I eye the Asia Minor ambassador again. She’s slender, with the dark-brown eyes and sweeping black hair common to her people. Asia Minor is now headed by a small country state whose name once meant “the land of the rising sun.” I’ve heard the sun rarely rises there now, though. And while the chief diplomat for Asia Minor may be one of the most important visitors to our city, she’s still just a pawn to those who rule Dominion’s Upper Circle.
I mentally scroll through my facts on Senator Gillis: No one has ever mentioned military background, though it’s clearly there in every nuance of his bearing. He’s always glided below our father’s radar, this one. Even his wife, a lovely and statuesque woman of mixed descent, has escaped our mother’s claws. Marigold—that’s her name—kept out of the spotlight and therefore out of trouble.
Tonight, the senator’s wife shines. Her long dress, with its Grecian cut and folds, is printed with long dark-blue flowers. She’s pinned one to her ear, holding her cascading curls at bay, the blue of her dress and the dusky hue of her skin accentuating the startling blue of her eyes. She doesn’t look at her husband, but after a lifetime of speaking a silent language with Margot, I can read their cues. She gives the tiniest flick of her slender hand, tilts her chin, and Gillis is there to pull that guest forward. They’re a team, these two.
When it’s finally my turn, I grace them with my most respectful curtsy, head lowered to just the right degree. “Senator Gillis, Mrs. Gillis. It’s such a pleasure to be here this evening.”
I don’t think I imagine the frost in their eyes, and I reckon I can’t blame them. Antonia and Lukas Fox likely represent everything these people detest: a plague of corruption they’d as soon tear down Dominion to get rid of than live with. And then, of course, there’s the fact that I’ve brought a True Born as escort.
It’s the senator’s wife who greets me first. “It’s Lucy, isn’t it?” She tilts her head and stares at me quizzically, as if memorizing the uniqueness of my features. I’ll admit, she’s as good at this as any diplomat’s daughter.
“Good guess.” I laugh, crinkling my nose up in mock delight.
“I had heard your sister is on an extended vacation with your parents, so it was an easy game for me,” she confesses. “And of course, I am in charge of the guest list.” She smiles her welcome. There’s that small flick of her wrist, and I’m passed on to her husband.
“And may I present Mr. Nolan Storm?” I indicate the hulking man at my side with a flourish of my hand. “Mr. Storm has been appointed my guardian while my parents seek their health.”
Senator Gillis’s eyes sharpen. “Mr. Storm.” He greets Storm with the same two-handed shake, but he doesn’t let go right away. “Your name has been coming up with increasing regularity,” the senator says.
No subtlety with these two.
“I hope with complimentary and rosy tones,” Storm replies. He shoots them both a charming smile that shows off his dimple.
The senator doesn’t budge. “Some men’s compliments are another man’s complaint,” he says thoughtfully. “Although I look forward to hearing your views on where Dominion should put its attention. I understand that the majority of the city’s current contracts are your own.”
“That’s true, sir, and I look forward to sharing my plans with you.” Storm steers me clear of the reception line and into a series of receiving rooms that ends in a giant ballroom. It isn’t me Storm speaks to next. It could be any number of the True Borns on the other end of his ear bud, feeding Storm the intel he’s looking for. Still, somehow I know it is Jared who’s signed up for this assignment. He’s been mysteriously absent for most of the day. “What have you got from all that?” My escort pauses, looks around with a sweep that speaks of years of ingrained intelligence work.
It’s a sophisticated setup, subtle but effective. White light bounces into the room from an outside bulb. Discreet cameras rove at almost every cornice in the massive, airy room. Most don’t bother with machine-based surveillance any longer, since there are men’s lives to be had for cheaper. Then there are the Personals, security operatives everywhere murmuring to themselves, dressed in dark-blue tailored suits with telltale bulges. Not your ordinary mercs, I reckon, but true military.
Just where does Josiah Gillis get his backing?
“What do you make of all this?” my curiosity drives me to ask as I smile at an elegant couple nearby.
