CHAPTER 58 #2
Rosamund’s mouth parts, but no words come out. Fear strains her face, making her look as powerless as I’ve felt until now. For a moment, I see the thought take root in her mind. She might actually beg. Then pride stills her tongue, breaking free as a sneer.
Her eyes dart frantically as she searches the ring of Blues for rescue. Then her gaze stretches beyond the circle, down the beach, and hope floods her features like a final gasp of air.
“Edmund,” she screams. “Help me, Edmund! Please!”
The circle goes quiet, so still that the only movement is the quivering shadow of my blade across the sand. My pulse races, out of sync with my slow turn.
Edmund stands on the shore beside Jack’s hoverbike, the power core still venting heat as if he gunned it the whole way from the Blue Dormitory.
He’s in his full Fraternity uniform except for the cap, his saber already drawn but hanging low at his side.
His eyes lock onto mine beneath the blazing sun, and for one staggering second, the world seems to stand still.
The Blues open the circle for him before he even lifts a foot.
When Edmund finally moves, it’s with a slow, measured stride, the tip of his saber carving a winding trail through the sand.
At the edge of the circle, he’s greeted with cheers from the Blues.
Rosamund scrambles up from her crouched position, laughing and sobbing, still clinging to his name.
My grip tightens on my saber until the tremor subsides. I force myself to stand tall, chin up, the way Dad taught me. “You’ll challenge me, then?” I ask.
Edmund doesn’t break stride. “Yes.”
My heart pounds fiercely behind my words. “Then draw.”
He stops within reach of my blade. His eyes flick to the saber in my hand, confusion darkening his face before he masks it. Slowly, his hand closes over mine and pushes my blade down toward the sand.
“I’ll challenge you, Loredana. But I won’t fight you.”
The words land so wrong they make the blades between us feel obscene. “What? Don’t lie to me.” The shout rips out of me, half a choke, half a snarl. I glance at his saber, mine, and the spectators chanting for blood.
“I lied to you on the tram,” Edmund says. “But I’m not lying now.”
I grit my teeth, unable to believe him after what he’s done. “I don’t trust you anymore, Edmund. Not without proof.”
“All right.”
He lifts his saber, retracts the blade, and slides it into my scabbard himself, forcing it home with a sharp, final snap. Behind him, the Blues erupt in shouts of fury and disbelief. Rosamund screams his name, demanding to know how he could betray her.
Still, Edmund’s eyes never leave mine. There’s no anger or sadness like on the tram, only the man I knew before all this pain. I try to understand what he means about having lied, but I’m too wrung out to hold his gaze, too exhausted even to fight how close he’s standing.
Now that he’s weaponless, I could swing at him easily.
I could split him open and let fate roar its approval.
But I know it for sure now. Edmund didn’t sabotage my civil credits.
If he had, he’d draw his saber and finish me here and now.
Someone else tried to kill me, someone who wanted me dead without leaving a name behind.
The truth makes my saber hand shake until the blade rattles against my leg.
Edmund leans in, his palm still resting over mine, and says quietly, “We’ll walk off this beach together, Loredana. Or you’ll walk off alone.”
The way he’s looking at me—like he might close that last inch, pull me in, wrap himself around me, and block out this whole shoreline of fury and blood—breaks me.
I know Edmund didn’t come here to kill me.
He came here to stand between me and death, one more time.
Maybe that means nothing… or maybe it means everything.
My saber trembles, then slips from my hand and falls into the sand with a dull scrape. Tears come fast, hot and blinding, almost making me miss the indistinct shape moving at the edge of the circle, advancing toward us.
It’s William.
He looks half-mad, his face warped with rage as he runs, and when he draws his saber in a deadly arc of graphene, a sudden, terrifying realization dawns on me: William wasn’t tailing me to spy.
He knows I was part of Edmund’s entourage, maybe thinks I still am, and he waited for me to lead him here. To Edmund.
And now I have.
Fear reaches for me, but I react before it can take hold.
I dig the energy shield from my pocket and slam it against my chest hard enough to bruise.
William’s saber swings high, aimed straight at Edmund, and I spring at Edmund, fisting his shirt and yanking him toward me as if I could absorb him into my own body.
The blade cuts downward—
And the beach bursts into a blinding flash of light.
William’s saber sparks as it scrapes futilely against the pulsing barrier.
Edmund jolts into me, his chest heaving, hands braced on my shoulders as the shield blazes between us and the strike.
He looks down at me, his eyes reflecting the crackling light, and in that moment, I realize he understands why I did it.
But William doesn’t.
The despair on his face is all-consuming, veins bulging in his neck as he shouts a single word: Traitor.
William wrenches his saber free and spins erratically.
The Blues rush to stop him, but he’s too far gone.
His blade tears through the ring of bodies like wildfire until it finds Rosamund.
Her scream is shrill with pain as graphene rips open the soft flesh from her shoulder to her breast. She collapses in shock while a Blue slams into William from behind, driving him face-down into the sand.
