CHAPTER 36
I asked her once what she thought love was. She told me love was sacrifice, and only then, after so many years, did I finally understand her choice.
—EVELYN WALDSTEN
Joining Edmund in the evenings is still a bad idea.
I’m not a Pinkie without feelings, built to follow a specific program.
I’m a girl knocked sideways, falling in love for the first time.
Being near him is a straight road to disaster, and if it were only the two of us tonight, I would’ve said no to the horse race.
But it won’t just be us. With Charlotte, Jack, and Dickie always around, we’ll never really be alone.
Charlotte comes to my suite to get ready.
My Pinkie moves briskly around the room, reciting riding etiquette as it applies our makeup and arranges our hair.
I rifle through my closet, cycling through four outfits before finally settling on a crisp plastron shirt, dark green breeches, white show gloves, and a double-vented hacking jacket with horn buttons.
As much as it sometimes hurts to be around Edmund, I’m still looking forward to seeing him. The thought of his face flushing when he laughs is enough to set my heart racing, and I find myself drifting around the room, so light I feel tipsy.
When the Pinkie fastens my pearl earrings in place, my eyes drift to the jewelry stand, to the lone diamond teardrop hanging there without its match. The other one is still missing, probably gone for good. I don’t want to imagine the look on Vivian’s face when I tell her I lost it.
Charlotte, who was excited about going riding earlier, now stands coyly at the mirror, pinning her curls back with a pair of diamond-studded pins. She hasn’t said much since she arrived.
“Did you get a haircut?” I ask her while the Pinkie touches up my makeup.
She shrugs. “Yeah. Did it myself last night.”
“I thought you were growing it back.”
“I wanted to.”
“So, why’d you cut it?”
Charlotte loops a curl around her finger, tugging it a little too roughly, then sighs. “Long hair is for the good times, Lore.”
I drift to her side, knowing she means before her breakup with Jack. “Any progress with him?”
“Yeah. A lot, actually, but….” Her voice hardens, then softens, like something melting. “Things are never gonna go back to the way they were.”
I try to look encouraging as I crouch and zip up her high-shine leather dress boots. Edmund has his fair share of enemies, but I can’t figure out who Charlotte could’ve been involved with that made both Jack and Edmund so angry they cut her off completely.
“It might help if I knew who he was,” I say softly, hoping she’ll open up to me.
Instead, Charlotte stares at her reflection, her lips pressed into a thin line, as if gearing up to punch it. When she finally turns to me, the hollow sheen in her eyes makes it clear this is one secret she’s never going to offer up willingly.
As we head outside, I tell myself some things are better left in the closet. After what I saw between Edmund and his mother, I should know that better than anyone.
Edmund’s midnight blue hovercar is already waiting outside the Green Dormitory, its back gullwing door swung wide.
The boys are leaning against the decorative grille, looking like they drove through a wave of stardust with the windows down.
Even Dickie, who’s not exactly easy on the eyes, could make a horse whinny in his dressage tailcoat.
Charlotte walks ahead of me in silence, nursing her wounds, until she spots the hovercar idling by the curb. Then a switch flips. She’s all delight and diamonds, swaying her hips with effortless charm as she calls to the boys, “I hope you are saving the window seats for the ladies.”
The sight makes my heart ache.
“Take the window seat, darling. Dickie and I are taking the bike.” Jack jerks his thumb at the big, dust-streaked hoverbike leaning against the curb.
Charlotte’s smile softens, wistful, as if she’s remembering all the nights she rode behind Jack on it. Then she turns to the public hoverboard rack, pulls one free, and powers it on.
“Try to keep up,” she says with a wink.
Jack laughs, though there’s a trace of regret in it. He’s much easier to read when he’s sober. “I’ll even give you a head start,” he calls, waving her forward.
Charlotte rockets down the street. Jack and Dickie hop on the hoverbike and race after her, leaving a trail of dust and smoke, while Dickie’s Pinkie chaperone follows on a hoverboard.
It’s only after their echoes fade that I realize they’ve left Edmund and me alone.
He’s still leaning against the ornamental grille, already a test of my restraint in the tailored riding outfit Dickie gave him for his birthday.
The shadows beneath his eyes that I noticed in the lecture room are gone, replaced by a bright, sharpened alertness, like an animal that’s caught a scent.
“Ladies first,” he says.
I quietly unravel under his gaze. The way he looks at me is gentle, yet it feels like a touch, like the brush of a fingertip across bare skin.
