by Tessa Elwood
“It’s okay, wake up.” I reach for his shoulder, except the skin ripples slick under my palm and maybe it’s sore or tender or something and I don’t want to hurt him. “It’s a dream, I swear it’s a dream.” I climb onto the bed, press on his unscathed shoulder and chest until he lies still because if he shakes any more he’ll fly apart. He might anyway, his skin is that hot.
“Eagle. Eagle.”
His eyes snap open.
“It’s all right,” I say. “It’s—”
The bed explodes, the world flips, my back hits the mattress, and Eagle blocks out the ceiling. He leans on his good arm, palm near my head, while the ball of the other presses my shoulder flat.
Unfocused eyes, staccato breath.
I lie very, very still. “Wake up, Eagle.”
My lungs burn with his rhythm. I make them slow down.
“It’s just me. You can wake up.”
He blinks and his eyes aren’t so black anymore. They look and look and finally see.
I relax into nothing. “Hey.”
His gaze skips like maybe I’m real or maybe I’m not—from my face to shirt to shoulder, and freezing where his arm pins me down. But he’s not pressing hard, just a warm knot that says he’s there. The sheets are warm, too, though not near as warm as the weight of his leg which half covers mine. All the way up my thigh.
Eagle’s knee is bent, but his heel still brushes the skin of my ankle because my sleep pants were once Wren’s and are too short, even when they weren’t threadbare, which they are now and have been for months, and I should really probably get rid of them, though maybe not this particular second.
His chest is skin and scars and muscles and brushes mine on his inhales or exhales or some other breath-related thing he shouldn’t be able to do because the oxygen is gone.
His eyes find me staring and I say the only thing in my head that doesn’t involve him. “Happy books.”
If Eagle thought I was a dream or crazy before, I’m officially both now. His arm presses harder as his balance shifts, bearing too much of his weight, and I slide up and a little away to compensate.
“That’s what I do. I have these audiostories on my digislate that are funny and when the dreams come, especially the really bad ones, I turn them on and—”
He disappears. Evaporates.
I rise on my elbows.
He sits on the edge of the bed, the left edge, as far from me as possible, all the smooth skin facing me, his handless arm lost in the dark. “Are you all right?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Why are you here?”
“I heard—you were dreaming.”
“Well, I’m awake now.” Even, controlled. “Go to bed.”
I scramble upright. “But do you have a book? I can get you a book; I can even read one to you.”
“I’m fine, Asa.”
“But Eagle—”
“Just. Get. Out,” he says to the floor, left hand bunched in the sheets.
Oh. Right. Evie’s coming tomorrow, and I’m confusing stories.
I slip off the bed. My socked feet siren loud as I reach the door. “Sleep well, okay?”
Eagle’s back tenses until the scars mold his skin. It’s hard to look at him, hard to be within three steps of touching. Hardest of all to close the door with him on the other side.
But I do.
I SCRUB MY FACE WITH HOT WATER, THEN COLD. IN the mirror, my puffy eyes chatter about tears, tears, and more tears like it’s something everyone wants to know.
I don’t know where Eagle is. The elevator pinged not long after I left his room, and it hasn’t pinged since.
I pull on the new dress Lady Westlet finally chose—a sleeveless, understated mix of silver and white—and slip into the living room and wait. Avoid the couch so I don’t wrinkle the dress. Knock on his door, just to make sure. I even open it, but the bed’s empty.
Eagle is never late. He’s always where he should be.
Which means he’s already there.
I yank the door shut, and the hard wood stings. It’s wrong. Maybe I’m not Cousin Evie and maybe I’m mixing up stories, but we’re the treaty, us, and I shouldn’t have to go in there alone.
I rest my forehead against the door and I wait. And wait.
The elevator doesn’t ping.
And it’s too late to wait anymore.
BREAKFAST IS A RETICENCE OF GHOSTS. THE CLOUDY gray window light dulls everyone’s smiles and clothes. Even the plates and knives are quiet.
