Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
EMILIA
Charlotte’s kitchen had gone quiet in the focused way that only happens when friends are doing something they shouldn’t be good at.
The balms sat in rows. Vivienne’s fingerprint-locked cases on side. Charlotte steadied another tube, drew the brush along the rim with a painter’s care, and clicked it shut.
“Don’t breathe on it,” Vivienne said, deadpan, as if exhaling could trigger a felony.
“I have steady hands,” Charlotte repeated.
“Your hands shake when your mother calls,” Vivienne said.
Charlotte didn’t miss a stroke. “That’s muscle memory, not nerves.”
“Hold it steady,” Vivienne muttered, leaning over with a precision that came from years of threading necklaces instead of syringes. Her bracelets clinked as she pushed a fingerprint-lock case closer. “One wrong swipe and you’ll put yourself under.”
Charlotte rolled her eyes. “Thank you for the vote of confidence.”
Vivienne ignored her, snapped another case open, and began slotting the balms inside. “You’re lucky I like you, Adams,” she said to me without looking up. “These cases cost more than my entire winter wardrobe.”
“You say that every time,” I said.
“And it’s true every time,” Vivienne shot back.
I leaned against the counter, watching them work.
It should have felt surreal—my friends dosing cosmetics like it was a parlor game—but nothing about our world had been surreal for a long time.
It was dynasty. If you weren’t laundering, you were smuggling.
If you weren’t smuggling, you were coating lip balm with poison.
“Careful,” Charlotte said again to herself, slipping the brush over another rim. She moved slow, deliberate, the picture of a girl who wanted her mother’s approval even when her mother wasn’t in the room.
I smiled faintly. “You’ve gotten good at that.”
“Don’t sound so surprised.” She twisted the balm shut with a sharp click. “Micro-dosing is an art.”
“It’s lip gloss,” Vivienne said dryly. “Stop acting like you’re Michelangelo.”
Charlotte flicked her hair over her shoulder. “You’d kill for my hands.”
“I’d kill for your inheritance,” Vivienne shot back. “Not your manicure.”
The banter rolled easy between them.
“So. The crash.” Charlotte glanced at me.
My throat tightened.
Vivienne looked up, bracelets chiming. “You’re not allowed to die before I do. It ruins my brand.”
“It was—” I started, then stopped. The lie felt heavy before it even formed. “Bastion pulled me out.”
There was a beat of silence that wasn’t empty at all.
Vivienne was the first to recover. “Of course he did. ”
Charlotte laughed once. “Nothing like a Crow.”
“You used to call them gutter kings,” I reminded her.
“I was a child.” She angled the brush. “And my mother liked it when I said her lines for her.”
“Your mother likes it when anybody says her lines,” Vivienne said. “It saves her breath for the mirror.”
Charlotte snapped the balm closed. “You didn’t know this, but I was auditioning for the role of ‘good daughter’ for twelve years straight. The show was terrible. Zero stars. Do not recommend.”
“You got the part,” I said.
“I did,” Charlotte said, then shrugged one shoulder with a sadder smile than she meant to show. “And then I quit.”
Vivienne slid a finished row into a case. “You only quit on paper. She still lives in your head.”
“She pays rent,” Charlotte said. “Which is more than I can say for the men in mine.”
Vivienne’s mouth curved. “Plurals.”
Charlotte didn’t blink.
The cases clicked as Vivienne arranged them into foam cutouts, velvet straps, tiny black hex keys magnetized to the lid. “You know,” she said, eyeing me, “for someone who almost turned into a rumor on Dockway, you’re awfully calm.”
“I already did my panic,” I said, which was true. It had been quiet and private and I had hated every second of it.
“What was he like?” Charlotte asked, not bothering to pretend she didn’t care. “In the car. Bastion.”
“Steady,” It landed heavier than I wanted. “Like the storm was happening around us, not to us.”
Vivienne made a soft sound that wasn’t quite a laugh. “Of course.”
I hated the way heat rose in my cheeks. “He—he put his jacket over me. He used his body to cover mine when the cutters—” I stopped. I didn’t want to give them the scream, the way it had torn out of me, how his voice had anchored me to the world. “I’m alive because he was there.”
“Crow math,” Charlotte said lightly. “If something is going to break, first you put your body under it.”
“And then,” Vivienne added, “you dare it to try.”
I swallowed. My hand found the edge of the table because it needed something to hold.
Vivienne’s gaze sharpened. “Em.”
“I’m fine.”
Vivienne and Charlotte exchanged a look.
“I’m fine,” I repeated, slower. “I’m here. We’re doing war crimes at your kitchen table.”
Charlotte pointed the brush at me. “Micro-dosing lip balm is not a war crime. It’s art.”
“It’s premeditated flirting,” Vivienne winked. “Which is worse.”
