by Tessa Elwood
Eagle goes still. Shoulders set, hands rigid. I twist my hands up and squeeze both of his.
He’s awake. Alive and standing. If Wren could be all those things or even half, she’d give up her hand in a heartbeat.
“And thus are you united,” the Officiator breaks from monotone. “By bond and by blood.”
The bell rings, a kick deep in my stomach. I flinch and so does Eagle, but the tolling continues. Once for Westlet, once for Fane, and once for both together. A deep, echoing toll that can’t be taken back.
Married. We’re married.
The white cuffs of Dad’s suit shine bright against his brown sleeves. He stands straight and strong as ever, but lighter somehow, head tipped back to the cloudless sky.
My heart tolls with the bell.
Eagle lets go and my heavy sleeve drags down my arm. We face the hushed gathering. Some smile, but most don’t. Not even when a cheer goes up.
Eagle holds out his arm, and we walk down the aisle under a rainstorm of petals.
ALONE. WE’RE ALONE. IN A ROOM OVERTAKEN BY A saccharine floral army. Flowers are everywhere, bell-shaped blue and yellow, vased and hanging.
In Westlet blood bond tradition, we get to see each other before we present ourselves to our parents.
Eagle moves between the flowers with purpose, pulling at the string near his throat. His overdress slides to the floor, revealing a silver suit with burnt-orange cuffs. He reaches for his helmet.
Westlet didn’t send us any pictures of Eagle, but Dad may have offered pictures of Emmie.
“Wait,” I say, so fast I squeak. If he knows first, maybe he won’t be as mad. With his helmet on, I won’t have to know how mad he is.
The slitted metal eyes swing my way, but only for a moment. “They’re expecting us.”
“Not yet.” I step forward, hand out and up. “Just wait.”
“You’ll have to see me sometime.” His voice is odd, scratchy, biting off each word.
“Please?” I try again. “Please.”
He stands, a fabric statue with eyes I can’t see.
“Please what?” He steps closer. “Never take it off?”
He hates me. He will hate me even more.
My tongue knots with my fingers and my sleeves and the tangles in my head.
Say it, just say it.
He shakes his head and steps away, hands rising.
“I’m not Emmie!”
His fingers freeze at his helmet’s edge. The medics misjudged his skin tone, so his waxy right hand is pale brown instead of the near black of his real one.
A stark, impenetrable, “What?”
“I’m Asa. Not Emmie. Emmaline.”
“Asa.”
“The youngest, you know—well, maybe not, with the lockdown—unless you saw me before that? Except I wasn’t very old then and I don’t know how old you were or if you remember, though you probably wouldn’t because it wasn’t your House so why would it matter, but I am Fane. Still blood. We are still bonded and allied and everything.”
“You’re not the Heir,” he says.
“No, but I am Fane and that’s all that matters—”
“Your father planned this?”
“No! I did! I mean, it was my idea. Dad doesn’t know. You think he would have played that song otherwise? During the ceremony? The lullaby? That’s Emmie’s favorite, not mine. Ask anyone. If he knew, he’d have played ‘Frostlark’ or . . . or something.”
God, all you do is babble, I can hear Emmie say.
The meshy veil is thick and hot and sticking to my lips. I tug at the headdress, bend down to pull it over my head, but it doesn’t budge—it’s clipped tight in too many places I can’t reach. I yank again and knock into a little table by the chair. I hear a vase crash, feel water splashing my feet and flowers crumpling.
I hug my sleeved palms to my chest so I can’t break anything else.
A hard exhale. “Hold on.”
Eagle sidesteps the mess and circles behind me. A muffled thump, and then his helmet rolls past my feet to bounce against a chair. Fingers skim my shoulders, find the clips, undo the buttons. I let my arms fall as he grasps the sides of the headdress. “Ready?”
“Yeah.” I stretch my neck to make it easy. Brace for the yank that’ll tug out what little hair I have. The veil feels cemented to my head.
Except Eagle is careful. Avoids my ears. A couple strands catch, then the world expands unfiltered—cool air filling my overhot lungs. I look over my shoulder. “Thank . . .”
