CHAPTER 49 #2
I mean to wait for another tram, but I can’t think straight enough to read the departure board. My feet carry me forward until my fingers brush the cold, wet iron of the facility gates.
Behind me, I hear Edmund follow.
“Loredana.” His voice slips in like a blade between my ribs. “Will you do what I did? Prove yourself?”
I turn on him, barely able to contain my shock. It only deepens when I see his face, still carved with a sadness that seems to rot through the middle of him. Why? I could forgive bitterness. I could even forgive rage. But this sadness… this I can’t forgive.
Again, the sense that I’m only seeing half the picture emerges.
“This isn’t you, Edmund,” I shout, hardly recognizing the face I’ve kissed so many times.
Is someone forcing him to do this? I don’t know. The only thing I can say for sure is that whoever this man is, he’s not the one I fell in love with, as if I watered a tree only to find it’s grown into a gallows.
“It wasn’t me then,” Edmund says quietly, “but it is me now.” He nods toward the vial of Bliss in my hand. “Will you take it?”
“No!” My voice rips out, ragged. I throw the Bliss vial to the ground and crush it under the heel of my shoe.
“I won’t. Don’t pretend this is a choice.
You know exactly what you’re doing. You know that once you force this, there’s no going back.
We can’t be together. We can’t even be friends.
Because I’ll hate you, Edmund. I’ll hate you until I die.
You can break me—you already have—but you’ll never touch my dad. ”
Edmund takes it without flinching, rain streaming down his face, his hair plastered to his forehead. I know he sees how desperate I am, how wrecked, and still he stands there, driving the knife deeper.
“How will you protect your father?” he asks quietly. “Without a saber?”
My throat knots as I realize he knows about my weapons restriction. He must’ve spent the last few days digging up every secret I tried to hide. “What do you mean? Is that a threat?”
“Not from me. From my kind. Your father is brave, yes, but a man who walks alone will always lose.”
“He’s not alone,” I fire back, the words tearing from my heart. “I’m with him.”
“Yes.” Edmund’s mouth tightens. “And you’re just as helpless.”
That does it. That’s the final, fatal cut.
I draw myself up, my chest heaving so hard my vision blurs. My hand dives into my pocket, fingers curling around the wire daffodil until it bites into my palm. I rip the flower out and throw it at him.
“I was wrong about you, Edmund! About everything. You’re a Blue. You do strike back, and you always will. You really are a beast.”
The words leave my mouth before I can stop them, before I remember whose nightmare I’ve spoken aloud. Edmund recoils visibly, as if I tore open the scars with my bare teeth.
For a moment, he stands there, rain dripping from his suit, the sadness inside him growing deathly still. Then, slowly, I see him remember the fencing room, his mother’s nails tearing his skin, the moment she told him he needed to become a beast. And now he knows I saw it all.
Edmund’s eyes turn dark, like a void, sealing shut right in front of me.
“Excuse me, miss.” His voice drifts, as if his mind is already somewhere else. “I’m late for my train.”
He turns and walks away, vanishing into the rain, so heavy now that I can’t see our colors anymore. But I know exactly what they are. He’s Blue. I’m Green. And I’ll never forget it again.
I stay rooted where Edmund left me, my teeth clacking like rocks in a jar as I struggle to grasp the finality of what’s happened: how cleanly he carved himself out of my life and left me here, gutted yet too stunned to cry.
The heartbreak, confusion, and regret swirl into muddy puddles at my feet.
But cutting through it all, raw and relentless, is something fiercer.
Rage.
When I lift my eyes, I see the root of Dad’s war, my ruin, and Edmund’s cage, this whole rotten lie we live inside: the Genetic Engineering Facility.
I crouch before I know I’ve decided. My wet hand closes around a stone by the sidewalk. I stagger back, plant my feet, and hurl it at the metal gates.
Then I scream, my voice splitting open under the storm. “Fuck you!”
A sharp grunt cuts through the rain, followed by a very human curse, echoing back like my own.
Oh no.
I lurch forward, splashing through puddles until I spot a man slouched on a bench inside the gate.
