CHAPTER 43
The only man I regret killing is the one who smiled, for he had the dignity to laugh at his own misfortune.
JULIAN LAKE, MASTER OF ARMS
Terror slams through me as every eye on the deck of the yacht turns toward me.
For a moment, Irene stares, her body unnaturally still, as if her mind is frozen on the words.
Rosamund, meanwhile, transforms the instant her accusation leaves her mouth.
Her lips peel back over her teeth, and her gaze rakes over me with slow, crawling revulsion.
I know she’s picturing Edmund and me together, and the thought makes her sick.
But it’s the Coppers who unnerve me most, all Greens, all glaring.
The sergeant, the one with the honor scar who only suspected this morning, looks at me now as if certain of my betrayal.
My disgrace. His eyes cut through me, as if demanding to know why.
What pushed me over the edge? Did I crawl into a Blue’s bed for protection?
For civil credits? Or was it all for nothing?
Did I do it because I was stupid enough to believe Edmund loves me?
I don’t understand.
I don’t know what Rosamund saw to make her accuse me, but it doesn’t matter. Everyone believes her. I can see the truth sinking in like a drop of poison spreading through the bloodstream.
I stumble back a step, then another, my hands groping blindly at my face, my hair, searching for the thing that gave me away… and then I feel my earring.
The diamond teardrop I lost in Edmund’s room, the one Irene found. Of course, she photographed the earring and sent a copy to Rosamund. Unable to track me down herself while under house arrest, Irene sent her bloodhounds after me. Now one of them has caught me.
I want to scream. I want to rip off the earrings and hurl them into the lake. I shouldn’t have worn them in the first place, but then again, Irene and Rosamund weren’t supposed to be here.
Irene steps toward me, and I straighten even as my lungs constrict with sudden, blinding panic.
The Coppers close ranks behind her, hands moving toward their weapons as a silent warning to Irene not to overstep.
But she’s still too close. I can smell the bitter tang of her isolation, the long, suffocating months she’s spent locked away.
Her eyes fall to the teardrop earring, and the muscles in her face begin to quiver.
Her expression turns brittle at the edges, so fragile I can almost hear it crack.
“So that’s why you refused my offer,” Irene says. “Why you wouldn’t help me find the woman my fiancé was betraying me with. Because it was you all along.”
I try to back away, but my foot hits the railing.
“She gave him Ernest’s Vanguard badge,” Rosamund cuts in. “That’s how deep it goes. I always wondered why she handed it over. I thought it was a bribe at first. But now it all fits.”
I grip the railing, realizing there’s no way out. Neither of their accusations is true, but at this point, they might as well be, because they’re right. I’ve become the very woman Irene wanted me to hunt.
“It wasn’t true then,” I say, holding my voice steady. “But it is now.”
The words leave my mouth like an obscenity, and for a moment, every face around me goes slack.
Then the Coppers pivot sharply, hands twitching toward their weapons as if fighting the urge to draw on me.
Rosamund shudders with a fury so dark I can see her regretting that she didn’t kill me herself.
Beside her, Irene’s mouth flattens into a thin, bloodless line.
To her, I’m more than a traitor; I’m a humiliation.
I’m a low-citizen thief who seduced her fiancé, stealing her honor with him. And now she has to reclaim it.
Irene lowers her head, shoulders rolling forward, and goes still in that dreadful, final way.
That’s when I know.
She’s going to kill me.
The Coppers leap into motion as Irene’s hand flies to the saber at her hip.
Their boots pound the deck, and their arms shoot out, seizing her before she can draw.
The sergeant orders her to stand down, but she resists, thrashing in their grip, lunging against them, muscles straining until the veins in her neck swell.
Her voice breaks through the commotion, righteous and certain:
“By the rights afforded me under the Civilized Constitution, I name you, Loredana Waldsten, as challenger. I invoke the rite of final contest to settle this matter by blood. Choose your witness. Choose your weapon. I have named the hour—and the hour is now.”
Irene thrusts her Blood Ring toward mine.
The scan completes before I can pull away, and my Bond flashes with a duel request.
Accept or decline: countdown, thirty seconds.
Oh, shit.
The Coppers advance, weapons lowered but ready.
“Miss Hussey, this challenge is invalid,” the sergeant growls. “You are barred from initiating a sanctioned duel with a key witness in an active case. Withdraw immediately.”