Storm stops a waiter bearing champagne flutes and hands one over to me. He takes the other, which I know he won’t bother to finish. In his large grip it looks like a skinny toothpick. “What do you know about Senator Gillis?”
I sip delicately. A blush of bubbles and the faint aroma of flowers waft from the stemware. Real, then. None of that synth stuff for the newly crowned prince of the Upper Circle.
“He’s got good taste in champagne,” I offer Storm with a mock toast. When his flat silver eyes rake over me, I sigh and add, “Not much. He stayed out of our father’s way…which means he’s smart. Judging by this, though—” I look up from my drink to gaze around the opulent ballroom filled with the Upper Circle’s most powerful players. “He seems to have done well in my father’s absence.”
The more I think of it, the odder I find it. Senator Gillis should have been a threat to Lukas Fox. Anything that our dear father can’t control is something to be destroyed.
I blink up at Storm. “Do you reckon they’re working together?” It’s the only thing that makes sense. Our father must have had Gillis on the backdoor payroll. Maybe still does.
Storm’s eyes glitter at me as he sets down his flute and takes my hand. “Good question. Let’s go find out.”
When I have danced with Colonel Deakins, a fat-cat banker named Hollister, and one of the lesser senators—with breath like the dead—Storm pulls me back into his orbit.
Since I went through this hell for him, I don’t feel the least bit guilty as I wipe a greasy sweat trail the senator has left on my hands all over Storm’s beautifully cut tux. He pulls me in for a dance.
“Well?” he murmurs into my ear.
“If you ever make me dance with him again,” I say, indicating the stinky senator La Roche with a discreet dip of my head, “I will throw myself under a bus.”
Storm chuckles. “Well, I don’t think we’ll need to worry about him much. Nielson just told me that the senator is about to be bounced for a financial indiscretion.”
I pull back to stare at Storm. “You mean the mistress he’s been keeping on House funds? Everyone’s known about that for a decade at least.”
Storm turns thoughtful. “Could Gillis be the real thing, then? They’re calling him ‘the Incorruptible.’”
I eye the decadent room meaningfully. “Is anything connected to the Upper Circle incorruptible?” I’m startled as the words leave my mouth. It feels like an oddly traitorous thing to say. After all, I was born and raised in this Circle. Half the people in the ballroom have been to my former home. All of them know my family.
Storm murmurs close to my ear, “You might have a point.” He sweeps me across the dance floor masterfully. Couples turn to admire him. But I can’t relax. A burning, prickling sensation picks at my back. Someone is watching me.
“Is Jared here?” I ask. But Storm doesn’t have time to answer. One of Senator Gillis’s aides silently walks up and taps Storm’s elbow.
“Sir, a meeting is just now getting under way that you will want to attend. Please follow me.”
Storm threads me through the audience of dancers and political pollywogs to a door set in paneled wood. The Personals swing their heads subtly as the cameras sway to catch our every movement.
We’re ushered into a room at the back of the mansion, hushed and quiet and entirely paneled in dark wood squares, right up to the fifteen-foot carved plaster ceilings. Over these squares hang oil paintings of what I presume were once powerful men.
“Mr. Storm.” Obscured behind the light of a glass-shaded desk lamp, Senator Gillis stands and gestur
es to a set of chairs ringing his desk. “Miss Fox,” he adds as an afterthought, “please.” One of the chairs holds the lumpy olive-uniformed shoulder of Colonel Deakins, who smiles sweetly at me.
Sitting in the chair opposite is a stranger to me. Wire-rim glasses pick up the light and obscure his eyes. He wears a fine suit, teal kerchief folded with precision into his lapel pocket. Bloodless, thin lips in a face drawn thin with pain, the bald sheen of someone who has recently been through hell and back and lived to tell the tale.
A Splicer, then. And recently, too.
Senator Gillis wants Storm to sit, but my escort insists I take the chair on the right. Storm perches solicitously behind me, one hand gently pressing into my shoulder. I get the message, but I’m not too big to admit I’m scared to Sunday. Whatever the purpose of this little meeting, I presume it will come at a price.
