She slept deep, like she was drugged, pulled down into darkness. She wrestled with nightmares that itched at her soul, taunting her with blades plunging into flesh and Anna crying in the distance, never able to find her, reach her, hold her.
She wakes with a headache and her eyelids feel hooked to bricks, though still more refreshed than she’s felt in a long time. She quietly slips out, expecting to find solitude in the living room. But Sawyer is sitting at the dining table, dragging her finger along the rim of a glass. She’s wearing nothing but sweatpants and a crop top sports bra. Most of her exposed skin above her elbows and on her back is decorated with gorgeous color tattoos. A particularly captivating one depicting the galaxy wraps around Sawyer’s side, extending past her hip and disappearing beneath her waistband. The tattoos are marred by a dozen small cuts littering her neck, shoulders, arms, and back, each now cleaned and covered with small Band-Aids.
Sawyer gives no indication of hearing Lynell until she sits across the table from her. Sawyer lifts her chin enough to meet Lynell’s eyes for a beat.
She thinks, Couldn’t sleep? but doesn’t say it out loud because the answer is obvious. An indefinite length of time passes in which the only sounds are their breathing, and an occasional whistle from between Sawyer’s finger and the glass’s rim.
“Are you okay?” Lynell eventually asks.
Sawyer’s hand pauses. She shrugs. “I don’t know what I feel.”
“I get that.”
“It’s just . . . people have hated me for years. Either because of who my family is, my sexuality, my wife, or my work with the rebels. But somehow, during all of that, it was still . . .” She trails off, her eyes finding Lynell’s again. She shakes her head. “I don’t know.”
“It was still worth it,” Lynell finishes for her. “You knew why they hated you, and it was worth it.”
Sawyer’s eyes widen. “Yes, exactly. But this is different.”
“Because now the hate has turned into real, life-threatening danger and you don’t know why.”
“I mean, I get that they hate me for leading the Resurrection, but why now? Is it seriously all about the speech?”
“Speech?” Lynell asks. “Is that your plan for the convention? To give a speech?”
Sawyer grips the base of her glass, staring into the water like it’ll tell her how to answer. “Ellery was scheduled to be the keynote speaker for a conference in Orlando six years ago but was killed a week before. She wasn’t big on planning, preferred to live impulsively, but she spent months preparing for that conference. Not many people read her speech, or knew what she was going to say. To this day, I don’t know how they got ahold of it, but two weeks before she died, a lawyer sent her a cease and desist. Apparently, the speech could’ve gotten her sued for defamation against the Elysians.”
Lynell notices Sawyer’s lips twitch and wonders if she’s fighting a smile. Whatever thoughts pass through her mind must give her strength, and she lifts her face to Lynell while she continues explaining.
“She’d never focused on the Registration during her activism until then. That would’ve been the first time she openly spoke against it. Unfortunately, she didn’t pick a great time to shift focus. The oligarchs clearly didn’t want any more incited rebellions, because they aggressively shut down anything anti-Registration. So, Ellery was only one of hundreds to be threatened with a lawsuit.”
“They didn’t have a legal leg to stand on,” Lynell says. “Unless the speech contained personal claims against a specific individual, then it’s not illegal to share your political opinion.”
“I think they were hoping to scare her into silence. I still have no idea how the Registration’s people got a copy of the speech. I didn’t share it with anyone else for years after she died. Not until I decided to . . .” She trails off, allowing time for Lynell to mull Sawyer’s words over in her mind.
“You’re going to give Ellery’s speech, aren’t you?”
Sawyer nods.
“So, Ellery is Registered before she can give the speech, and now you’re being threatened into not giving it?”
“I guess,” Sawyer says.
“What is in that speech that they’re so afraid of?” Lynell asks.
“I would bet anything he secretly hid the code inside the contents of the letter he wrote you all those years ago,” Eric seems to whisper in her ear.
History repeats itself. That truth lives in every twinge, ache, and memory in Lynell’s body. Could it also live in Ellery’s speech?
But why would Ellery know the companion cloaking code? And why would she put it in a public speech?
