CHAPTER 41
A man may witness the turning of the world and bear faithful record of its course, but he is not meant to feel what he sees. For, to feel it, would be to carry every hope and every ruin, every triumph and every tragedy, until he shoulders the weight of the world itself.
—BENJAMIN BOGART, THE CIVILIZED VOICE
I keep my plan to tell Edmund the truth about Charles a secret from Dad. I already know what Dad would say, and I already know I’m going to disobey him again.
I’ve decided to tell Edmund next week, on Founders Day, during the private party he’s hosting aboard his yacht. He’ll ask me to stay in his entourage then. Before he does, I’ll tell him the truth.
I don’t know how Edmund will react. I can’t picture his face or imagine his words.
But I do know what the damage will feel like, because I’m living it.
It’s a slow, splintering grief that breaks apart piece by piece, carving deeply through my body until it feels like everything inside me is bleeding.
In the meantime, I do my best to distract myself.
Between practicing with my fencing stick, training new floor gymnastic routines, attending lectures, and studying for exams, I scroll obsessively through media coverage of the Blue trial, telling myself it’s out of curiosity rather than desperation.
The homepage of The Civilized Voice is always flooded with urgent, flashing headlines and breaking news alerts, though most of it is just noise.
Still, I check for updates every night, hoping something real might break through. And the night before Founders Day, it finally does.
I’m in the rose gardens of the Green Dormitory, playing croquet with Dickie as he quizzes me for our Civilized World History exam.
It’s something he’d never do under normal circumstances, but ever since I arranged that meeting for him with President Reeve, he’s been all grins and gratitude, throwing compliments like confetti and sprinting to my side whenever I so much as glance his way.
“Who led the Vanguard defense after the shield was breached near Brookstone City, and what did he claim in his memoirs?” Dickie asks as I swing my mallet. My ball sails cleanly through the wicket but stops an inch from his.
“General Whit Mercer,” I say grimly. “He called the Rangers sick, soulless animals. Every time one of their jets breached the shield, they targeted Offspring Institute labs where all the babies were.”
“Right.” A spark of something dark passes through Dickie’s eyes. Then, like a switch, his smirk slides back into place. “Thanks for the opening, broad.”
He lines up his shot with mock ceremony, gives a theatrical bow, and taps his ball into mine. The clack of the roquet rings through the garden. With a smug flick of his wrist, he swings again, sending my ball skipping into a rose bush.
“Enjoy the thorns,” he mutters, chuckling to himself.
Just then, a pretty student walks by, and Dickie straightens, puffing out his chest to better display the digital badge pinned to his suit jacket.
It shows a looping clip of him and President Reeve shaking hands.
Reeve wears a dignified smile, while Dickie beams, his thumbs up and his eyes wide with uncontainable joy.
The height difference is absurd; Reeve may be tall, but next to Dickie he looks like a tree stooping to shake hands with a blade of grass.
The girl catches sight of the badge and pauses, clearly impressed, though she tries to mask it with a scoff.
I can’t help but smile at the photo and at how much that moment meant to Dickie.
He dives back into his explanation of the Shield War, his words spilling out so fast I start counting his breaths to make sure he’s still taking them.
I drift toward the rose bush, trying to keep up as I search for my ball, when my Bond pings with a breaking news alert.
I tap the alert, and a banner from the Civilized Voice floods my screen.
brEAKING: HIGH-CITIZEN TRIAL SENT TO JURY AFTER STUNNING DEVELOPMENTS.
“Hey, broad, don’t you know the date? The year, at least?” Dickie snaps his fingers like I’m a wayward pupil. Instead of answering the question I didn’t even hear, I send him a link to the article.
Dickie goes silent, croquet mallet still in hand, as he skims the words. Then his eyes bulge wide.
We forget about both croquet and studying, holding our breath as we click on a video embedded in the article.
The footage shows Benjamin Bogart on the steps of the Hourglass Courthouse in Charleston City, framed between two double-headed eagle statues, each with its wings spread wide enough to cast a long, unbroken shadow.
From Bogart’s rigid posture and solemn, fiery gaze, I never would’ve guessed he and Scarlett Du Pont had gotten back together if I hadn’t seen the headline last week.
“It has been, ladies and gentlemen, a devastatingly dramatic day here at the Hourglass Courthouse. For days, legal analysts predicted a swift acquittal or, at worst, a hung jury. The defense had done its part: cross-examining witnesses, exposing inconsistencies, and systematically dismantling the prosecution’s case. The tide, it seemed, had turned.”
The screen splits as courtroom footage rolls, overlaid with Bogart’s somber voice.
The two accused Blues sit shoulder to shoulder at the defense table, both clean-cut and unnervingly still.
Their cold, uniform expressions reek of something military, a covert unit that doesn’t officially exist until the high-citizens need someone silenced.
More than men on trial, they look like men between assignments.