The right half of his face, cheek to ear and neck to temple, has been burned. Skin puckered, folded and shiny. Ridged in places, grated in others. Shallow, unsteady rivers weave around his right eye, twist the corner of his mouth. The left side is smooth, mostly untouched, like someone took a ruler and drew half a map.
“Still thrilled with your idea?” he says, and his large brown eyes say nothing and everything at once.
“Yes.”
A long incredulous second, then he dumps the headdress with a thud. Unfastens the buttons down my back and pushes the overdress off my shoulders. I shake my arms from the sleeves and kick out of the crumpled fabric.
My underdress is simple, wide-necked and knee-length, pale brown trimmed in white. House colors. Fane colors.
Eagle stares. At me, my legs. Or rather, my feet. At least I remembered socks, so he can’t see my nail-less toes. Aston promises they’ll regrow, like he promises my hair will someday be long enough to run my fingers through instead of over.
“Shoes?” he asks, like he’s counting straws and this one is second to last.
I shake my head. “I’m taller than Emmie.”
MY FEET DON’T MATTER, MY FACE IS ENOUGH. DAD fades as white as the couch he sits on, then glows red as the wine in his hand. “Asa?”
“Asa?” asks someone. Eagle’s parents? Followed by, “Eagle?”
“She’s the youngest,” says the boy who was at my side and isn’t anymore.
I’m alone.
Dad becomes everything deliberate and careful. Sets his wine glass on the table without a clink and stands without a sound. Chiseled edges and conversational tone. “Where is Emmaline?”
“Sedated.” I push past the weight of my tongue. “Sleeping. She’s okay.”
“Sedated.”
“You were going to kill her.”
“Fane?” asks that someone again, but it doesn’t matter. My father steps forward.
I back away. “It’s all right, I swear it’s all right. I’m blood so the alliance still holds—”
“Shut. Up.” Dad blocks the light, and my heels hit the wall. “Tell me I didn’t walk you down that aisle.” His chest heaves as his hands flex. “Tell me.”
“She’s going to wake up.” My voice is tinny even in my head. “Her monitor—”
“Tell me!” Dad’s fist sails past my ear and slams the wall near my head. I press flat, but there’s nowhere to run.
“Fane!” A larger, darker hand latches onto Dad’s arm and yanks him back. “I don’t know what game you’re playing, but you will not play it here.”
Lord Westlet is taller than Dad, leaner and wider cheeked. Fluid water, but every bit as frigid.
“Please,” I say. “It was me. Dad didn’t know. I drugged Emmie—”
“Shut up, Asa,” Dad growls, and Lord Westlet chimes in with, “Yes, child, do.”
Neither looks at me. The air crackles.
“You know, Fane,” Lord Westlet continues, “it is one thing to undercut the one, the only stipulation I had in this agreement when you were the one to approach us, but this?”
“We can solve this, I will do whatever—”
“You think there is a solution?”
“—is necessary, whatever is necessary.”
“Please,” I say, louder now, “it wasn’t him, I—”
“You?” Lord Westlet rounds on me, then drops Dad’s arm in disgust. His lips catch between a smile and a scream as he turns to his wife. “I knew this was a tr
ick. The glorious Fane appearing from the mists after thirteen years—thirteen—of no contact whatsoever. Though even I wouldn’t have thought him capable of making his child—”
“He was going to kill Wren!” I yell loud enough the stars hear me.
Silence. A thousand tugging strings from four sets of eyes.
“Emmie’s not the Heir,” I rush out before somebody stops me, “not unless Wren dies, and Wren isn’t dead. Dad was going to pull her life support to make Emmie what you wanted. But I won’t be Heir even if Wren dies, so she’s safe now. I’ll be a good wife, I swear, and Emmie will take care of Wren.”
Dad stands straight and unmoving and somehow leveled to the bone.
“Wren?” asks Lord Westlet. “Your oldest? But you said—”
“She’s in a coma,” Dad says. “Over six months now. Her chances are minimal, and the last specialist recommended life support removal three months ago.”