His suit is a burst of orange against the gray downpour, unbuttoned at the collar, the fabric plastered to his broad frame.
He’s older than most students—a sixth-year, maybe.
His hair is slicked flat to his forehead, and a gaping cut blooms above one brow, bright orange blood mixing with the rain as it runs down his jawline.
I shoulder through the gate and skid to a stop a few feet in front of him, heart hammering.
“Sir, I apologize. I did not—”
I freeze as I remember the formal introduction law.
The man squints at me through the rain, glances at the departing tram, then fixes his gaze on me.
“All right,” he says at last. “I forgive you. But only because your Blue probably won’t.”
I stiffen as confusion cuts through my anger. Why is he talking to me? Doesn’t he care about the law? My eyes drop to his Blood Ring, where I catch the shimmer of a blue band circling his thumb. An Aegis.
The man leans back on the bench, studying me like I’m a rumor he’s finally bothered to verify… and found disappointing.
“You look like you’ve got something on your mind,” he says.
My mouth opens, but the words get stuck behind my teeth. He watches me for a moment, one blood-soaked eyebrow raised, then crooks a finger.
“Come on. You’re allowed to say it, sweetheart. But no flower fuckery. Talk like you think.”
The jab burns off what little patience I have left. Still, the rules keep my mouth shut.
“Talk,” he says, sharper now. “Or I’ll report you for assault. You broke my very delicate face.”
I bite the inside of my cheek so hard I taste blood. It’s either lose a few civil credits for breaking the behavior law or lose a hundred for assault. My rage decides for me.
“Fine.” I spit the word like another stone. “How long have you been sitting there?”
The man’s grin cracks wider, bright and bloody. “Long enough to pick sides. I was rooting for you. At first.”
“You liar. You were spying.” The hypocrisy of my own accusation tastes bitter, but I don’t care. My anger has to land somewhere. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
He shrugs and wipes a smear of orange blood from his temple. “Wanted to see how it ended. Thought for sure you’d knock him flat if you breathed just a little harder.”
Rain sluices off his hair as he leans forward, revealing more of himself: brown, wavy hair curling around his temples, amber eyes half-lidded with amusement, a mouth too handsome for the trouble it’s probably caused.
He has more going for him than the average Orange, but I’d die before I tell him that.
“You’re awfully confident for such an ugly man.”
He barks a laugh, as if he’s heard the opposite enough times to be immune. “You, too—for such a stupid woman.”
“My scores say differently.”
“Scores?” He laughs harder, his head tipping back into the rain. “You got tossed out of your Cloning Theory exam.”
“Yeah, well, not because I’m stup—” I stop. “Wait. How do you know about that?”
“Waldsten, right?” The man jerks his thumb at the facility entrance. “Someone posted a bulletin in the lobby. Says you’re a nuisance. Difficult. Uncivilized. Really charming stuff.”
I go still as the pieces click into place. No wonder every professor’s class was magically too full to accept me. I turn back to him, forcing the words through gritted teeth.
“Can you please take it down?”
Rain spills from his mouth as he scoffs. “Why the hell would I?”
“Because… you’re rooting for me.”
“That was before the rock.”
Behind us, the next tram glides up to the platform.
When the man stands to approach it, shaking rainwater from his sleeves, I step back, startled.
He’s taller than I expected, broad through the shoulders, solid enough to block a doorway.
He fishes an energy drink from his pocket, pops the tab, and drains half of it.
“Look—I’m sorry, all right?” I snap. “I wasn’t aiming for you. I was aiming at the building.”
He pauses, the can halfway to his mouth. “You got something against genetic engineering?”
I glare past him at the facility, every muscle in my neck wired tight. “Yes.”
His mouth quirks, almost in pity. “Why? You in love with that Blue back there?”
I scoff. He has no idea my hatred for this place runs older and deeper than Edmund. “No. But so what if I was? You don’t get to judge me. Who even are you?”
The man’s grin flashes, wide and shameless, as he flicks open his suit jacket to reveal the Grandmaster University badge glinting beneath.
“Jerome, sweetheart. Your brand-spanking-new genetic engineering professor.”