The only Blue at the table who looks afraid is the one with the least reason to be: the defense attorney.
He’s crouched between the accused Blues, whispering rapidly, one hand braced on the table and the other clutching a digital tablet that trembles in his grip.
His smile is broad and brittle, the kind worn by men already feeling the loss before it comes.
One of the accused Blues exhales through his nose, visibly irritated.
Bogart waves a hand, and the footage vanishes.
“Everything changed shortly after nine o’clock this morning.
A key witness, whose earlier refusal to testify dealt a near-fatal blow to the prosecution, returned to the stand.
Agatha Grey. She is a senior aide to Representative Lorraine Russell of the Orange District and was a direct witness to the assassination attempt on President Reeve at the Bridge Banquet. ”
Bogart lowers his head, letting the silence stretch long enough to feel like a stage cue.
Dickie groans and flails his croquet mallet. “Speed it up, you gilded gasbag! Spit it out already!”
Bogart presses on. “Miss Grey entered the courtroom visibly shaken. Her hands trembled as she was sworn in. And yet… she testified, under oath, that she had received direct threats. That her family had been followed by unmarked drones. That she had been warned to stay silent about what she witnessed that night. And still, she identified the shooters. Both of them.”
A brief clip plays across the screen. Agatha sits on the witness stand, her shoulders squared beneath her burnt-orange blouse. Her pale eyes are rimmed with red, and her lips move slowly, as if each word is torn from a place of deep, wrenching fear.
“Following Miss Grey’s testimony,” Bogart continues, “she and her family were placed under immediate protective custody.” He lifts a finger with a tone of finality. “And then came the final blow.”
The courtroom vanishes, replaced by a rapid collage of Bond footage stitched together by prosecutors overnight.
“This,” Bogart says, “is footage recovered from individual Bonds, submitted by guests of the Bridge Banquet. Time-stamped. Verified. And, as of this morning, admitted into evidence.”
Dickie snorts like he heard a bad joke. “Took ’em long enough. What’d they need to finally find their nerves? A handwritten invitation to hell?” He leans on his mallet like it’s a cane, tapping it on the ground as he mutters.
Then the clip plays, and he goes still. The mallet stiffens in his grip as the footage shows the two accused Blues, disguised in Copper uniforms, raising their guns in the crowd at the Bridge Banquet and firing at President Reeve.
The slow-motion frame captures the bullets leaving the chambers in a trail of proof so damning that the accused Blues might as well have turned the guns on themselves.
“The defense objected to the admission of this evidence,” Bogart says, standing tall as he descends the courthouse steps. “They argued it was circumstantial and did not meet the standard of proof. But the judge overruled the objection.”
Bogart pauses at the bottom step, his gaze lifting to the double-headed eagle statues, as if weighing what that symbol will mean should the accused Blues be convicted.
Then, with a tragic sigh, he continues, “At 4:00 p.m. today, both the prosecution and the defense gave their closing statements. Directly afterward, the jury was sent to deliberate.”
The camera cuts back to the courtroom, where the accused Blues sit straight-backed and silent.
One glances repeatedly toward the exit, while the other taps his fingers against his thigh in a slow, agitated rhythm.
Their attorney wipes sweat from his upper lip and leans in for a hushed exchange.
One of the accused Blues mutters under his breath, his eyes flicking toward the jury chamber.
Bogart’s voice returns: “It bears repeating, ladies and gentlemen, that if the accused are convicted, the sentence is death… And, as we all know, there has never been a public execution of a high-citizen in the history of the Civilized World.”
He pauses, his face drawn tight with something close to fear. Then, on a breath barely louder than a whisper, he adds, “But in a matter of hours that precedent may fall.”
The camera zooms out to reveal the entire courthouse, with sunbaked stone and a copper dome aged to a soft green patina, its beauty too serene for the storm brewing inside. Then the video cuts out.
For a long moment, neither Dickie nor I speaks. The garden is eerily silent, interrupted only by the gentle bubbling of the nearby stone fountains. Finally, Dickie lifts his mallet and, with a casual pivot of his feet, lines up his shot.
“Guilty, or no?” he asks.
“I’m not sure,” I say, my mind already drifting to jury tampering. “You?”
“Guilty.” Dickie swings his mallet, and the crack of wood against the ball echoes like a gavel. “Guilty, and already halfway down the chute.”
He waves for me to hurry and take my turn, then pulls a fistful of chocolate-covered fruit from his pocket and crams it into his mouth.
I watch him, waiting for some sign of fear or doubt, but none comes.
Instead, he looks resolute, almost eager, as if he’s already booked a front-row seat to the execution.
For a moment, I don’t recognize him. He looks hungry for something I can’t quite identify, something no amount of sugar can ever satisfy. Whatever it is, it makes him seem old enough that, for a brief, alarming instant, I don’t see the scrawny, freckled boy I know but a man seeking justice.
Or maybe it’s revenge.