“You mean Marianne?” I ask. “No, Dad, you can’t listen to her. She wants to pull everybody! The whole ward talks about it, just ask—”
Dad’s hand cuts the air with a silent, stop, and my words die.
In sync and on cue, the older Westlets glance at their son.
Eagle looks like he’s been in a hundred hospitals with a hundred specialists who measure out cheery platitudes that never add up to hope. But he’s still here, tall like his dad with his mother’s poise, dressed in their colors and part of their conversation without having to say a word.
“I have a daughter who will never wake,” Dad says, slow and coarse. “An ally who would only become an ally in exchange for my Heir. I have a new, sustainable fuel my people don’t trust, because its creation cost us our main agricultural planet. I’ve had to release half my troops because I cannot afford their rations. The one thing standing between me and a Galton invasion is a lockdown that was never intended to last half this long, and likely won’t last much longer. Do you think I’d be here if I had a choice? Any other choice?”
The silence vibrates, hinges on Dad’s rigid frame. “Do you think I would be here if I had any other out? Do you want me on my knees? Because I will beg.”
No. He wouldn’t, he can’t.
The room tastes of rust and acid, and I can’t look away.
He’s lying, he has to be. He’s our House. He stands for everybody. Fane doesn’t beg, Fane would never—
Dad steps forward, right knee folding down.
“No!” I clutch his arm. “Don’t! You can’t. It’s my fault, I’ll fix it, I promise, Dad, I swear.”
He doesn’t look at me. “Let go, Asa.”
Lord Westlet looks between us. “This is . . .” He presses two long fingers between his eyes. “No. Enough. Get out.”
“Westlet,” says Dad in a voice that could almost be mine.
The Lord rounds on him and points to the door I entered by. “To the other room, Fane, for five minutes—five damn minutes. I need to speak with my family.”
Dad doesn’t move. “The treaty stands?”
Lord Westlet throws up his arms. “It’s inviolate, that was the whole point of a blood bond! Of course it stands.”
“And the food shipments?”
The Lord’s teeth glitter. “One thing at a time.”
DAD DOESN’T YELL. HIS STEPS OWN EVERY LAST INCH of the room as I curl in a chair, but he doesn’t yell. He doesn’t have to.
I am a stupid reckless child. A disappointment. The shame of our House, my House, whom I’ve just doomed to starve.
I am my mother’s daughter.
Mom orchestrated the theft of our last, unpopulated uleum-rich planet. Used her power as Lady of Fane to sneak Galton soldiers in. Seized the mine that was supposed to see our House through the development of ecoflux and make the transition easy instead of a ration nightmare. She tried to break our House, but we survived her.
We may not survive me.
“Enough, Dad.” Emmie stands in the doorway, barefoot in sleep pants and a silver-orange robe that doesn’t suit her and doesn’t belong. “It’s done.”
He halts and transfers all his flame to her.
One shot of this and you’ll be down for the night, Aston had said when I went to the medic’s desk for something to help me sleep. He hadn’t even questioned it.
But Emmie’s eyes are red and her skin is pasty, like someone drugged her.
Me.
“You don’t know what she’s done,” Dad says. “The extent of it. You have no idea.”
Emmie shrugs. “I know she can’t take it back, and that if you keep this up she’ll be a blubbering mess on the floor and that won’t go over well. You know how she is.”
“Yes.”
A disgrace. Unfit for my colors, unfit for my name.
“We’re ready for you.” Lord Westlet slides in, eyes only for Dad. “And just you. The children stay out.”
EMMIE GIVES ME SHOES. HER SHOES, AND A HOODED cape deep enough to hide my face. She marches through rooms and corridors, pale heels pounding paler wood until wood turns to stone, and rooms to air.
When she stops, I stop, too.
“Try not to be an ass. There’s been enough of that today.”
“I’m sorry,” I say.
Emmie swears and grabs my shoulders. “How did you think this would go down? Huh? What did you think Dad would say? How could you possibly be so stupid?”
“I don’t know.”
“Not. Good. Enough.” She shakes me until my head wobbles. “What do you think will happen to Wren now? Dad will probably unplug her out of spite.”
“No, he won’t.” I look up, her face inches away. “You’ll look after her. When you’re not traveling and studying and all that.”