I scan the heads. Lord and Lady Westlet, Reggie and the cousins, a man in a deep purple suit, and a woman too old to be Evelyn.
Eagle didn’t come without me.
He didn’t come at all.
“There she is,” Elona calls from near the end of the table, resplendent in silver and purple and very adult. “We’d quite given you up.”
I hurry toward an empty chair. “I’m so sorry! Eagle”—isn’t here, why isn’t he here?—“couldn’t sleep, so I found him some pills, except I think they were too strong because I couldn’t get him up.” The Lady shoots me a look, and I add, “He’s fine, I wouldn’t have come if he wasn’t, but I am sorry.”
“Don’t be,” says the woman seated across the table, one place down from the chair I stand behind. She stands, too, and even in the clouded sunshine, her bodice and skirt sparkle purple stardust. She’s like the Lady in height and age but softer-jawed and springy as her slightly frizzy hair. Blonde hair, oddly familiar, loose and escaping its pins. “My dear, dear child. How you have grown.”
Grown?
I can’t get the word to make sense, it won’t translate. Or maybe it’s the voice. Something about the voice.
Everyone watches like we’re at a dance.
The space beside me is very, very Eagle-less.
She smiles, wide and warm, like we share a secret.
I used to sneak into Wren’s room when I was little and play with the mini techbots she built for class. That’s how I found the holorecord of the woman in the glitter dress—with her luminescent eyes and swishy skirt. She’d chatter endlessly about a concert or a party or something, but her dress was perfect and starry and I didn’t even notice when Wren came in.
She yanked the digislate from my hands. You tell Dad, you’re dead, do you hear me? Dead.
I scooted back against the wall, because when Wren got really really mad, she could be scary. But all she did was hug the slate and look at me. Just looked. You don’t remember, do you?
“You remember me, don’t you?” asks the woman who isn’t Evie or Evelyn.
Not that Dad ever says her name.
But it’s not her, it can’t be. She’s too pretty—prettier than the holorecord, mouth quirking like Emmie’s does when she laughs, long legs peeking out from the swish of her skirt.
She always wore skirts. Fluttering, pretty things I’d tumble after on too-short legs, trying to catch them like butterflies. They sparkled so, but tasted gritty.
I can still feel them, the flaky sticky bits, acrid on my tongue.
“You do remember,” says the woman who can’t be here because the Westlets wouldn’t let her in. Wouldn’t sit with her and smile over coffee like it’s nothing. Like she has every right to be here. Like she didn’t sell us out to Galton and nearly break our House.
But she is here, prancing around the table, bony arms stretching from embroidered sleeves. “Oh, sweetheart, I’ve missed you.”
Missed me? She doesn’t know me.
She left when I was three.
“Genevieve.” Glitter and grit.
“So formal.” She seeps into the space where Eagle isn’t. “We can begin better than that.”
She holds out her arms.
Lord Westlet throws a too-languid elbow over his chair’s back while resignation shines from under the Lady’s half-closed lids.
They’re already calculating the fallout. My inability to measure up.
I don’t have any smiles in me, not eve
n fake ones, but my tongue still works. “Mother.” I step forward and let her arms snake around my waist. I pat a back so thin I feel her spine.
When I pull away, she keeps an arm around me.
Down the table, Elona meets my eyes and raises her glass in a toast.
Stay still. Just. Stay. Still.
“My baby.” Genevieve lays her head on my shoulder because that’s all she comes up to. “I was so worried. Gavin can be such a grudge holder, I hate to even think what he told you. Nothing worth repeating, I’m sure.”
No, Dad said nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Except to tell me I was hers.
“But there now, you’re here and out of that cursed lockdown.” She pulls me toward the suited stranger, who is already rising to his feet. He’s familiar somehow, round faced and light skinned, with short ashy brown hair. His purple cuffs are etched with the same threaded blue as Genevieve’s dress.
Galton colors.
Genevieve rubs the shoulder of what must be Dad’s replacement. He smiles from a height that matches mine and measures me by inches.