“Maybe you can answer that for me,” Sawyer says. She leans forward and pulls several crinkled and dirty pages from her back pocket. The edges are slightly stained with blood, and one page has a tear nearly all the way down the middle. “I don’t know why I brought it yesterday. But I did.”
Cautiously, Lynell reaches out. When Sawyer doesn’t pull the papers away, Lynell takes them and reads the title at the top of the first page, Be a Peony, with the subtitle, Learning resilience in the face of certain death. She notices several handwritten corrections throughout the typed paragraphs, probably where Sawyer has made updates.
“‘Be a Peony,’” Lynell reads. “The note and petals in your office.”
“Yeah. Ellery was going to talk about resilience and finding a way to live despite being surrounded by death. About how the Registration causes death and devastation every quarter. Peonies were her favorite because they die every winter and return every spring to bloom again.” She pauses and Lynell turns away, pretending not to see the tear that slips from Sawyer’s eye. “Johnson must have gotten a copy of the speech somehow. I deleted every file of it from my computers and rarely left this copy lying around.”
“Maybe whoever threatened to sue Ellery gave it to him. An oligarch or committee chair. If they’re behind all of this now, then maybe they coerced Johnson to Register Ellery.”
Sawyer’s eyes widen with recognition.
“What is it?” Lynell asks.
“After Ellery died, my lawyer found this sort of manifesto.” Sawyer explains the discovery, her conversation with Paul, and the realization that the ‘founding Father’ was probably her grandfather. Her words sound frayed at the edges, something Lynell intimately understands.
“I guess you can join the Shitty Grandfather Club.”
Sawyer grins. “That’s not a membership I ever wanted.”
“It comes with a healthy dose of trauma and trust issues. Lucky us,” Lynell says, finding solace in the humor. She takes a heavy breath. “Look, I don’t think it’s just Jude. I’m pretty sure Finnegan Reese, Tamara Nelson, and the oligarch Bruce Macgill are involved too.”
“Jesus,” Sawyer curses. “How many of them are behind this?”
“We should probably assume a lot. I mean, they’ve threatened and stalked you, bombed my house, kidnapped Anna, and shot at both of us. The policy change is important to them. They can’t have me trying to stop it or you interrupting the announcement during tomorrow’s convention. They definitely don’t want us working together. We’re clearly a threat to them.”
“Being a threat sounds good in theory, but it sucks in reality,” Sawyer says.
Lynell remembers the comments under the article about the bombing a week ago that mentioned shadow governments and women in power being a threat to the patriarchy. Maybe there’s more truth in them than she originally thought.
“Let’s see what’s in this speech that’s so dangerous,” Lynell says. She lays the papers out and starts reading. A few sentences stand out, independent statements from the surrounding text.
“Every year, winter ravages any flowers that manage to grow. And every year, peonies return, rising from the dead to bloom once more.”
“Every quarter, the Registration ravages this country. And every day, we, the outcasts, the rebels, the survivors, rise from violence to bloom once more.”
“Our country is ruled by a devil disguising himself as our heavenly ruler. They want us to believe he is pure, but he’s not.”
“Their lavish homes are stained with our blood. What they call paradise is our purgatory.”
“They condemn us to death and call it a kiss.”
“Our very lives are paychecks to them, and the longer we accept the Registration, the more compliant we become to our lives being sold like rotten fruit.”
“The Elysians spread death like weeds, hoping to choke the life out of those of us who dare to challenge their values.”
“Winter will keep coming. Weeds will keep growing. The Elysians will keep throwing death at us. But like peonies, we will not stay defeated. We will come back every year.”
And the last sentence, which Lynell silently reads in Sawyer’s voice, “Against all odds, we will rise again.”
She knows each previous rebel group had their own idea of how the country should run. Some were formed from times before the Registration and simply evolved along with the country. Some fight solely on the basis that certain things should be legal outside of the Registration, like abortion, but don’t try to fight the Registration itself. Others want the Registration to end completely, so everything it allows will become illegal, no matter the circumstance.
The group Daniel fought with was one of the biggest. It became possible when all the groups worked together. After their defeat, the groups mostly dispersed, licking their wounds. Many of the rebels stepped away from activism. It wasn’t until four years later, two years after Ellery died, when the Resurrection formed, that those lost rebels found somewhere to belong again.
