CHAPTER 35
There can be love without happiness,
but never happiness without love.
—HENRY, A PINKIE
I’ve only lied to Charlotte a few times.
Once, I accidentally broke one of her porcelain jazz-dancer figurines and blamed it on her dad’s cat.
Another time, I told her I couldn’t go tap dancing because Mom said no, but really I was curled up in bed, surrounded by snacks, binge-watching a tragic romance series on my Bond, with tears and chocolate smudges all over.
Now I’m about to lie again.
It’s late afternoon, and the campus is bathed in cool spring light that makes the clouds look painted onto the sky.
I meet Charlotte on a dirt trail near the beach, one of dozens that wind through the forested edge of campus.
She’s just placed third in a competitive distance run, and her eyes are alight, like they always are when she bursts across the finish line, chest heaving and body glistening with sweat.
I think it’d be just as difficult for her to stop running as it was for me to stop fencing.
When she’s lost in the rhythm of her footsteps pounding the ground, she isn’t angry about Rosamund, sad about the breakup with Jack, or bitter about her fallout with her dad.
Out here, I know she finds purpose in pushing her body to the limit.
And whether she wins or not, it’s where she finds peace.
With the competition over, most of the paths are empty now, except for a few students hiking toward the observation decks. But even one pair of ears nearby means we have to keep our language formal. So Charlotte shoots me a text instead:
“Where were you when Jack, Dickie, and I went to Jolt & Jive? You said you were stuck, but you never explained.”
I tug on my earring, avoiding her gaze as I text back. “I meant I got held up, not literally stuck. I got some bad news. My dad’s running for governor of the Rainbow District.”
Charlotte lowers her water bottle with a gasp. “Oh shit. Seriously?”
I shrug like it doesn’t matter, like I’m not still buckling under the weight of the news. “Wasn’t really in the mood for a club after that. I went back to my suite for the rest of the night.”
She stashes her water bottle in her backpack, wipes the sweat from her hands, and threads her fingers through mine. “Lore, you should’ve said something. I would’ve ditched Jolt & Jive and brought over something stiff. We could’ve talked about it.”
“I know. I’m sorry. Just needed some time alone.”
I tug harder on my earring, and with every second that passes, I hate the lie a little more.
Because I wasn’t in my suite.
I was crouched, half-frozen, on Edmund’s balcony, biting my fist to keep from screaming as I watched his mother tear into him so violently that strips of skin hung from his face and chest. But unlike with the figurine or tap dancing, I don’t feel guilty about lying to Charlotte because this secret isn’t mine.
It’s Edmund’s. And I was never meant to witness it at all.
Still, I think I’m only one of many people carrying the secret.
Jack and Dickie likely know, too. The way they covered for Edmund during the week he disappeared—with straight-faced lies that melted into sweet-talk whenever Charlotte asked the wrong question—was too casual to be anything but routine.
What unsettles me most is that the boys don’t seem bothered by it.
When they tear through the corridors of the first-year Lecture Hall on hoverboards or flick coins into each other’s knuckles in the dining hall, the mood is boisterous and carefree.
Even Edmund, who has every right to blow us off and retreat into himself, laughs like he’s flooring a stolen car down an open road.
It makes me wonder whether Edmund is accustomed to the violence, whether what I witnessed wasn’t a rare outburst by his mother but a glimpse into the dark, doorless room he and Rosamund have lived in for years.
When I look at him now, seeing how hard he works to craft an illusion of ease, I can’t help but feel I’ve stolen from him. Even if I didn’t mean to, even if there was no way off the balcony, I’m still a thief carrying a piece of him in my pocket that he never willingly offered.
The wave of guilt that follows is overwhelming enough to make me start avoiding Edmund.
Whenever the five of us are together in his suite, I find ways to slip out of sight, boxing in the training room, texting my sisters on the balcony, or disappearing into the furthest corner of the library with a book I somehow manage to read without retaining a single word.
It works for a few days until Edmund starts seeking me out.
Once, on a rainy Sunday, he follows me into the bar after an hour-long lunch, during which the only thing I say to him is—Can you please pass the pepper?
—but I slip out before he has the chance to speak.
Another time, he appears in the library after his daily fencing practice with Jack and leans against the window seat where I’m perched, close enough to cast a shadow over the page of my book.