“Mr. Storm,” Gillis begins. “The colonel here was just telling us that you and Miss Fox recently paid him a house call.” Ah, so that’s what this is about.
“Yes. Miss Fox and I are fortunate in our circle of friends,” counters Storm breezily. The colonel blushes slightly and sits up straighter in his seat, the cigar in his hand all but forgotten. “How are you, Colonel?” Storm inclines his head ever so slightly, the fine cobweb of his antlers catching the light.
“Fine, fine,” says the colonel, coughing into his hands.
Fox and henhouse, I think to myself, remembering the game Margot and I used to play. In the art and war of diplomacy, there are only two kinds of people: those who are eaten and those who don’t go to bed hungry.
“I don’t believe you know Senator Theodore Nash.” The senator indicates the sweating man, who takes out his handkerchief and mops his forehead before folding it back into his pocket with elaborate care.
“I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure.” The man smiles at Storm. His teeth are even and white, but there’s still no mistaking the slight lilt to his words, the tinge to his teeth that marks all those outside Dominion’s limits, no matter how carefully you dress it up.
“You’re the new senator for the territories.” It slips out before I realize what I’ve done. Stuck, I go on. “We’ve heard about your recent…victory…” I bite my lip and blush. “Over the NewsFeed, of course.”
They say the territories are more of a wasteland than Dominion itself. With so few people to sustain the farmlands that keep the remainder of the city’s populations fed, they’ve resorted to shipping lifers from the penitentiaries out into the fields. They barter for rum and a few less years on the line, and when their time is up, some of them even stay to make up their own merc franchises, take over lands where the family lines have bled to dust and bone. In the Upper Circle, these merc men of the territories are whispered of behind hands, accompanied by shivers of dread.
Our father used to say they were the problem Dominion was going to have to stand against at some point—and the king of the territories would be key to it all. But even our father would have been shocked at the election victory proclaimed for Senator Nash a scant month ago. The NewsFeed hinted it was an unexpected landslide, when a third-rate senator no one had ever heard of came from behind to obliterate the competition…
No—our father likely would have thought the man a genius.
Rather than being offended at my social gaffe, the sweating Senator Nash gives me a great big NewsFeed smile. “Oh, you follow politics, do you?” he says politely. “How nice.” The rest of us exchange an uncomfortable look.
He doesn’t know who I am.
It’s a first for me, the daughter of Dominion’s unspoken king. I pick a spot behind his shoulder and smile. I would have been content to leave it there, but it’s Gillis who won’t let it die.
“Plague take you, man.” Senator Gillis slashes at a paper on his desk. “Do they not have NewsFeeds in the patty fields?”
Nash dabs at his forehead and sits up a little straighter. His smile tightens like a vise. Gillis leans over the desk with a meaningful look. “Perhaps you’ve been so busy with your campaigning you haven’t had a chance to meet some of our first families,” the senator says with meaning. “Miss Lucy Fox is the daughter of one of Dominion’s brightest stars.”
The card has been played. I have no choice but to lay it down. “Perhaps you’ve heard of my father, Senator Nash. He works closely with the government. The Honorable Lukas Fox?”
The color drains from Nash’s already pale face until I think he’s fainted dead-gone. I file this away for later: clearly our father has made an impression in the territories, too. Storm presses a finger down on my shoulder. He’s paying attention, too.
“Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, perhaps you can tell Senator Nash about your bid for the city’s security contracts.”
“I would be happy to, Senator Gillis, but perhaps another time? Forgive me, gentlemen,” Storm breaks in. “It’s getting late and I’d like to have Lucy home before the rats come out.”
Nash stammers and wipes his head like it has been filled with a sudden, stabbing pain. I know the feeling. I’m tired, and we’ve gotten absolutely nowhere, and I’m wondering what the point was for this little meeting. I squeeze the hand on my shoulder briefly.
