Chapter 42
I carry Marie’s grateful smile with me as I make my way back to the Tzu cottage, clutching it like a lifeline against my crumbling worldview. So many things I should have already known. Spoken out against.
The whipping posts. The rolling Harvests. The curfew.
But those are recent changes. Meryl made me see there are problems baked into our system.
The law requiring we marry into Houses based not on love, but on numbers.
Need another worker? Here you go. Have too many?
Shift one somewhere else. Want to keep your skills after you join a new House?
So sorry, you must stick to the furrow you were assigned to plow.
I’ve seen how destructive these rules are up close and personal during the census, caught a glimpse of tiny cracks that I wouldn’t have noticed before Jonas’s Harvest.
Didn’t I witness Sylvan, son of the Forester House, standing outside the Potters, watching with something like love as Toshiko worked the wheel?
Maybe caught a glint of despair in the face of the Ropemaker daughter when she told me how she loved to write stories but understood she couldn’t have pen and paper beyond what was necessary for schoolwork?
If I’m honest, even my own brother had been ill-suited for the duties of our House.
Jonas was learning, and he was so good with people that he’d have done fine, but his real talent was in toymaking, and hadn’t I experienced the unfairness of it all firsthand when I was lifted from the Apothecary House into the Guardians, expected to relinquish a lifetime of training?
The blind rigidity has always been there, but I chose to see it as a fixed reality rather than a problem with a solution. After all, I was lucky enough to be born into the perfect House for me. Others, like Sal and Meryl, had a front-row seat to the rottenness of a system that stifles us all.
I’m walking down a cobblestone path, nearing the Tzu cottage, and close enough to imagine I can smell the wild rice I left covered and simmering on the stove.
It’ll be creamy by now. I smooth my hair, my tunic, my trousers.
Jarek and Misia shouldn’t be home, only Gryphon, but given what happened last night, I want to be prepared in case they’ve returned early.
If they’re inside, I’ll swear I got lost doing the census.
Or maybe I’ll say Gryphon and I ran off again. I shiver at the thought.
I glance around. The Tzu house is a ten-second walk around the corner.
The lane is empty, most everyone gathered around their dinner tables by now.
Assured I’m alone, I lend a swish to my hips as I close the distance between myself and the Tzu cottage, imitating a walk I’ve seen other women of the Valley perform.
Eero was right that the more I’m able to act like I’m in love, the better, so I try to think wifely thoughts, but in this moment I can’t imagine what they’d be.
“What do you think, Lucky Bunny?” I whisper to the toy in my pocket. “Between this ridiculousness and my cooking, I should be able to keep Jarek and Misia off my case for a few more days, right?”
“Rose.”
I jump. It’s Gryphon. He’s been waiting outside his front door, hidden in shadow. Sun and Water, what a nightmare. He just saw me practice flirting!
“I had something in my eye,” I babble. “And in my shoe. That’s why I was walking that way. I was also—”
I don’t get a chance to finish my sentence, because he steps forward, his gaze so lovestruck that I think I must be dreaming. He holds out his arms, and I glide into them. I stare up into his eyes, astonished.
I can’t believe walking like that worked!
He opens the front door with his free hand and dances me into the warmth of the Tzu cottage, mouth inches from mine. I can’t look away from his obsidian eyes, the yearning in them.
Is he going to kiss me again? My brain’s twirling.
He leans over, his mouth moving closer to mine. It passes my lips, and I feel an ache of something lost. But then his breath is hot in my ear.
“You were at Oscar’s trying on your dress,” he purrs.
Someone clears their throat.
I straighten myself. Glance around the Tzu kitchen.
And feel the blood drain from my face.