Irene spits at his feet. Her chest heaves in jagged bursts, her knuckles trembling with the effort to force her saber free of its scabbard.
My Bond screen glows brighter, urging me to choose an option.
If I decline, the shame will follow me forever.
It’ll be a permanent black mark on my record, cowardice written into every future that might have been mine.
But the Coppers won’t let a death duel happen under these circumstances.
I won’t have to fight. I just have to protect my name.
I accept.
Irene lifts her head as if she smells blood. “So, you accept?”
“Yes.”
“Enough,” the sergeant barks, shoving himself between us. “The duel is unlawful and will not proceed. Miss Waldsten, return below deck. Miss Hussey, you will follow us now or face resistance charges.”
The other Coppers continue to restrain Irene. One Copper’s hand hovers near his pistol, and though he looks prepared to draw, his darting glance reveals doubt about whether he can stop her if she truly breaks.
“This is a matter of honor, sergeant,” Irene declares. “Will you deny me the right to reclaim it?”
“You may submit a challenge if you are exonerated. Not before. The court proceedings must come first.”
Irene bares her teeth in a silent snarl. The heat of her fury seems to warp the air between us. “You accepted the duel challenge, Miss Waldsten. And yet you have no saber?”
“She can use mine,” Rosamund says.
Rosamund draws her saber and tries to press it toward me, but I jerk back as though the graphene itself might burn me. The blade slips from Rosamund’s hand and clatters onto the deck near my foot.
“What’s the matter?” Irene snaps. “Too cowardly to defend your dishonor?”
Rosamund’s gaze sharpens, and the manic gleam in her eyes dims for the first time, as if she sees something Irene doesn’t.
She bends, lifts the saber, and offers it again.
I retreat, too quickly and too desperately. That’s all it takes.
“Why, Miss Waldsten,” Rosamund murmurs, suspicion coiling in her tone, “are you so afraid to touch a weapon?”
My throat locks. “Because the duel is illegal. We are not allowed to fight.”
I swing toward the sergeant, willing him to act.
With a sharp step forward, he seizes Irene by the arm. “Your saber, Miss Hussey, or I’ll take it off you myself.”
Irene’s attention lingers on his hand, already resting on his unsnapped gun holster, and her nostrils flare in frustration.
Then, slowly, she unsheathes her saber and hands it over.
The sergeant takes the weapon as if it might go off in his hands, then pockets it with a breath that’s half relief, half disbelief.
“You will return to your suite, Miss Hussey. No resistance.”
Irene bites off a curse, her fingers twitching as if reaching for a weapon that’s no longer there. Still, she gives a curt nod. The Coppers close in, forcing her back, their grips loosening as they guide her toward the hoverboats.
“Lore, are you still up here?” Charlotte’s voice rises from below deck, echoing off the wooden planks. She turns the corner with her Bond activated. When she sees all of us clustered together, her face tightens into a frown. “What’s going on up here?”
“Nothing to concern yourself with, Miss Deering.” The sergeant pivots toward her. “Please return below deck.”
The moment he turns his back, Irene lunges.
She rips free with a violent twist and arcs toward me.
In a flash, her fingers clamp around my wrist. There’s a crack, followed by a hot sting across my skin as the Rippletone that Edmund gave me tears loose.
Irene tosses the bracelet onto the deck, where it skitters and rolls to a stop.
I dive for the Rippletone instinctively, just as Irene’s leg sweeps up. I react a second too late. The kick strikes my ribs with enough force to steal my breath, the pain like something caving in. My body folds, then lifts, and the world flips upside down.
My sandals catch the railing as I tumble over. For a breathless moment, the sky tilts above me, bruised and blinking with early stars. I hear Charlotte scream, Rosamund gasp, the sergeant shout over pounding boots, and Irene grunt as the Coppers tackle her.
But I’m already falling.
I expect wind. I expect fear. Instead, there’s a metal rod slamming into my shoulder, followed by the give of a body beneath me and a startled, terrified cry. Dickie.
I crash against the gunwale of his hoverboat, which has risen halfway up the port side of the yacht.
The craft lurches and flips with a shriek of tearing steel, hurling both of us into the open air.
For a split second, I see Dickie falling beside me, arms wheeling, mouth stretched in a scream.
The lake surges up fast, glowing blue and roaring with bioluminescent light.
My head rings, my pulse races, and my mind narrows to a single, searing thought:
Dickie doesn’t know how to swim.
Dickie hits the lake first.