“Colonel,” I say, addressing Robbie’s father. He’s almost as uncomfortable as Nash at this point “The other day you mentioned that you’d routed those bastards who burned down my home.” I throw in a growl, making it clear where my loyalties lie. “I can— I mean, I trust that they won’t be able to come back. Will they?” I give Colonel Deakins a wide-eyed look through strands of my hair, every inch of me praying that I’m a good enough actress to pull this off.
“Oh, sure, sure.” The Colonel paws at the air and relaxes. “But Senator Gillis can speak more to that.”
The good senator looks like he’d rather chew glass than admit anything to me. He rubs his ear as if he could rub out those last words. “Yes, the colonel is quite right. We believe that the preachers and a few of their more militant followers are contained. We’ll make sure they stay that way.”
The colonel clicks his tongue in approval. “Too right—and once we’ve routed the preachers, the rest of the population won’t be so inclined to believe all that superstitious nonsense.”
I wonder if the senator buys it when I force my eyes even wider, even more vapid. “But how? Surely there are too many to throw in the jails. And you wouldn’t ship them out as lifers, would you?”
But it is the colonel who steps in this pile of bones. “Not at all.” He chuckles, as though incarcerating thousands is a joke. “We won’t need to throw them in jail. Just bury ’em, I say. Then we won’t need True Borns— Ahem,” he ends delicately. He thinks he’s being coy, but by the way his eyes tilt toward the senator, it’s clear Colonel Deakins expects a pat on the back for his rudeness.
I nearly choke on my tongue but am able to keep my face composed, and I studiously avoid looking over at Storm. “Oh, I see,” I murmur, standing. “Thank you.”
I wait for Storm to say his good-byes and let him lead me away. My gorge rises, and I fear I’ll be sick before I’m out of the room. But it’s not until I’m in the ballroom surrounded by a crowd of sequined and silked ladies, twirling around the perimeter on the arms of tuxedoed men, that the true horror hits me.
I grab at Storm’s arm. “Wait. Did you…?” I begin.
But what do I really want to ask? Did the colonel just admit he and other factions of the government are against True Borns? Did you know the government is planning on murdering a large portion of its remaining population? Are you in support of this? Will you stop it?
I shake my head, as much to clear the seesaw of my thoughts as to think carefully about what I want to say next.
As usual, Storm is one step ahead of me. He sweeps me into a dance. Jaw rigid, his breath tickles my ear. “The answer is no. It’s the reason we’re here tonight.” He turns me gracefully and I sink into the half curtsy the dance requires before I’m s
wept up again. “I thought we were going to have to abort. But you were marvelous.”
I wasn’t sure whether I was playing the part too well or not at all. This is the part of our bargain that troubles me, the odd blurring of lines between my old life and some fictional character I become for Storm. Which one is even real?
Storm smiles, but it doesn’t reach his wintry eyes. The luminescent lines crackling around his head grow solid as flesh.
“What are you going to do?” I whisper.
Storm has the hearing of a forest god. He looks down at me, something gentling in his expression. His hands tighten around mine reassuringly. “Lucy, I won’t let anything happen to you. You know that.”
“That’s not what I’m worried about. That’s the last thing I’m worried about.”
He considers me again for a long moment. We’re barely swaying there on the floor. Then suddenly he swings me out before curling me back onto his rock-hard chest. I can feel eyes gathering to us. Not that we don’t stand out anyhow. Nolan Storm has all the presence of a hurricane.
“You’re not going to tell me, are you?”
“Not here,” he murmurs with a charming, dimpled smile. I tamp down on my urge to stomp my foot and yell at him. Because he’s right. This isn’t the time or place. Not in this pit of Upper Circle vipers and vixens.
The dance ends and the floor erupts with polite applause. I turn to head off the floor when the sight of Jared arrests me. He watches us, still as a sculpture. Hands crossed at his waist, his back lines straight against a wall. He’s decked out as a rich man’s Personal in a perfectly cut black suit paired with a crisp white shirt, just a degree shy from a proper tux. Pale-pale face. Serious, so serious. The only life in his face throbs through his eyes.
I can’t take my eyes off him.
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