“I’ve read it over and over trying to see it from their perspective,” Sawyer says. “To figure out why they have a problem with this speech specifically . . . it can’t just be because of our plans to interrupt the conference. They could reschedule the announcement or something.”
Lynell frowns at the words on the page, experiencing intense déjà vu from three weeks ago when she, Zach, and Daniel were trying to figure out the code. “It’s obviously anti-Registration and anti-Elysian. But that’s not a new thing.”
“The funny thing is, the harder they fight to keep this speech buried, the more convinced I am to give it.”
Chuckling, Lynell leans back in the chair, ignoring the pinch in her arm. “You sound like me.”
“I sound like Ellery,” Sawyer says with a smile of equal sadness and fondness. “The easiest way to get her to do something was to tell her not to do it.”
“I’ve never said I’m sorry for your loss,” Lynell says. “I can’t imagine losing Daniel.”
Sawyer’s smile loses some of the fondness and she whispers a soft, “Thank you.”
“I heard your song. It’s beautiful. It was noble of you to invite others into your grief with your music. Grieving is difficult enough when done in the safety of one’s own heart. But now I’m learning how much more complicated and difficult it is when the world seems to have an opinion on your loss.”
“Yeah, it’s . . . odd. To grieve so publicly. I’m sorry for your loss, too. I know they were horrible, but Eric and Zachary were technically your family.”
Lynell feels her spine straighten at the mention of those two names. The mix of hatred for Eric, guilt for his death, and crushing sadness over losing Zach makes her lungs feel too heavy for a full breath. When she speaks, the words sound strained: “Thanks. Eric is no loss. He was nothing but awful. But Zach . . . he was one of the bravest people I’ve ever known. He would have broken his generational curse.”
Sawyer’s brows lower and her lips thin. Lynell wonders if she and Harlow ever discuss Zach or if it’s an unspoken agreement not to. Does Sawyer think Zach is a copy of his father, or does her friendship with Harlow give her a different perspective?
The Zachary Elysian that the public knew was a man who thought he’d find safety and happiness in loyalty to his father, torn between parents, trying to protect his mother while supporting his father and all that entailed. They saw the man who did whatever he was told, the man who supported the Registration. The public Zachary Elysian thrived off the legacy of death his family left him.
They didn’t know the Zach that Lynell had begun to meet before he was taken. The man who gladly sacrificed his life for hers, Daniel’s, and Anna’s. The man who turned his back on his father and all the power, money, and control that came with his last name because he wanted to do what was right, what was good.
Lynell desperately needs the subject to change. “Tell me about Ellery. What was it like being married to her? What brought her joy?”
Sawyer studies Lynell for a moment, who doesn’t blink until she passes whatever invisible test Sawyer is grading. After a long silence, she rolls her lips together and nods, uncertainty dissolving.
“Being married to her was . . . difficult but beautiful. Ellery was stubborn and determined and assertive. People might have hated her if she didn’t work her ass off to love them well.” She pauses, drops her eyes, and smiles softly. “The first few years of our relationship were hard because Ellery didn’t understand my emotions, so she’d dismiss them. We had starkly different upbringings. It would’ve been easy for her to write me off as a spoiled, entitled girl who chased drama for the attention. But she worked to understand me like no one ever had before.”
Lynell listens, knowing each word is a priceless gift. She can’t decide if she wants to smile or cry. The love in Sawyer’s voice is heartbreaking, but it also gives Lynell hope more than anything else.
That kind of love is not only healing; it’s fortifying.
“That’s what gave her joy. Understanding things that didn’t make any sense to her. And fighting against injustice. And fighting in general.” Sawyer laughs, shaking her head at some memory Lynell can’t see. “She loved arguing. Nothing gave Ellery joy quite like having a productive, respectful conversation with someone who disagreed with nearly everything she said. That’s why she had friends you’d never expect a transgender, lesbian activist to have. A preacher, a member of the NRA, and a traditionalist pro-lifer, to name a few.”
Lynell would whistle if she could.
