Chapter 62
PROMISES
Vincent’s too busy for piano block. Again.
He’s been preoccupied for weeks. Only showing up in my room late into the night, disheveled and exhausted.
Unless I have questions, he’s silent. He brings along files, reports, his tablet; anything to keep his hands busy.
But no matter how long it takes or how much his eyes droop as the hours drag on, he doesn’t leave until I’ve fallen asleep. No sedatives, no questions, no pushing.
Forty-three of my fifty days have come and gone. Which means I’ve got seven left to either figure out a way out of here or concede to letting the organization send me to my doom.
My days are filled with…nothing. Turns out, without lectures, drills, and workbooks, this place is incredibly dull. Colt and I have tried every single craft in the enrichment room, to varying degrees of success.
Then there’s piano, or lack thereof. I still can’t bring myself to play for more than a few minutes at a time, much to Vincent’s growing dismay.
He won’t say it out loud, but it’s clear something hinges on this—something bigger than me.
I was never bold enough to believe he just wanted me to play for my own sake, even in the training wing.
But the way his face falls when I beg to stop tells me we’re gambling with something neither of us can afford to lose.
That leaves the garden. It may not be nearly as intoxicating as it was when I thought it was real, but it’s the closest thing to fresh air. I’ve found my usual spot, back against the damp grass, legs kicked up on a stone wall.
I should be planning, but my head is still swimming from my session with Carr yesterday.
That’s the one thing the polishing wing hasn’t saved me from.
He’s been meeting with me every three days like clockwork.
It never lasts long, but he insists on blindfolding me every time.
I can’t tell what he does. My sensations blur, but I feel the ghosts of metal kissing my skin.
When it’s over, I’m dazed, tired, and sick.
Instead of curling into a ball and panicking about whatever Carr might be doing to me, I’m reading. I grabbed a book from the stack Vincent left on the way to the garden. A guide on animals. I find it fascinating. Colt, on the other hand…not so much.
“Guess what they call a group of crows.”
“Annoying?” Colt muses, leaning back against a perfectly artificial tree. His jacket’s shrugged off, leaving him in a slim-cut black T-shirt that frames his biceps.
I chuckle, holding the book above my head so he can see. “Good guess, but no. Apparently, they’re called a murder.”
“Almost the same thing,” he brags, digging his boot into the dirt.
“Oh yeah, how so?”
“You wouldn’t find it annoying to be murdered?”
“Touché.” I press my heels against the wall, relishing the cool sensation of stone through my flats.
I flip the page, but I can’t seem to get my mind to refocus. Uncomfortable seconds stretch into unbearable minutes for no reason other than the thousand questions I worry I’ll never get to ask him.
I force my mouth to open because living with embarrassment is a whole lot better than living with regret. “Will I ever see you again? After graduation, I mean.”
“I don’t know,” he says, though we both know it’s a lie. I don’t know where the organization will decide to send me after graduation, but it won’t be somewhere he can follow. The thought makes me want to melt into the grass.
“In a weird way, I wish things could stay like this,” I say with a shaky laugh.
He sighs. “Yeah, me too.”
I hate how true it is. I hate this place. I hate everything about it. But I can’t bring myself to hate the people in it. Colt and Vincent are the closest thing I have to family.
And in a week, they’ll be gone.
I’ve lost so much. My memories, my friends, my dignity. I’m not sure I could survive losing them, too.
I swing my legs down, sitting back on my heels to face him. His face is flushed, eyes darkened with the same anguish he had when Vincent shattered the window. The last time he thought he was going to lose me.
“We could leave?” I force my voice to be light, hoping it sounds like a joke.
“Maysie, what are you suggesting?”
I flash him a half-smile. “You’ve got a keycard, right? We could—”
“We can’t,” he snaps, face suddenly stern. He reaches for my wrist, but I wrench away, back slamming against the stone.
“But—”
“You don’t get it.” Colt grits his teeth, breathing hard.
“If you run, they’ll give the order, and I’ll be the one hunting you down.
Pressing you into the tile while you beg me to stop, counting the seconds until you collapse.
” His hands knot into fists. A shaky breath slips from his lips.
“And I’ll do it—because I don’t get a choice.
But losing you like that…” He shakes his head hard.
“It would destroy me.” Colt’s composure shatters on that last word.
He rakes both hands through his hair, shame darkening his features.
I want to grab his shoulders and tell him he’s wrong. That I’d forgive him, that it isn’t his fault. But my chest is already constricting with the truth: He’s bound to this place, leashed to the system that’s slowly killing us.
“You can’t, Maysie. Please don’t bring it up again.” He stares at nothing, hands gripping fistfuls of stiff faux grass. “Promise me.” Colt reaches for my hand again, but I can’t bring myself to move.
Instead, I watch a single manufactured cloud drift across the simulated sky. “I promise,” I say, breathing depth into the lie.
Hoping I’ll be gone before he realizes I’ve broken it.