Chapter Three A Dance, a Misstep, and an Engagement
For Zada, finding her way back to the wedding was a matter of following the sounds of complete pandemonium.
Overturned benches littered the gallery, Lieutenant General Dobson’s search party feverishly circled the room, Aiden’s grandmother had recovered from her fainting spell in time to loudly announce to nobody in particular that these mistakes simply would never have happened in her day, and Flora blinked her glassy eyes as her parents interrogated Aiden on the last time anyone had seen the missing tool.
Maybe this was why Daphne had taken the Applicator—to expose the precariously balanced social contraption the wedding really was. A broken Rube Goldberg machine: Roll the ball toward the row of dominoes set up to deploy the lever and watch the ball deflate instead.
Or maybe Daphne had done it out of sheer boredom.
When Zada entered the wedding hall, she wove her way through the crowd until she found Buford. He was doing his best to calm an elderly gentleman from the groom’s side, whose silvery handlebar mustache bristled with offense.
“Buford, can I talk to you for a moment?” said Zada when Aiden’s—grandfather? great-uncle? old family friend with an absurd number of opinions?—paused for breath.
“Absolutely,” Buford told her. They stepped away, the mustachioed man still sputtering. “What seems to be the trouble?” Buford asked in a low voice. He tilted his head at the chaos of the wedding venue. “Other than, you know, everything.”
Zada held the Applicator out to him, politely positioning it in such a way that he could take hold of it without brushing her hand. Buford grasped it gingerly.
“Where did you find this?” he said.
Somehow, despite everything, the thought of turning in her former best friend made her stomach churn worse than the thought of public speaking.
“Someone left it in the restroom,” Zada invented. “They must’ve forgotten it there, if you can believe it.”
He had no reason to. It was a bad lie. But he simply nodded, as if that made perfect sense.
“I’ll just go tell everyone you found it, then. Or did you want to share the good news yourself?”
“Oh, no, thank you,” Zada said hurriedly, “I’d sooner unhinge my jaw like a python and swallow the thing whole.”
Buford’s forehead creased in polite confusion.
This was a common reaction to Zada’s jokes.
Zada opened her mouth to explain, remembered with a sinking sensation that this particular comment would make zero sense to anyone not exposed to her school friends’ love of researching the precalamity beasts of the world, and started again.
“Never mind,” said Zada. “You’d better tell everyone the news before they all come to blows.”
At that, he nodded briskly and jogged to the podium.
“Honored guests,” Buford intoned into the mic, “Thank you for your patience. The Applicator has been found.” He held it aloft for emphasis.
“We all know what that means: It’s time to set everything right, and continue with the ceremony.
We’ve had our ups together, and our downs.
We’ve learned to never stand between Georgina Trafford and an unturned bench.
” A peel of relieved laughter rippled through the gathered crowd, echoing off the high ceiling.
“Now I know we’re all eager to see the happy couple bound together at last, none more so than Flora and Aiden themselves! ”
Zada retrieved her cello from the stage, and the wedding of the season started up again. She’d saved the day, and best of all, she’d done it with hardly any witnesses.
From there, the dreamy, hazy atmosphere of a storybook wedding took over once more.
The orchestra remixed the processional, keeping the basic chord progressions but incorporating the trilling melody of Flora and Aiden’s Heartsong, to great success.
Flora’s gauzy, fluffy, pure white gown made her look half like a pop star off the live feed and half like a perfect little cloud, and Aiden’s steel-gray suit and newly shorn hair made him look as if he almost deserved her.
There was one hiccup, when Flora’s father let go of her hand too soon when presenting her to Aiden, and, still lost in bliss from a morning of Counseling, Flora nearly tipped over and fell.
But Aiden managed to catch her around the waist, and the crowd applauded at the romance of it all.
Zada and the rest of the bridal party had covered for Flora during her nine a.m. Counseling appointment, smuggling her back into City Hall and maintaining the polite fiction that her hair and makeup were simply taking longer than expected.
It wasn’t as if nobody ever did Counseling; Zada knew that Augusta and her late husband had gone through it as well.
But it was hardly a topic for polite conversation.
After all, the Heartsong program was never wrong.
