CHAPTER 36 #2
Every lie I’ve told him races through my mind, especially the one about why I quit fencing. Did he know I was lying then? And if he did, why didn’t he say anything until now?
“What else do you think I’ve lied about?”
He bites the wire again, grinning around it. “No. I’m not gonna embarrass you like that.”
It’s too late. I’m already embarrassed enough to stick my head in the console and slam it shut.
But maybe I deserve it. After all the lies and false fronts, maybe this is my penance.
I shrink lower in my seat, my throat burning as I run through every moment that I tugged that damn earring without realizing it.
Mom does the same thing when she’s nervous.
I slide off my jacket, suddenly too hot. “Doesn’t it bother you that I’ve lied?”
Edmund leans back and turns the wire faster between his fingers, as if he’s trying to finish before we reach the stables. “Didn’t expect you to be straight with me when we first met. Half the time, you looked like you wanted to bite my head off. But now? Yeah, I’d rather you were honest.”
“I don’t like lying,” I say, and I mean it. “But sometimes I need to lie.”
“When do you need to lie?”
My heart pounds hard enough to shake the answer loose, the truth I don’t dare speak aloud. “For low-citizens, lies and secrets are sometimes the only way to survive.”
“You’re less alone in that than you think.
” His tone is unexpectedly understanding, as if, beneath the cold machinery of rank, he’s convinced we’re not as different as I claim.
“Lies and secrets are currency for high-citizens. We trade in them. And yeah—I’ve got my share.
But they don’t stay quiet forever. Hold onto them too long, and they’ll turn on you. ”
I fall silent, wondering if he’s referring to his mother’s abuse. But there’s no bitterness in his expression, only an edge of regret, so I’m sure he’s talking about something else.
Outside, the Moonshine Mile unfurls in a wash of neon.
Our hovercar coasts past buildings frosted like cakes, past the violet glow of the Lotus Lounge, where lotus flowers twist around marble columns, blooming only when the club is open.
A little farther on, we stop beside the stables, where Charlotte, Jack, and Dickie are already waiting.
I turn back to Edmund. He’s leaning under the ceiling light, squinting as he shapes the last petal and straightens the end into a stem.
“If that’s what you really believe,” I say quietly, “why not share all your secrets with me, then?”
His shoulders stiffen, as if I’ve pulled the one thread I shouldn’t. His eyes lift to mine, conflicted. “You sure you want that?”
I tighten my grip on the champagne bottle’s neck, pushing past the warning in my head. “One secret, yes. One answer.”
“All right.”
Edmund holds the flower toward me. It’s a daffodil, impossibly detailed for something twisted from a champagne cork wire in only a few minutes. The petals spread in thin, delicate curves, and the corona at the center flares just enough to mimic the real flower.
I smile and set down the champagne bottle.
“Well?” he asks.
“Daffodils are my favorite.”
“I know.”
He reaches across the seat, his fingers brushing mine as he places the wire daffodil in my palm. The touch feels as warm as desert wind, coursing up my arms and down my legs until it hurts to hold it in. I barely notice Dickie’s muffled voice cutting through the window.
“Hurry it up already. Waiting on you two is like trying to herd snails.”
Edmund draws his hand back slowly, his fist tightening at his side as if he needs the force to ground himself. “Go on. Ask me. I won’t lie.”
I clamp my arms across my chest, feeling as if my heart might spill out otherwise. But it hides nothing. He already hears the strain in my breath.
“Edmund… Why are you breaking all your rules?”
“Which rules?”
“That we’re not supposed to be alone. You said it more than once. And yet, these past weeks, it’s like you’ve been finding ways for it to be just us.”
He nods, unapologetic. “You’re right. I have.”
I meet his eyes, and the air between us shivers. “And what about touching me? That was your rule, too. A rule you break every day. And I wish—” My voice cracks as if it were torn on my teeth. “Edmund, can’t you see? It’s hard enough just being near you. Why are you making it worse?”
His eyes drift over my face, as if what’s unbearable isn’t the closeness but the distance. He leans forward, ready to answer, when Dickie raps impatiently against the window. Irritation cuts across Edmund’s expression. He waves Dickie off, then turns back to me. “I’ll tell you. But not here.”
“Then where?”
“Later,” he says quietly. “We’ll break off from the others.”
His hand closes around the door handle, then stills. He glances back, and in his eyes, I see the promise to be careful, as if he knows that, like the wire daffodil he gave me, I wouldn’t survive a fall to the floor.