“And good food. Ellery loved good food. She had the most sophisticated palette. It made going out to dinner nearly impossible. She was so picky.”
“My mom was like that too,” Lynell says. “She’d eat whatever we had, but she used to talk about gourmet meals she’d had as if they were ex-lovers.” She wonders, for the first time, if her father had taken Elizabeth to fancy restaurants when they were dating. Eli Elysian would have had plenty of money to treat her to the most expensive meals. Elizabeth never talked about her own family, but Lynell always assumed they were poor and that’s why her mother never had a Registration of her own. If that was the case, then it was likely that any gourmet meals she’d had were courtesy of Eli.
Not for the first time, Lynell mourns everything she doesn’t know about her family. And not for the first time, she struggles to contain the rage against Eric Elysian for killing her father and sending Elizabeth into hiding to keep Lynell safe from her own family.
But her family is gone now. Dead. She’s the only one left.
“Why didn’t you Register Johnson? For revenge?” Lynell asks. Sawyer might be a rebel, but her parents weren’t. They would have bought her a Registration when she was born.
Sawyer pushes her cuticles back with her thumbnail, thinking about her answer. “I wish every day that Ellery would come home. Or that I could get revenge for her death. But desperation makes you sloppy. Besides, there are other ways to get revenge.”
The way she says the last sentence makes Lynell burn with curiosity. She wants to ask, but a voice in her mind—sounding suspiciously like Daniel—says it’s not her place. Thinking of Daniel while Sawyer’s eyes fill with tears over her dead wife snaps a string in Lynell’s heart. She tastes bitter anger and injustice on her tongue. Ice-cold resentment raises goosebumps on her arms and legs.
What is the point of having the power, money, and influence of the Elysian name if she can’t do anything about it? What has changed, really, in the last few weeks? She’s again hiding in an unfamiliar house, and can’t go anywhere because it’s not exclusively her life on the line anymore. It’s her daughter’s, her husband’s, and her friend’s.
She nearly gasps at the thought that Sawyer is her friend. It feels right, even unsaid in her own mind. She isn’t the enemy the world built her up to be.
“I’m so fucking sick of playing defense,” Lynell mutters.
“What do you mean?” Sawyer asks.
“Since I was Registered, I’ve been on the defensive. Every move has been about surviving. As soon as I try to fight back, to play by the laws of the system, they change the game again. I’ve never had the ability to win or even make a move that’s not running away.”
“Offense isn’t much better. It’s just as dangerous.”
“But it’s action. I’m tired of reacting.” A certain rage flickers in her. She knows this type of inner fire is dangerous, that it could burn her and the people close to her, not just their enemies. But now she doesn’t care. She’s felt cold for too long. The heat of the flames is intoxicating.
“Action can start wars, Lynell.”
“Wars can be won.”
Sawyer shakes her head. “But the only thing war guarantees is death, not good change for a better life. Don’t you want that?”
“Death is inevitable. Let’s use it to our advantage.”
“You’re not thinking clearly. You’re hurting and angry and sleep deprived.”
“Of course I’m angry. We should be angry.” Lynell is dimly aware that her volume is rising and there are other people in the house trying to sleep, but she doesn’t care. All she hears is the roaring fire.
“I know that. I’ve been angry for six years. I’ve also been leading a rebellion. I understand the desire to do something no one can ignore. But the last time this country went to war, we came out of it with the Registration holding us by the throat. We have to be careful with every step we take.”
“What has being careful done for you, Sawyer? Four years you’ve led the Resurrection, and the committee is still going to pass this policy tomorrow.”
Sawyer leans against the table toward Lynell, her cuts and bruises more visible than ever. “We’ll keep fighting.”
“We’ll never win if we’re not willing to fight like them.”
“When has stooping to the enemy's level ever worked?”
“This isn’t a movie, Sawyer! We’re not heroes guaranteed a happy ending.”
“Okay, you’re right.”
Lynell is so surprised to hear Sawyer agree that she doesn’t know how to reply.
“We won’t win by playing it safe,” Sawyer continues. “But we don’t have to become them either. We can fight our own way. Together.”