CHAPTER 29
As Heretics, we are butterflies against wasps, the few against the many. Yet honor burns brighter in noble defeat than in ignoble victory.
—EVE WEATHERS,
FIRST-YEAR GREEN GRANDMASTER
“Eve threw up,” Charlotte writes. “But she didn’t cry.”
I deactivate my Bond, a disturbed sensation deep in my gut, and head to the one place I’m sure that no one is watching Bloody Sunday: the student library.
The scent of leather and ink hangs in the air, a lingering reminder of a bygone era.
Shelves climb to the ceiling, packed with books no one needs anymore, but the Oranges insist on keeping them.
If all our knowledge is online, they say, it can be edited, erased, and rewritten.
Books are the only way the written word survives in its original form.
The library is always crowded. Some students read quietly at corner tables, while others cluster in groups, conversing behind stacks of books and half-drunk cups of tea. A few Pinkies scurry up ladders to fetch new titles or return old ones to their proper spots.
I take my usual spot on a window seat and ask a Pinkie to bring me a few books on fencing.
While I wait, I catch snippets of conversation drifting through the room.
I expect talk of the execution, but instead, nearly everyone is gossiping about who will replace Eve as our first-year Green Grandmaster.
The realization shocks me. I wonder if Eve knew people would forget her name before her severed head even struck the grass beneath the guillotine platform.
“The new Grandmaster will be Benedict Townsend,” someone declares.
“No, absolutely not. He is only a C-level. It will be Eliza Van Alen,” another counters.
But one name keeps surfacing, again and again.
“It will definitely be Vincent Lee.”
I scoff, unconvinced. Yes, Vincent is one of our best fencers, but Grandmasters are almost always sixth-years, and he’s only in his fourth.
Still, the rumors persist, winding through the halls like a game of telephone.
I hear them when I return to my suite at night, the next morning at breakfast, at the lockers between classes, and again in the dining hall at lunch.
I hope the rumors are wrong.
I know Vincent regrets trying to kill me when he was suffering from Bliss withdrawal, but that doesn’t mean he likes me.
I remember the contempt on his face when I told him I was part of Edmund’s entourage—the way he turned on me, his voice so scolding it might as well have been Dad’s and told me there’s no family outside the home.
After class, I return to my suite and dress for Fraternity night.
The uniform is black, edged in deep green like trails of poison.
The double-breasted jacket and trousers are neatly tailored, and the brim of my flat-top cap shades my eyes without obscuring my vision.
The only piece missing is a band, the sash worn diagonally across the chest from right shoulder to left hip.
But the band is reserved for second-year students and above.
The rest of us—first-years—are just Foxes.
At 7:00 p.m., I meet Jack and Charlotte in the parking lot beneath the Green Dormitory. Our uniforms match to the last stitch, except that my scabbard hangs empty. It reminds me of a slogan my old fencing instructor used to repeat: empty scabbard, empty threat.
We take Jack’s hovercar to the Green Fraternity house, the one Rosamund gave him, which Charlotte has started calling the Web Wagon. As usual, she sits on her coat to avoid touching anything.
I want to ask Jack and Charlotte who they think our new Grandmaster will be, but there’s no room to cut in. They’re too busy arguing about Charlotte’s birthday gift to Edmund, specifically why she spent only two hundred on the pocket watch chain after Jack lent her five thousand.
“Money is tight right now, okay?” Charlotte sighs, swiping lipstick across her mouth. “Why does it matter what I gave Edmund anyway? He hates me.”
Jack side-eyes her from the driver’s seat. “How tight?”
“Don’t worry, I’ll still repay you.” Charlotte tosses the lipstick back into her handbag. “I’ll send you two thousand later tonight, and the rest in a week or two.”
Two thousand. That’s the money I gave her for her bills.
Jack’s fingers stiffen around the control stick. His jaw works for a moment, as if he’s chewing on a thought, then he turns back to the road and says quietly, “Go ahead and keep it, darling.”
Charlotte flushes, her lips parting in surprise. When she responds, her voice is fragile, as if it’s been cut open. “Thank you, Jack.”
He nods stiffly.
The rest of the drive passes in silence.
By the time we arrive, the gold-and-pink sunset spills over the stone columns of the Green Fraternity house like an overturned cocktail.
The building looms tall, its bas-relief windows dusted with snow and its steep mansard roof lined with copper trim darkened to a rich patina.
Outside, our flag whips in the winter wind, the deep green fabric as vivid as the nearby waters of the Luminescent Lake.
Students enter in neat, orderly rows. Jack, Charlotte, and I blend with the flashes of green and black, our caps bobbing above the tide.
We step over the threshold into a foyer filled with impossibly lifelike holographic figures.
Each is a legend, the most distinguished Greens in our history, captured mid-stride, their translucent forms forever fencing, forever victorious.
We move through the halls, where bronze sconces burn along wainscoted walls. Oil portraits of former Grandmasters watch in silent judgment, their eyes following us past heavy doors, dark as cut obsidian. As we enter the drinking hall, I catch sight of Vincent Lee.
He stands near a Pinkie assistant, his cap pushed back, one hand resting on the hilt of his saber. Around me, murmurs swell as students realize they were wrong. Vincent isn’t our new Grandmaster. The gold badge on his suit jacket identifies him as our new Deputy, second-in-command.
But the rank is still high enough to make me curse my luck.
I’ll be forced to see Vincent every week now, dropped straight beneath the boot of his authority.
He could abuse it out of contempt for my place in Edmund’s entourage, or worse, out of revenge for my refusal to forgive him.
Ideas on how to avoid him are already forming, and I try to duck out of sight, but his eyes find mine across the crowd.
I tense, expecting a flash of resentment, but instead I see only desperation.
Vincent’s fingers flex at his side, and his eyebrows knit together, his expression less proud and more pleading, as if he still needs my forgiveness to make peace with himself.
For a moment, I feel a prick of guilt, and I can’t pinpoint why.
It’s strong enough that a tingling sensation runs through my palm, urging me to close the distance and offer him something small.
A simple handshake would be enough to show we’re no longer on opposite sides of the line his saber once drew.
It would be so easy, and yet, even as the guilt intensifies, I turn away.
The drinking hall is crowded now, filled with first-years still trying to process their surprise at being mistaken about Vincent being our new Grandmaster.
“If it is not Mr. Lee, then who is it?” someone asks.
That’s when a bell rings on the second floor, its deep, resonant toll echoing through the drinking hall. The line of students shifts, and every head turns toward the staircase.
I see his boots first as he descends, the polished black split-sole ones I gave him for his birthday last year; next, the long, muscular legs Vivian never shuts up about; then the double-breasted jacket, with the Grandmaster pin already attached: two crossed sabers, one slightly longer than the other.
And finally, the crown of curls, red as a dying sun.