For a while, Edmund waits patiently for me to look up. When I don’t, he shifts restlessly until I catch the sharp line of his face in my periphery. I fight the thought of what it would feel like to touch it.
Finally, after a few minutes, he says, “Need a new book?”
“No,” I reply. “Why?”
“That one looks like it’s stressing you out.”
I glance up, and the sight of him drags me back to the moment on the balcony outside his suite.
I was sure that after his mother said she hated my family and warned him that staying near me would be a betrayal, he’d pull away.
But he looks like that horse again, and it’s no longer nosing the pen for weak spots.
It’s ramming the boards head-on, with splinters flying.
“It’s not the book,” I say.
I close the book and set it on the window seat. Edmund clocks the title, sees it’s about fencing, and then nods. “So, it’s me then?”
Yes, of course it’s him.
“No. It’s not you either.”
Edmund steps closer, and I see him fidgeting with his Altimor pocket watch in his left hand. He flips the watch open, fumbles it as though his palm is sweaty, then tucks it backward into his waistcoat without seeming to notice.
“You’re sure about that?” he asks.
I dodge the question with a smile. “If you really want to know, I’m stressed about finals. I still have a lot of studying to do. Actually, I need to head back now to finish a paper for Civilized World History.”
I grab my T-strap heels from the window seat and fumble with the buckles.
Now, when I’m counting more than ever on the stillness of my heart, it betrays me.
It hammers so hard my hands shake, and I can’t fasten the second strap.
I lower my leg, ready to leave it undone, when Edmund crouches in front of me and takes my foot into his hands.
His fingers brush carefully over my ankle, fastening the T-strap buckle like he’s handling something small that just hatched.
“This thing fights back,” he murmurs as he threads the strap through. “I could pick a lock easier.”
I stare down at him, caught in a dizzying heat, wishing the shoe had ten buckles instead of one. “If you think that’s hard, try walking in them.”
He laughs and looks up at me, his hands still holding my foot even though the strap is already fastened. It’s hardest to be near him when he looks at me like this: gentle yet scraping through me like sandpaper all the same.
“Edmund.”
The sound of his name makes him straighten, the way you do when someone calls you out of a crowd.
His grip tightens on my foot, his thumb pressing into my ankle as if in answer.
He keeps looking at me, and from the way he leans in, I know he wants to speak.
I lean closer too, pulled in like a flower turning toward the sunlight.
I could touch him. I know exactly where my fingers would land—his hair, his jaw, his mouth—the familiar features I’ve traced a thousand times in my head. The thought makes my vision swim.
Kiss me.
The moment the thought forms, I understand with startling clarity how weak my self-control really is. If Edmund did kiss me, I wouldn’t be able to resist.
I clench my fists, nails biting into my palms, trying to feel anything except how much I want him. The pressure keeps building until my skin breaks. I feel the sting, then the warmth of blood sliding down my wrist.
I look at it.
And in that single drop of green, the pain in my hand is replaced by a far more painful reminder of where a road like this one ends: a rabid crowd closing in, the word Vulgar hurled like a stone, the brutal hands of Coppers locking around my wrists, and the executioner’s smile flashing before the guillotine blade drops.
Fear crashes through me, and I yank my foot from Edmund’s grasp.
“T-thank you,” I say.
Edmund calls something after me as I leave, but I don’t hear what. I’m too consumed by fear, too devastated by the fact that I’m walking away from the man I want more than anyone I’ve ever wanted.
Back in my suite, I grab my fencing stick for a quick practice, but I feel too sick to swing it.
There’s a knot lodged deep in my stomach, vicious and fluttering, like wings beating against a glass jar.
I press my fist into the knot and bite back a sound because it hurts.
It’s not the soft, dreamy ache Vivian always described, or the dizzy butterflies she swore I’d feel someday.
This is wild, violent, and relentless, like being struck again and again from the inside.
I can’t go on like this. I can see exactly where it will end, with me doing something reckless, like taking a Bliss pill to feel anything other than this slow, grinding torture.
Edmund and I can never be together. A relationship with him, one where we could share a real future, is illegal. I not only have to accept this, but also act on it. That means opening myself up to the possibility of meeting someone else.