Charlotte smirked, but her eyes went softer when she looked back at me. “Do you know,” she said idly, “my mother used to tell me that Crows don’t feel things. That they learn the shapes of feelings like languages they can perform.”
“Your mother also thinks ‘grief’ is a scheduling issue,” Vivienne continued to put the balms in.
“She thinks everything is a scheduling issue,” Charlotte rolled he eyes, “But she was wrong about that. The Crows feel. They just don’t announce it.”
“How do you know?” I asked, trying to sound like I wasn’t asking.
Charlotte’s smile went private. “Field research.”
Vivienne laughed outright. “Just say Rome. She’s sleeping with Rome.”
Charlotte didn’t dignify it with more than a neatly raised eyebrow and an extra-slow click of a lid .
“Field research,” she repeated, and the phrase sat there with too much gloss on it to be accidental.
“Rome is a bad idea,” I said, purely on principle.
“So is oxygen,” Charlotte said. “Still inhaling.”
Vivienne shook her head, amused. “And for the record, if we are doing confessions, I like knives and difficult men who pretend they have a soul. Which is to say—Nikolai.”
“Of course it’s Nikolai,” Charlotte said. “He looks like a line you shouldn’t cross.”
“He looks like a threat assessment,” Vivienne corrected. “And then he opens a door, and you think: oh.”
“And after that?” I asked, because apparently I wanted to suffer.
Vivienne’s smile went lazy, the kind that suggested secrets. “After that, you remember that my mother taught me to never leave without my own key.”
“Your mother taught you to marry a treasury,” Charlotte said.
“She taught me to become one,” Vivienne said, and slid the last balm into its velvet tray.
“Well that explains the extra four months overseas.” I said, moving an empty tray towards Charlotte. I felt useless with one hand.
Vivienne just smiled. I should have realised it was a man keeping her in those Dynasty halls, and not her grandparents.
We let the work move our hands for a few minutes. Lids. Clicks. Cases.
“What did Alexander say?” Charlotte asked, too carefully casual. “After?”
“About the crash?” I asked.
“About you being pulled out of a car by a Crow.” She didn’t look up when she said it, which meant she cared.
“We haven’t covered that,” I paused for a moment. “Yet. ”
“Then he already knows.”
“Probably,”
Alexander knew everything, except the parts I buried where even I couldn’t find them.
“They’re going to be at the reunion,” Vivienne finished clicking the last of the magnetic taps on.
The last thing we wanted was someone who didn’t know what the lip balm was using it. The owner fingerprint matched to the cap.
Dynasty daughters knew what the balms where, but outside of that no one.
“The reunion,” Charlotte repeated. “On the yacht.”
“Of course it’s the yacht,” Vivienne moved a new line vial towards Charlotte . “Where else do dynasty children go to pretend the water can still baptize them?”
“Floating court,” Charlotte said, eyes bright. “Floating confessional.”
“Floating trap,” Vivienne added.
I swallowed. “You two are making it sound like a haunted house.”
“It is,” Vivienne said. “Only the ghosts wear stain.”
“Are you going?” I asked.
Charlotte’s mouth went sideways. “I am—how do I put this politely—very busy not attending. Unless I receive a… persuasive calendar invite.”
“That means if Rome asks,” Vivienne translated.
Charlotte watered the basil on her windowsill like the plant had personally offended her. “We cannot all be stoic and pure, Emilia. Some of us have appetites.”
Vivienne’s bracelets chimed. “Nikolai texted an hour ago.”
“Of course he did,” Charlotte and I said at the same time.
Vivienne showed us her screen: Bring a case. Not for me .
“Not for him,” Charlotte repeated, smug. “Translation: for her.”
Vivienne slid the phone away. “It’s possible we are conducting a small market test on the west docks this weekend.”
Charlotte lifted a brow. “Is it a you test or a balm test?”
Vivienne looked scandalized. “Please. I market-test men all the time. This is business.”
“Is business why you have a cufflink in your purse?” I asked, because I’d seen the N earlier when she’d searched for a lip balm scoop.
Vivienne didn’t blush. “It’s collateral.”
“What does Rome keep at your place?” I asked Charlotte lightly, and she didn’t answer, but the faint red mark just under her jaw did.
“Do your mothers know?” I asked before I could stop myself.
“Mine suspects everything and admits nothing,” Charlotte stopped sorting the vials. “She pretends I’m still twelve and can be dressed into obedience.”
“Mine knows and keeps a ledger,” Vivienne said. “Everything with her is accounts. Losses, gains, daughters.”
“And mine,” I said, then stopped. The kitchen went quiet. “My mother would have told me to stop embarrassing the family.”
Charlotte looked at me a long beat. “Your mother would have told you to stop breathing loud.”
I didn’t cry. We are trained better than that.