Its finely tuned algorithm, informed by the wisdom of the Founders, selected the person who was perfectly suited to you.
And if there were any bumps along the road from first touch to final binding—well, that meant you were the problem.
Chancellor Fallow himself took charge of the binding, wielding the Applicator with the precision of a fencing foil.
His lean frame, piercing blue eyes, and formidable brow suggested he would have been a fearsome opponent.
The slight smell of lemongrass and rainwater, to cover the burning-hair odor of searing corneas, wafted through the air as the Applicator engraved the details of the marriage on the couple’s irises.
“With the power vested in me by the Founders,” said Chancellor Fallow, “I declare this couple forever bonded. May you dwell together in virtue, honor, and duty.”
Hand in hand, Aiden and Flora turned to the assembled guests, their silhouettes outlined with the light of the towering projection behind them, which displayed their newly marked eyes.
Wave after wave of applause crashed over the crowd.
More than one guest fumbled for their handkerchief.
Augusta was outright crying. One of Zada’s old schoolmates, Christiana Tam, was narrating the whole thing for a live feed, her face glowing with the excitement of the day’s events.
Then the doves were released, their illuminated wings forming glowing constellations against the red and gold sunset framed by the skylights overhead.
The crowd oohed and aahed, Zada right along with them.
Daphne’s hollow expression, the sensation of her pulse fluttering against Zada’s hands, were a distant memory.
Once the cheering subsided, Flora’s mother invited everyone to the adjoining ballroom for dancing and refreshments.
Zada handed her triple cello off to her parents, and everyone rushed for the ballroom door, as quickly as they possibly could while still leaving the debutantes enough room to pass through without being jostled.
Nobody wanted to be in the room for the rounding-up and retrieval of the birds.
In the ballroom, Zada made straight for the refreshments.
Jade-green and gold plates laden with edible blooms and translucent desserts floated in the air, bobbing ever so slightly.
Zada plucked a flute of glittering, color-shifting punch from the edge of this cloud and took a sip as she surveyed the crowd.
Hubert Sweete was trying to provoke an argument with a short, broad young man, who seemed much more interested in live streaming everyone’s shoes for some fashion feed.
Helena Neale was telling anyone who would listen that because Aiden and Flora had been matched at her eighteenth birthday ball, some of the congratulations should really go to her.
Marianne Erskine and Venetia Collingwood strolled along the high table where the wedding’s scent story had been laid out.
Scent stories were the latest fashionable thing, a sequence of carefully curated perfumes arranged in such a way as to create a complete narrative.
Flora’s followed a progression from carefree childhood days—represented by the smell of a meadow with daffodils—through an earthy, woodsy forest that was meant to demonstrate challenge and adversity, to clean linen and warm spices, to denote the stability and domestic joy of a match.
It was a triumph in fifteen gorgeous, gilded bottles.
Zada had helped Flora choose between a few different wood fragrances and was deeply curious about the final result, but when she approached, Venetia looked up, eyes sparkling with malice.
She drawled, “I adore that dress, Zada. It’s so flattering.
Oh, but you seem to have lost your Gracelet. Do you need help looking for it?”
Venetia knew that Zada’s family couldn’t afford the standard coming-of-age gift for a debutante—a bracelet that hummed warningly and projected a beautiful, shimmering force field if anyone came too close.
Gracelets were only ever deactivated at home or during designated social events, which made them very helpful for everyday life.
To go without was extremely gauche, almost vulgar, but Zada had no choice.
“I—” Zada began. She was briefly struck with an irrational sense of indignation at having to bear this cruelty alone.
She’d spent most of her school years bundled up in her friend group, safely ensconced as one of five.
She could still remember the rhythm of it, their freewheeling late-night conversations, how invincible she felt when they were all together.
If this had been just a few years ago, Flora would’ve opted for a distraction, leaping in with a change of conversation, her tone as sweet and bubbly as a glass of brut.
Augusta was more likely to smile and respond with a seemingly innocent comment that was in fact devastatingly cutting.
Daphne, on the other hand, would’ve gone nuclear, throwing out a sarcastic jibe engineered to make even Venetia slink away ashamed. And Carine—