38. Praetexo

praetexō ~ere ~uī ~tum, tr.

1. to fringe, edge (as in weaving)

I wake to white lights, the squirm of nanomachines all over my body, cold and metal and shaped like leeches, worms eating me too early. I’m in a hospital again—the smell of bleach and the beeping of my own heart against silence. My bleary eyes catch a riot of color, blue hyacinths and white daisies in a vase at my bedside—just like the ones I gave Mother on her birthday. Blink again. Someone sits at the bright hospital window in a hoverchair, humming jets keeping it aloft. It’s a boy, not a hallucination; young, thin legs, soft brown hair, and a smile like the carved angels—watching, listening, neither angry nor pleased.

“I found you,” he says gently. “You’re the one doing it, aren’t you? Confusing them.”

I open my mouth to answer, but everything spins and his smiling face melts into the white blur of the ceiling. Reality returns with pain; a throbbing head and keening chest and a bone-deep fatigue.

“—nali. Wake up.”

My vision swims until it treads water—I’m back in my room, five uncrossed circles in my wall and Luna a golden blur at the end of the bed. My hand instantly juts to my collarbone—Mother’s cross is still there. Dravik sits at my bedside, hands folded over his cane and his gray eyes blazing.

“What did you do to Heavenbreaker?” he presses. Worried about his steed, not me.

I chuckle, lungs too liquid-warm to make the sound for long. “Made a mess of it, didn’t I? But I’m sure your expert engineers can put it back together.”

He wordlessly projects his vis to show a replay: Heavenbreaker hunched over, a massive charcoal lance pierced through its chest, the very tip glancing clean through my shoulder, and my visor broken open. My lifeless ice eyes stare at nothing. Blood everywhere. Across from us, Flamedancer is intact but motionless, a single silver spike sticking out of its eye slit.

“—and the referee’s called it, folks! Synali’s helmet hit came milliseconds before Olric’s breastplate strike! Synali von Hauteclare is the winner of this match! I repeat; if she survives her injuries, Synali von Hauteclare advances to the—”

Relief floods me, sweet and aching. “I won. That’s all that matt—”

“What matters is riding.” The prince’s cut-off is so cold it sears. “You were sloppy, and you nearly lost for it.”

“I’ll ride Heavenbreaker however the hell I want, Your Highness.”

“You will not, Your Grace.”

We fling our titles like insults at each other. He hesitates only for a moment before switching the vis to brain images overlaid in orange and yellow, but it’s the uncolor that stands out most—empty gray holes as big as wax seals dotting the entire surface. It’s like looking at cheese, at metal rusted through and gaping, and my eyes find the name at the top right:

LITHROI, DRAVITICUS A.

Draviticus…Dravik. My eyes travel up him slowly, and when they meet the prince’s gaze, all that’s left in me is a cold unease.

“You want me to trust you,” he says. “I give you my weakness. One more ride, a single drop of exposure to a saddle again, and I will go the way of Sevrith.”

I swallow. “What are those holes?”

“They’re not holes. They are pockets.”

“Pockets of what?”

He stands abruptly, cane flashing in the sunlight, but I won’t give up.

“Why won’t you tell me? What are you so afraid of?”

The withered trees claw at the windows with the artificial breeze, bark fingers scratching the glass tension between the bastard of a king and the bastard of a duke. He turns his head over his shoulder.

“I’m afraid that I’m afraid for you.”

“Don’t be. You’re not my family.”

His laugh ricochets. “You don’t know what a family is. Neither of us does. But as of late I find myself more glad for it, because it’s precisely what drew us villains together.”

My scoff has no strength to it this time, dissolving into a smile. The prince grins back—casual and wry—and makes for the door. Every table in my room is empty—no daisies or hyacinths. Those flowers I saw…they were the exact same. I scraped together credits for months to buy those flowers for Mother’s birthday—proudly presented them, ecstatic to have bought something new for her rather than the same rusted salvage. Whoever sent them had to know what they meant to me, but I’ve never told anyone. Those particular flowers have only ever stayed in my memory, buried deep.

I find my voice at last. “Dravik—the white daisies and blue hyacinths in the hospital—were those real?”

He pauses, hand on the doorframe. “Someone delivered them. I had guards posted outside your door, cameras, and yet whoever it was slipped through undetected.”

“Do you know who they are?”

Of course he knows; he knows everything and everyone—he is the chessboard and the player that moves the pawn. No one gets past him. And yet now his mouth goes serious and straight.

“No. But I look forward to meeting them.”

The third circle dies while I’m recovering.

ONE NEW MESSAGE FROM: DRAVIK.

His name was Raoulle von Hauteclare; twenty-five and a man of science, working in a corporate lab developing antigens for the red pox sweeping the infants of Mid Ward and Low Ward. He convinced Duke Hauteclare at parties, at wine soirees. Talked logic with him. Reasoning. His encouraging messages blare in my eyes.

RAOULLE: No one would even know she was gone, Uncle. There are so many just like her.

RAOULLE: Her odds in Low Ward are not exactly promising, either.

RAOULLE: The universe is a chaotic thing, Uncle, and evolution is not kind. It does not measure who goes and who stays. We are all the same to it.

His reasons are logical, and his death is logical, too.

A reporter stands solemnly on the orange hard-light ribbon of the highway. “—in the early hours of the morning, a tragic accident on highway seven occurred between two hovercarriages—one of them noble. I’m here at the scene, and you can just see the remnants of the carnage all around us—”

A white wheel, broken. Glittering chunks of golden lacquer. Something dark smears long and uneven down the highway: blood.

“—no charges pressed, as the cause has been determined to be an unfortunate programming accident. It resulted in the death of one young nobleman who, for the purposes of respect for the deceased, will not be named—”

They have much respect for their deceased and none for ours.

I stagger out of bed and to the wall, diamond pendant in hand. With all the strength my pink-fresh wounds allow me, I scratch the third circle out. Four left. All I can do is heal, and wait, and think, “I found you. You’re the one doing it, aren’t you? Confusing them.”

Who was that boy in the hoverchair? Who exactly am I confusing?

Olric destroyed the muscle and tendons between my shoulder and neck—as Dravik loves reminding me, six inches lower, and it would’ve been my heart. My scar now stretches across my shoulder blade. New scars, new determination. Sleep, eat, watch the vis, ignore Rax’s constant pings, he just wants to bed you and your body wants the same. It wants to see if he’d be any different, but what my body wants cannot be trusted. It would be a weakness, compromising everything Dravik and I have accomplished thus far. And where would it even lead? To nothing but the end.

It would be pointless to hope.

Quilliam is with me always—hovering, administering, his sniffing no better even though he and I have cleaned nearly all of Moonlight’s End.

“You’ll have to find someone else for this,” I say one day, wringing out a rag with my good arm. “When I’m gone.”

Quilliam’s shock of gray hair droops over the bookshelves as he dusts. “Yes, miss.”

“I’m serious, Quilliam. You and Dravik cannot keep living like this. He needs people. You need people.”

The manservant’s voice goes soft. “Indeed, miss.”