The stables echo with the crack of riding crops as high-citizens mount their massive, muscle-bound horses, which snort and paw the ground like beasts bred to run with lions.
The Blues’ gazes skim over anyone too short or too small to meet their eye level, so hardly anyone notices me as I pass.
Their attention gathers instead around Edmund.
He moves effortlessly among them, greeting Blues by name and shaking hands, his smile bright and open.
Someone asks him to join their riding group; Edmund declines with an apology, promising to make it up to them by inviting them to a party in his suite.
Another Blue leans in to catch what Edmund says, then laughs and replies, “I’ve risked broken bones for less. ”
I slip the wire daffodil into my jacket pocket with a shaky hand, still recovering from the conversation in the hovercar, then join Charlotte by her horse.
The stables are crowded tonight, overbooked, so only three mounts are available.
Jack volunteers to take his hoverbike, while Dickie’s Pinkie chaperone remains on its hoverboard, and Dickie himself wriggles onto the back of Charlotte’s horse.
“Do stop squeezing me like that, Mr. Langely,” she huffs. “I am not one of your video game controllers.”
Dickie smirks. “You wouldn’t be complaining if I were Jack.”
Warmth rushes to Charlotte’s cheeks. Avoiding Jack’s gaze, she yanks off her glove and jams it into Dickie’s mouth.
He spits it out and smugly snickers until Jack shoots him a look.
I strap on my helmet and follow a Pinkie to my horse, a shiny thoroughbred that’s the same dark brown as Edmund’s hair.
Beside me, Edmund mounts a black Friesian, its mane flowing in long waves down to its legs like a defiant brushstroke.
The horse is enormous, so tall that when Edmund settles into the saddle, his head nearly grazes the stable ceiling.
Jack swings onto his hoverbike and snaps up the kickstand. “We taking the usual? Up to Brass-Spire Ridge?”
“Yeah. But we can do better.” Edmund gathers the reins, leather creaking against his gloves. “You, Dickie, and Miss Deering take Switchbacks Trail. Miss Waldsten and I will take Fernway. Winning team gets to decide what we do tomorrow.”
“Fernway’s longer,” Jack points out.
“Sure. But Switchbacks is steeper.”
“All right, then.” Jack spikes his hoverbike’s power core, grinning as if it’s the sound of a lover. “I’ll blow you a kiss from the top.”
Charlotte glances back at me to check whether I’m okay with splitting up.
I shrug casually, even though sweat slicks my forehead beneath my helmet.
She nods, then kicks her horse forward and follows the roar of Jack’s hoverbike out of the stables.
They ride side by side into the warm evening, like a scene from a film I once saw in which a man leaped from his hoverbike onto a woman’s horse and kissed her mid-canter.
I turn to Edmund, ready to ask whether we’re really taking Fernway Trail, when he brushes past the Pinkie that’s holding out his helmet and spurs his horse from the stable.
I follow, swept up in the rush despite myself.
Every bit of sense tells me to turn back, but I don’t want to. Tonight, I want to break my rules, too.
Edmund leads us out of the Moonshine Mile and onto the paths reserved for Blues, which extend into the mountains along the northwest edge of campus.
The evening air is hot and muggy, but Fernway lies primarily under forest cover.
The tree branches weave a canopy overhead, breaking the last of the light into fractured gold as the trail begins its ascent toward Brass-Spire Ridge.
Hooves drum against the rocky slope, each stride jarring up through my legs until my thighs burn from holding steady in the stirrups.
I haven’t ridden since before arriving at Grandmaster, and it shows.
Sweat streams down my back in the stifling heat, and all I can think about is water.
Edmund rides alongside me, his body tuned to the horse’s wild, unruly gait as if he’s ridden it before.
He keeps glancing at me—at the squeeze of my legs against the saddle, at the arch of my neck as I brace against the pine-scented wind.
Each time, he forces his eyes forward again, tightening the reins as though reining himself in, too.
For twenty minutes, we push along Fernway, passing Blues and their entourages on the winding path through the trees.
Then Edmund cues his mount with a light neck rein, and the horse veers onto a narrow switchback that twists over damp roots and old deadfall.
The trail opens at last to a clearing overgrown with bright, feathery dandelions.
Thin waterfalls cascade in silver sheets over moss-dark stones, breaking into a creek that flows through the forest, bubbling like the laughter of the mountain.
We guide our horses to the stream bank to drink. I take off my helmet and shake out my damp hair, grateful for the cool air after the grind of the climb.