I might be up for sale.
“A pleasure to meet you, my girl.” He holds out his hand at the odd emphatic my.
Timing is everything in a handshake, and I count the seconds.
One, two, three.
Four.
“You as well,” I say, taking his too-smooth, too-hot palm.
“Asa!” Genevieve chides. “Doesn’t your father get a hug, too?”
I freeze.
So does everyone else. We’re in a holorecord with no Pause button. Even Elona’s smugness has gone.
You have done well, Asa, and you will do this.
I take back my hand, slow and steady, so the words come slow and steady, too. “My father is in Fane. But if he was here, I’m sure he’d also be pleased to meet you.”
“Gavin?” Genevieve laughs. “I very much doubt it.”
“A deeply moving reunion,” says Lord Westlet, his voice airy razored silk. “Really, the heart bleeds. But perhaps, my Lady, it might continue after breakfast?”
He doesn’t linger on the title but it is definitely there, the Lady, with the full House weight.
But Genevieve lost that title when she lost Dad. The Triplicate holds only Lady Westlet and Lady Galton, and Genevieve can’t be Lady Galton because she’s old. Lady Galton’s Heir is a son around Dad’s age. Even with lockdown, Dad would have said if a House Lady died, even Galton’s. If he had known, he would have said.
Wouldn’t he?
But this man is Dad’s age and so very familiar.
“Yes, of course, forgive me.” Genevieve’s nod is everything gracious, hair slipping into the Wren-blue eyes. “Gavin has kept you trapped for much too long, but he hasn’t a right and we will prove it. We won’t let him steal you again, will we Jaered?”
“No.” The man kisses her reaching fingers. “We hold on to our own.”
Then he smiles.
A round-cheeked, uneven Asa smile.
His nose is bigger than mine, but turns up at the tip the same way. He has my hair, and the eyebrows that don’t quite match. The pale, uninteresting lips that Emmie says I should always bury in color.
Me in a way Dad never was.
A ringing kicks up in my head, creeping high and higher, until it drowns everything. Lord Westlet stands in slow motion. The Lady, too, then everyone. A mimed disharmony of mouths and feet, all focused on the man who is me and isn’t and can’t be.
I step back. Once. Twice.
And I’m gone.
DAUGHTER
“DAD!” I SAY INTO LORD WESTLET’S FLIPCOM. I’m in the Lord’s office, under his desk. It took forever to connect through the one open channel, even with Lord Westlet’s communications ID.
“Asa?” And it’s him, really him.
“You have to tell them. You have to tell them I’m not his.”
“What?”
“She says they’re going to steal me back because you have no right and, Dad, he looks like me—like me—and you have to tell them I’m yours, because whatever I say they’ll keep talking but they won’t with you, you can prove it. Please, you have to come.”
His voice drops. “She?”
“Genevieve. She was at breakfast, Dad. Breakfast. And they’re calling her Lady and this Jaered is with her and—”
“Galton’s there?”
“No, Dad, listen. Not Lady Galton, but Genevieve and this Jaered person—”
“Jaered is Galton. His mother died two years ago.”
Galton? Lord Galton? My mom is Lady—?
My palm buzzes with their polite, treacherous handshakes, and I scrape it against the carpet.
“How long have you known?” I ask, but Dad’s already moved on.
“What did your mother say?”
It doesn’t matter what she said, it’s what he didn’t. “Did you know she was related to the Electorate?”
“Distantly, what—”
“Did you know she was a cousin?”
“Fourth or fifth, what—”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I told Emmaline.” Ragged and echoing.
Right, of course. This is her role, her place. She doesn’t look like him.
“What did your mother say, Asa? What exactly?”
“That you’re not my dad.”
“And that Galton was?”
I nod, which is stupid. “Yes.”
Maybe he nods, too, because he doesn’t answer.
He won’t come. He didn’t for Wren. He won’t for me.
Not if it means seeing Genevieve.
