more.
My friends were amazing. If they were manifestations of my subconscious, did that make me amazing?
I wrinkled my nose. It didn’t. I hadn’t done jack shit for myself.
“Can I ask you guys about something?” I looked over my shoulder to make sure Brit knew she was included.
“Aye,” Brit said. She led the two of us off to a corner with a very romantic, though uncomfortable, stone bench for two that overlooked the promenade. Everly and I sat, though Brit crowded close so she could hear.
“I can’t leave the castle,” I started.
I shared my encounter with Ezra, but I skipped over the gym, sauna, Alun, and all my confusing feelings… which left me with very little to go on. I quickly moved on to Chancellor Morgen’s warning and then everyone’s efforts to influence my friendships here.
“No,” Everly said, for probably the tenth time since I started. “That did not happen.”
I widened my eyes and bobbed my head. “Yup. After I ran, he literally handed me to Rowan and was like, ‘Rowan would make a good friend.’”
“It was Rowan’s suitress who started all those horrible rumors about you!
” Everly exclaimed. “And even after she left the castle, he still didn’t stand up for you!
He would not make a good friend. And don’t get me started on the Silvers.
I don’t know Seth, but think sheep. So many sheep.
Their fortune is in wool and mutton. Do you want to spend the rest of your life in itchy shirts? ”
I giggled. “Probably not, but I think you missed my point.”
Everly rolled her eyes and took my hands. “I know we’re an item, but it’s not real, Quinn.”
I nodded solemnly, making her grin.
Her face grew serious. “The men you are meeting now might be your suitors later. The people here are trying to arrange your life, and that’s not OK.”
Her grip on my hands tightened, and tears welled in her eyes. “It’s not right. Not right at all. You should be able to pick. It’s your life.”
I looked up at Brit, who placed her big hand on Everly’s shoulder. “We know. Every woman should have the choice. You too.”
Everly stiffened and blinked the tears in her eyes away before they could fall. She hadn’t said it, but I doubted she picked her contracts. Strolling along with boy-me on her arm was a lot deeper than she wanted to talk about yet.
“I get this year. One year to do whatever I want.” She grinned. “When I told my mother I wanted to spend it in the Architect’s family, she almost fainted.”
Brit barked out a laugh. “You keep surprising me. I thought you’d been sent here as some sort of punishment. This can’t be the luxury you’re used to.”
Everly wrinkled her nose. “It’s not. I, ah, yeah. We’ll leave it at that. But this is exactly what I wanted. To see how the other half lived.”
“You mean us poor folk?” Birt stuck in.
“You said it, not me.” Everly shrugged.
Brit’s eyes widened, and she spluttered while I bit my lips shut to keep from laughing.
“I wanted to work for something, too,” Everly continued. “Make my own decisions to see what that felt like.”
“Part of Your World,” from The Little Mermaid, burst into my mind, and I had to bite my lips shut to keep it to myself.
Everly grabbed my hands. “I didn’t expect to make real friends. One of which needs my help.” Her chest rose and fell, and she looked at me as if my problem was the most important thing that had ever happened to her.
“Are you like, royalty or something?” I asked.
Brit snorted. “Might as well be. Rich and able to have kids.”
Everly let go of my hands to swat at Brit. “This is not about me. This is about Quinn.”
I accepted the topic change. If we started trading childhood stories, the conversation would get really awkward really fast. “How do I fight back?”
Everly smirked. “Well, you’re not going to stay a boy forever.”
I put my hand over my heart as if wounded.
“I think you should take control of the narrative. Fuck everyone here if they think they can manipulate you. Wait.” Everly flung her hands up. “Your missing TB!”
I put my hands up. “It has nothing to do with this. I drank too much, and it still hasn’t turned up.
” I hated lying to my friends, but I didn’t want them to know I’d skipped out on a tab like some poor trash.
Moreover, there was only one place to eat and sit down with a drink in this entire castle.
What if they tried to help me and things went south? It wasn’t worth the risk.
Everly raised an eyebrow as if she could see through my lie, but accepted it. “Still. The Architect is all about giving people free choice and equal rights. Right, Brit?”
Brit, who had been very quiet, inclined her head. “The Architect himself recruited me, promising a better world. Shit ain’t adding up.” She cocked her head to the side. “I’m thinking we need more information. Whatever Everly’s cook’n up, it's gotta give us more.”
Everly let out a little whoop and jumped to her feet.
“I’m going to miss torturing my twin, but tonight, we’re making a statement.
” She raised her voice and pulled me to my feet.
“Come, my suitor. I can’t have you taking me to the party in your trainee uniform. What were you thinking this afternoon?”
Heads turned. I swear, a girl passing us blushed in embarrassment for me. But all I could do was laugh and pray this didn’t make everything worse.