Page 205 of Because I Killed Him
The Pinkies strap a support device onto my leg before discharging me from the Belvoir Infirmary. It’s much lighter than the brace, wrapped securely around my thigh and calf to keep everything aligned while the last bits of bone and tissue heal. Three more weeks, the robots say, and then I’ll be normal again. Whatever normal means now.
Charlotte drives me back to the Green Dormitory. We follow two Pinkies who carry my boxes and unpack my life piece by piece, putting everything back where it belongs. Considering how much Charlotte and I talked these past few days, the silence between us now feels strange, almost uncomfortable. But I want the quiet more than the comfort.
At the door, she pulls me into her arms, her chin tucked over my shoulder, as if bracing herself too. “Good luck, Lore. I’ll be here when it’s done.”
“Thank you, Char.” I squeeze her again, long enough to feel her heartbeat, then pull away before I lose my nerve.
Jack said the meeting point is the tram stop by the Blue Dormitory. I don’t understand why. It’s crowded and exposed, nothing like the private corner I’d hoped for. But maybe that’s why Edmund chose it. We met on a train, and now, at the bitter end of everything, we’ll end things on one, too.
When I reach the platform, Edmund is already there, waiting with his hands locked behind his back. The sight of him, standing among low-citizens, makes him seem impossibly tall, impossibly out of my reach.Maybe I aimed too high, tried to grab the branches when I should’ve been satisfied with the roots. Now, when he lets me go, the fall will be as hard as it is long.
I hope I won’t break.
I knew I’d found the one, not when I was willing to die for her. But when, for her, I was willing to die to myself.
—EDMUND PREW
CHAPTER 49
Whatever shock or anger Edmund might’ve carried these past few days, none of it shows now. The only thing I see in him is sadness, like the shadow cast when a cloud drifts in front of the sun. It doesn’t fit the suit he’s wearing, a bright, eggshell-blue three-piece that makes him look like spring in mourning.
When I reach him at the tram stop, the rain begins. It’s only a few shy drops at first, but the sky above us appears swollen, ready to split wide open. Edmund remains silent as the tram arrives, though his gaze drifts over my goosebump-pebbled arms, as if noticing I’m cold. He lifts his hand to signal for me to board first.
I glance up at the overhead display, which shows the route to the Moonshine Mile. Of course. It’s Thursday, the day we usually breakfast at the Tangerine Tree. But I won’t see that place today. It’ll all be over long before then, and I’ll step off this tram alone, heading back to the low-citizen zones where I belong.
I can’t bear it.
As Edmund guides me through the Blue section of the tram, the silence between us feels like it could crush me. My throat works around all the words I want to force out, yet each one feels too little and too late. We pass several booths, private and luxurious, until he chooses an empty one near the end.
We step inside and sit facing each other, our knees nearly touching. As Edmund closes the door, he avoids my gaze as if my face were an openwound he can’t bear to look at. I swallow hard and slip my hand into my pocket, wrapping my fingers around the wire daffodil he gave me, willing it to steady me. But when he finally looks at me, the sadness in his eyes wilts my hope, and my composure breaks. I don’t have the right words. There aren’t any. All I can do is say the ones that claw their way out first.
“I’m so sorry, Edmund. I didn’t mean to lie. I swear, I never meant to hide what I did. I didn’t know Charles was your cousin until a few weeks ago. My dad told me. And by then… by then I was already—We were already—” The words break apart on a gasp.
“We already cared about each other too much. And at that point, I didn’t know how to put it in your hands and hope you wouldn’t hate me. I tried—on the yacht, before Irene came. And after that, when you asked me to go flying with you. I was going to tell you then, I promise. I never wanted it to come out like this. Not in that room. Not in front of everyone.”
I pause and draw in a ragged breath that scrapes my throat raw. My hands shake so violently that I clamp them between my knees, trying to still them. “And I know it cost you everything. All those Blues telling you to get rid of me—”
“Yes,” Edmund says softly.
The word silences me.
“Yes,” he repeats. “But the cost never mattered to me. Like you said, we care about each other. And that’s what people who care about each other do.”
I frown, unsettled by how calm his tone is. It doesn’t match the tension in his body or the unsteady look in his eyes, quiet yet desperate, like a man slowly bleeding out. I lean forward and reach for him instinctively, but just before my hand touches his, he pulls away.
“Given the nature of our… situation,” he says, loosening his tie, “I’ll give you a choice. I won’t cut you out of my entourage. I won’t hold it against you. I’ll even forgive you—if you prove yourself the way I proved myself to you, by paying a cost. For me.”
I nod before I can stop myself, even though every ounce of my survival instinct screams at me to run. Something about this is wrong. It feels like he’s moving pieces on a board I can’t see or touch, yet they’ll decide my future all the same.
“Prove it how?”
Edmund’s throat tightens, and he drags his hand across his mouth as if to hide it. Then he reaches into his suit jacket pocket, pulls something free, and presses it into my palm.
I look down and see a small glass vial holding a single black pill.
Bliss.
As I stare at the pill, black as a dead star in the vial, the deal that Edmund is lying at my feet dawns on me in brutal flashes, like a shockwave of glass shattering behind my eyes. I see it all: take Bliss, one tiny pill. It’ll cost me a hundred civil credits, pennies he’d probably slip back into my account himself. But the real price isn’t in the civil credits. It’s in the destruction that would follow.