“I should go,” I say.
“Asa.”
“It’s okay, Dad.” It’s not, but it’s not like he’ll be here to care. “Even if no one listens, I can get a blood signature or something to prove—”
“No.” Immediate and harsh. “I will be there tomorrow. Do not give them the idea if they haven’t had it yet. Don’t say anything.”
“Dad?”
“Though knowing your mother, I’m sure they have. Do not let her near you.”
“But I’m yours, it won’t matter if—”
“Blood bonds require actual blood, but she’s resourceful. Don’t give her the opportunity.”
“But Dad, I’m—”
“Asa.” Three letters strung by thread. “I will handle this.”
The flipcom slips to the floor as I lift my hands. Dad’s hands. Wren said so. When we used to play Slap Spades, Emmie would whine because we were faster, and Wren would press my palm to hers, spread all the fingers out and say, That’s because we have Dad’s hands and you don’t, so there.
“NICE TRY.” REGGIE PEERS UNDER THE DESK, ANGER pulsing in his temple, backlit by the light he has switched on. “But this is your mess, and you’ll face it with the rest of us.”
He grabs my arm and hauls me to the elevator and up four flights. There’s rhythm in the marching. I count our steps, the passing doorknobs, the wall sconces.
But all I hear is Dad.
Reggie yanks open the door to the small library and pushes me through. “The Daughter of Fane, as requested.”
The storytelling windows warm everything but Lord Westlet. He paces thunder while the Lady watches from an armchair and rubs her temples.
I stand in the middle of the room, assessed and alone.
From behind, Reggie says, “Or should I say, Galton?”
“No,” I say, but it holds no depth or weight. Not enough to stay upright.
Except Lord Westlet catches my arm and pushes me into the chair by the Lady. “Get out.”
I try to rise, but the Lady rests two fingers on my hand and keeps me in place.
“Now, Reggie,” says Lord Westlet.
Reggie slams the door. The Lord picks up his battle march.
Thirty-four steps. Thirty-eight. Forty-six.
“NO, I WILL NOT CALM DOWN! THE STABILITY OF OUR House rests on a Daughter of Fane who—b
esides not being the Heir—isn’t actually Fane.”
“We don’t know that, Arron.”
“You saw them! You saw them both!”
“Just because there’s a slight similarity—”
“We have her mother’s word. And if Genevieve is sure, I’m sure Fane has at least guessed—an interesting little tidbit he failed to mention.”
“The arrangement was for Emmaline—”
“No, the arrangement was for the damn Heir, not that it matters now, because if the girl is Galton’s, then her blood is Galton’s, and our treaty is with Galton—and, might I point out, we don’t even have Fane’s damn energy schematics! Should Galton decide to strip our planets as bare as the independents, we won’t have the power enough to stop him without stripping our planets ourselves, and won’t the Electorate love that? ‘Oh, by the way, I’ve decided to annihilate your home world, would you mind moving out?’”
“I’m sure Fane will deliver—”
“But if we hold fast to our son’s lying bastard of a father-in-law, we will be in direct violation of the treaty—since we are blood bonded through Galton’s Daughter, and the Electorate will back his right!”
“We’ve no proof she’s—”
“And should we fail to honor that, Daric could oust our line! Or prep a militia for the attempt, which he has been quietly building over on Olev—don’t think I don’t know—and waste the last of our energy on a civil war that neither of us have a hope of winning. Especially, if Mekenna withdraws her support. She has been our one steadfast ally, and now we may not even have her.”
“Yes, but we don’t know for certain Asa is—”
“Not to mention that without Fane’s fuel—or, God forbid, the man himself—our whole House will go dark. We’ll be sent back to the damn preflight age, though at least they had separate energies for light and heat and flight. Not that they could fly, but at least their entire power structure wasn’t uleum based.”
“Arron.”
“Where the hell is Eagle?”
“Asa, dear, where is Eagle?” Lady Westlet looks at me. They both do, with the Lord pausing on step eighty-six.