My heart kicks hard as I climb into the back seat, which suddenly feels too small and enclosed.
Yet deep inside, the part of me I’m still fighting, there’s no place I’d rather be.
Edmund steps in after me and lowers himself into the seat opposite, so we’re facing each other.
The hovercar lifts off and veers down the street, heading northeast toward the Moonshine Mile.
As we speed through a string of green lights, he flips open the console bar and pulls out a long, iridescent bottle shaped like something that might hatch if you stare at it too long.
“What kind of alcohol is that?” I ask, reading the Knucklebone label.
“Brandy.” He pops the cork out the window. “Two shots will have you eating dirt, but one will keep your hands steady. These horses are engineered.”
“How fast can they run?”
“A hundred.”
My eyebrows shoot up. Vivian’s fastest horse at home barely ever breaks seventy miles per hour.
Edmund hands me a shot, and I throw it back. The Knucklebone burns across my tongue, but I hardly taste it. I’m too busy noticing that, unlike Jack, drinking suits Edmund. It turns up the light in his eyes and puts a flush in his cheeks, as if he’s come off a sprint in the summer heat.
“So,” he says, setting his glass in the console, “what’d you think of my bedroom?”
I choke on air more than liquor. “W-What?”
“My bedroom.” His tone is easy, but his eyes aren’t. “Do I have style?”
My thoughts race, already plotting how to strangle Dickie if he told. “How do you know I went in?”
“You left evidence.” Edmund slips a hand into his pocket and pulls out my missing diamond teardrop earring.
Relief surges, but it dies just as quickly under the rush of heat flooding my face.
“I… t-the door was unlocked,” I stammer. “I wanted to see what it looked like, and then I saw the Vanguard uniform, and—” I cut myself off. Excuses won’t help. They never do. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have gone in.”
“You going in isn’t a problem. That’s why I left it unlocked.” Edmund hands me the earring, then pulls a bottle of champagne from the console and unwinds the wire at its neck. “I didn’t notice it on the floor. Even stepped on it once, I think. Miss Hussey’s the one who found it.”
Shit.
Dickie said Irene searches Edmund’s room every time she visits, hunting for proof of Edmund’s mistresses. Now that she’s found the earring, she’s probably funneling all her resources into finding out who it belongs to.
“Miss Hussey already suspected I had a girl,” Edmund says, ripping the wire free. “Now she’s sure of it.”
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper. “I didn’t mean to make it worse.”
He shrugs. “It was already worse.” He smooths the wire flat against his knee, then extends it toward me. “Pick a shape.”
I blink at him, confused. “Aren’t you angry?”
“A little, sure. But only at your earring.” His eyes hold mine, still bright from the brandy. Then, softer: “Go on. Choose.”
I study his face, expecting at least a shadow of resentment. My mistake has thrown a wrench into his already strained arrangement with Irene, yet he sits there smiling, as if he’s just been told the Vanguard program is being relaunched.
“You choose,” I say.
Edmund studies the wire as the campus blurs past us, light scattering over his cheekbones like showers of prisms. At the next red light, he starts bending one end into the shape of a petal.
I lean closer, drawn in by the gentle way his large hands move.
Every curl of the wire is careful, almost delicate, reminding me of how he held my waist on the surfboard.
He’s so big and bullish, like a firework in the middle of a library, yet somehow, he knows how to dim himself enough not to burn me.
I let my head rest against the window as he bites through a piece of wire to begin the second petal. Part of me wants to stay silent and let him work, but another part is tired of guarding secrets that no longer matter.
“Irene didn’t just suspect you had a girl before she found the earring,” I say. “She was convinced of it.”
Edmund’s fingers keep moving, though a small crease forms at the corners of his eyes. “How do you know that?”
“Because she offered me a deal at the Speakeasy. She said she wouldn’t kill me if I agreed to spy on you and hand over the names of your mistresses.”
His hands pause on the half-formed petal. “Mistresses?”
“Yeah. Irene thought you had more than one.”
Edmund tips his head back and breaks into a loud, amused laugh. “Didn’t realize she gave me that much credit. And you, Miss Waldsten—lucky you turned her down.”
“Why?”
“Because I would’ve caught you.”
I frown. “How?”
“You’re a good liar—almost as good as Dickie—but you’ve got a tell.”
I feign calm as I reach for the champagne, pop the cork, and sip from the bottle. “What do you mean?”
Edmund points to my ear. “You pull your left earring when you lie. Sometimes just before, sometimes right after.”