More Blues pile on in a blur of fists, blades, and boots.
Blood sprays, and bones snap like dry branches. The sand drinks everything.
Edmund hurls himself against the shield, trying to break through the wall to Rosamund, but it holds, buzzing and blistering, until the last blade stills. When the shield finally disables, he’s at my ear in an instant.
“Run, Loredana. I’ll find you.”
Then he’s gone, vaulting past Charlotte and running across the blood-soaked sand toward Rosamund.
Sirens wail in the distance, a piercing chorus of Copper vehicles and ambulances.
Charlotte limps toward me, the truth of what just happened ticking like a grenade between us.
I grab her hand and pull her through the crowd, toward my hovercar waiting like an open grave.
Behind us, the beach tears itself wide open.
Charlotte protests going to the hospital even as her blood soaks into the passenger seat of the hovercar, dripping down her boots and pooling on the mats. She’s flushed and trembling but remains stubborn, shaking her head and insisting she’s fine.
I head to the hospital anyway. The drive field spikes, the stabilizers screaming as I lift off the sand and vector toward Belvoir Infirmary.
Sirens wail through the streets behind us.
My hands shake on the control stick, my whole body thrumming with adrenaline and the echo of Edmund’s face, his voice, the shield still burning between us.
I land in a hospital docking bay, where Pinkie medics are waiting outside, already alerted to other injured students coming from the beach. One robot sprints to the passenger side, yanks open the door, and catches Charlotte as she slumps against the dashboard.
Her legs are shredded, torn in five places from thigh to shin, blood winding in oily ropes that are already beginning to congeal.
Her shoes make a sick squelch as the Pinkies lie her on a gurney.
A robot injects a sedative into her neck, and Charlotte goes limp immediately.
I trail after them, feeling helpless as the Pinkies rush her into surgery.
I wait in the corridor, still numb, holding the wrong Fraternity cap.
I thought it was mine when I grabbed it from the hovercar, but under the harsh hospital fluorescents, I see the small tear in the green band.
It’s Vincent’s. I clutch the cap tighter than I mean to, knuckles whitening around the brim.
Two hours pass before the Pinkies wheel Charlotte into a recovery room.
Both legs are bound in layers of bio-bandage mesh.
The surgeon says Rosamund’s saber missed the tendons, but a few inches in any direction, and Charlotte would be relearning how to walk like I did.
A Pinkie administers another sedative, something strong enough to knock out a bull, and I keep waiting.
One hour. Then another. The day fades away, and the outside light dies.
The monitors beep softly, as if the machines are breathing for Charlotte, and she continues sleeping.
While I wait, I send her two hundred civil credits as a cushion for what’s coming.
Jerome warned me against handing out civil credits, but when it comes to Charlotte, everyone knows she’s my best friend, so I’m sure the transfer won’t raise suspicion.
She’ll need the boost after what she did, especially with all the eyes that saw her challenge a Prew.
My civil credits aren’t permanently linked to hers since she was above the arrest threshold when I sent them, but even if they were, I wouldn’t care.
With William dead, my civil credits are no longer connected to him. I stare at the notification on my Bond, which confirms the penalty is lifted, and feel nothing at all.
Close to midnight, Charlotte’s fingers finally twitch against the blanket. She opens her eyes, and when she sees me, she flinches with shame, as if no time has passed since the death duel on the beach.
“I’m sorry, Lore,” she rasps. “I had to stand up to Rosamund.”
“I know.” I brush her damp curls behind her ear, afraid of my next words. “But Char, why a saber duel? Did you… want to die?”
Charlotte nods stiffly, then forces the words out through clamped teeth. “Yes. But only until I almost did.” Her lips tremble as she wipes away a tear. “Thank you for helping me, Lore. And for—”
“You don’t have to thank me, Char. I did it for both of us.”
She tightens her grip on my hand, her fingers warm in mine, and we sit in silence as the visiting hour clock creeps toward its end.
After a long pause, Charlotte murmurs, “Rosamund sent a request to dissolve the death duel.”
I wonder if Rosamund did it because Edmund made her or because she’s afraid that I’ll come finish her off. “Did you accept it?” I ask.
“Yes.” Charlotte’s voice thins as she begins to doze. “Even if she beat me, at least she knows I’m not afraid of her anymore.”
I keep holding Charlotte’s hand until her eyes close. I stand to leave, but when I reach the door, she calls out to me, “Lore.”
I turn.
“You love him, don’t you? Edmund?”
There’s no point denying it. Charlotte isn’t the only one who witnessed what happened on the beach.
“Yes. I love him.”
She exhales, and the sadness on her face folds inward. “I’m… so sorry.”
I’m sorry too, because Charlotte’s expression seems to convey the same anxious warning Mom gave me only days ago, that loving Edmund means suffering in pursuit of an ending that can never be bright.