Her lips thin, and her nails dig into my skin, her shiny eyes catching the sun before she squeezes them tight. She shakes her head, flips me around, and pushes. I stumble forward into longer arms and a different, harder chest.
“Damn stupid idiot,” she mutters, then adds louder, “earn yourself some cosmic favors and don’t be an ass.”
“Okay,” I say to Emmie’s retreating steps.
“She meant me,” says Eagle.
EAGLE’S BOOTS MAKE LESS SOUND THAN EMMIE’S heels. I keep my head down, away from the flowered trees. Focus on the stone puzzle pattern of the walkway. It doesn’t matter where we are or where we’re going. Dad will find me soon enough.
The path ends in a small tower less than ten stories tall, with silver walls broken by an arched door and high round windows. Eagle doesn’t enter a code or palm a security screen, he just pulls the door open.
We step into a tiny, private docking bay, with overhead lights powered down to almost nothing. A flightwing commands most of the space, its curved wingtip nearly brushing Eagle’s head. He leads me to a small elevator, which rises so fast my stomach drops. The doors open, Eagle snaps his fingers, and light flares.
I lift my head and the hood slides off.
A long, wide room. White walls with no pictures, two white chairs and a couch with no pillows, pale floorboards with no scuffs. Even the stone balcony, peeking through the glass doors in the wall opposite, is white.
Stark and empty.
Eagle is as silent as the room, but Dad echoes in my head.
I hadn’t left home since Decontamination. I’d stayed in the capital city on our core planet, within a three-district radius of Wren’s medicenter and Axis Tower. Of course no one was starving. Of our whole House, Malsa would have been the last place to fall.
I rub my shoulders. “He will send the food, won’t he? Your dad? He’ll send the food?”
“A blood bond’s inviolate.” Which should be an affirmation, except his voice says if it wasn’t, the bond would be ripped to shreds.
The floor sucks me in.
“Easy.” Eagle grabs my arms as my knees give out, holds on until I find my feet.
But Fane doesn’t break, not in front of people.
I step into the barren white room and Eagle
lets go. Ahead, two doors glare at each other across the floor, each ajar. Bedrooms? Maybe? Something else?
My arms won’t warm no matter how much I rub them. I try twice before words come out. “Do we share?”
“You’re in that one.” Eagle jerks his chin at the door on the left, then disappears through the one on the right.
RINGING. IN MY EARS, MY BONES. A STEADY WHINE THAT rises and fills everything. Is everything. It crushes. Flattens me between hard pavement and limp heat. Smoke in my nose, dust and iron. It’s on my cheeks, sliding through my hair and down my neck. “Wren?” Heat puddles in my ringing ear, slithers through my parted lips. I taste blood. “Wren?”
I jerk awake. Scramble back until my shoulders hit a wall. Rub my face and ear and neck, because they’re all sticky and seeping and Wren—
Wren.
I fumble to my knees, fight the ringing echoes. Search the ground. She’s here, I know she’s here, I can still feel her on my chest and—
The floor bounces, fuzzy with blankets. A bed, not an alley. A dark room with a desk in the corner and two doors in the walls. No rising smoke, no bleeding Wren.
Just me.
“It’s okay,” I say aloud because that usually helps.
But it doesn’t. I reach for my digislate with its library of audiostories to erase the one in my head, except it’s not here. I can’t find it in the covers. I don’t know where it’s gone, or if it’s even here.
I curl forward, ears burning with blood that isn’t there. The room squeezes tight and I have to get out. Somewhere, anywhere. See what the stars look like from a different solar system. See if I can see home.
The living room is dim; Eagle’s door is closed tight. I creep past the couch and end table to the balcony’s sliding glass doors and slip through. Find the night and the stars.
And Eagle. Eagle’s on the balcony. Leaning against the fenced edge, forearms loose on the curved railing.
He doesn’t speak, doesn’t smile. Probably hates me. I know Dad does.
I mean, his dad, not mine. Probably not mine.
Eagle looks away. His suit’s smooth lines are unbroken by wrinkles. It’s the same one from yesterday.