Page 242 of Because I Killed Him
“Edmund.” I step out of the shower and call his name before I realize what I’m going to say. “I’m sorry for what I said to you in the rain. I shouldn’t have called you that. I didn’t mean to see what happened with your mother, either. I was out on the balcony, and… I didn’t know she was coming.”
Edmund stops, shoulders stiff, caught midway in the turn. Then he nods.
“Why do you let her do it?” I ask softly. “Why don’t you stop her?”
His eyebrows draw together, and his face twists with the same pain I saw when he stared at his bloody, ruined reflection after his mother left. “Because there’s less horror in losing my own blood than in losing those I share it with.”
He walks out.
I wait until his footsteps fade and the suite door closes before I drop the towel and step back into the shower. Slowly, I lower myself to the floor, sitting directly beneath the spray. Not to wash away the blood and dirt, or even to hide the tears sliding down my face. But to feel the warmth, as if Edmund were still here, still holding me.
No enemy brings me greater satisfaction to defeat than the one who was once my friend.
—PHILLIPA PREW
CHAPTER 60
I sleep for barely three hours before waking and taking a tram to the Genetic Engineering Facility. Exhaustion weighs on me, and I almost nod off in my seat as the Civilized Voice drones on the overhead television. Benjamin Bogart’s words drift into my ears through a haze of half-sleep:
“—reported an hour ago that all breaches in our shield have been sealed. There have been no further attacks from the Rangers since the fateful night of May 28th. However, we remain vigilant, ready to become sons and daughters of war, as our grandparents were.”
My head leans against the seat, eyes slipping shut. But the thought jolts me awake once more, persistent and unyielding. I can’t sleep. I have to find it first.
When I reach my stop, I embrace the warm predawn air, the sky faintly blushing as if the sun is about to rise. I use the light from my Bond to search the grounds where Edmund and I argued, walking the same stretch over and over, then dropping to my knees to crawl through the grass, examining between every blade. Thirty minutes pass before I finally find it, flattened beneath a stone near the facility gate.
The wire daffodil he made for me.
I pick up the flower, and my heart aches as I try to twist it back into shape. When it looks as close to a daffodil as I can manage, I board the tram again, clutching it to my chest the whole ride back to the Green Dormitory.
Outside the window, the sun slowly rises above the buildings, flooding the streets with a soft, newborn light that feels hopeful, like the turning of a page. I don’t know what awaits me in the next chapter, only that my second year at Grandmaster University will be different: better because I’ll be doing something worthwhile by helping Jerome infiltrate the Heretic network on campus; and worse because I’ll have to keep my distance from Edmund, loving him from afar. The very thought makes me want to revolt, to tear the Aegis from my Blood Ring and throw it out the window, until I remember something Jack once told Charlotte:you can’t ruin something that’s meant for you.
And somewhere deep inside me, as certain as the force that shapes my being, I know Edmund and I are meant for each other.
At the third tram stop, I realize I’m close enough to walk to Belvoir Infirmary. I’d planned to visit Charlotte today, but she texted that her dad had shown up. She hadn’t expected him to come after the Pinkies notified him that she was injured, yet he’s with her now. Besides attending the Ovation Ceremony tomorrow morning, her dad also wants her to fly home with him for the summer. I don’t know why he changed his mind after all this time, but I hope it’s the first step toward fixing what was broken between them. Charlotte needs him, just as I need my dad.
He’s flying in today, too, though not until this evening. Mom was supposed to join him, but given how devastated Vivian is over Harrison’s arrest and the postponement of their wedding, she chose to stay behind. While I wish Mom could be here, I understand her decision. Vivian needs her now, and she’ll need me, too, once I get home.
When the tram reaches the Green Dormitory, I step off sluggishly, my hand closed around the wire daffodil in my pocket. My eyes droop as I enter the elevator and ride it to my floor. All I want is to collapse into bed and sleep, because waiting for Dad has become unbearable. Every second without him feels like fresh pain, something I have to endure before I can finally earn the right to fall into his arms.
On the third floor, I trudge groggily to my suite. As soon as I enter, the scent of daffodils greets me with the sweetness of a faraway dream. I smile faintly, half-thinking Edmund must have sent a bouquet, until I hear a voice in the salon.
“Loredana?”
My head rushes with blood, and I shake it, certain I must be imagining his voice. Still, my heart hammers as I push through the doorway. And there he is—just as he always was after I finished a duel, waiting for me outside the piste with a smile and a bouquet of daffodils, whether I won or lost. Now he’s here again, ready to catch me after the final touch, after the longest duel of my life.
“D-Dad.” The word comes out in a sob. “I thought y-you were coming tonight?”
He shrugs, almost shyly. “I missed you.”
I stagger forward, my tears so heavy that his shape blurs before me. Dad sets down the daffodils, hurries toward me, and catches me as if I were still a child. I press my face to his chest, breathing in his familiar scent between sobs, clinging tighter and tighter until the heartache inside me begins to ease: the longing for Waldsten Mansion, for its endless corridors where I left memories like fingerprints; for the rose garden blooming wildly in the first weeks of spring; for the pine forest and the crooked roof of the tree fort Vivian, Hillaire, and I built in its center.
Because I have Dad back now.
And home is wherever he is.
Dad and I spend the day in my suite, talking from morning into late afternoon. Between breakfast and lunch, which I finally have the appetite to finish, he tells me about his plans for the Governor’s campaign and how he’s working discreetly through a Brasscoat contact to uncover the plea deal Harrison took, hoping to help him.
I’m mostly content to listen, smiling in a daze of happiness as I watch his face, half-afraid it isn’t real. When he asks me questions, I answer. I tell him about Edmund, that I’m no longer in his entourage but that we’re on good terms, even after he found out about Charles. The only thing I keep secret is my Aegis. Jerome said I could tell Dad about it, but I’d rather wait until we fly home. I twist my Blood Ring around my thumb, feeling the weight of the Aegis inside it as Dad takes a call about the progress of the political response to the Ranger attacks in the Green District. Eventually, exhaustion pulls me down, and I curl up on the sofa with my head againsta pillow. I drift off to sleep to the familiar sound of Dad’s baritone voice, like I did so many times in the living room of Waldsten Mansion. I sleep so deeply and dreamlessly that it feels like I only dozed off for a few minutes. But when I wake, blinking into the bright sun, I realize I’ve slept through the night. It’s morning, the day of the Ovation Ceremony, when the academic awards will be handed out.
