Page 211 of Because I Killed Him
She never told us how it happened, never even spoke of it until now.
I sit frozen, feeling cracked wide open, waiting.
“The current carried me downstream all the way to our tree fort,” Hillaire says. Her voice is flat, but every word cuts. “I remember thinking the trees were bending the wrong way in the wind. Then the water pushed me under a pile of logs jammed against the bank. One spun and pinned my wrist under a rock. I couldn’t lift my head. Couldn’t push up. After that, the forest went quiet. The only thing I could hear was bubbles popping near my eyes, and I thought: Fine. Let it be water… Then I felt my coin.”
Vivian and I exchange a sickened glance. Vivian is as stiff as a corpse,the diamonds on her dress shimmering against skin gone pale. I look back at Hillaire, trembling with dread because I know what’s coming next.
“The blade in my coin wasn’t sharp enough for bone,” Hillaire says. “So first I had to break my wrist between the logs. I didn’t like how easy it was. Then I started cutting at what was left. My blood looked yellow in the water, like it wasn’t even mine. Like maybe something dead was floating in there with me. By the time the bones let go, I couldn’t see much anymore… couldn’t hear the forest either. The current tore me loose, and I thought about sinking then, just letting it push me to the bottom. But when I floated up for air, I saw our fort through the trees. The roof—from that angle, it looked crooked.”
She pauses, wiping her eyes with a rough swipe. “That’s what made me start kicking again. Crawling through the mud onto the rocks. Because I didn’t just want to survive, Loredana… I wanted to come home. To you. To Vivian. To Mother and Father. I wanted tolive.”
Vivian presses her hand to her mouth, her breath hitching in quiet, uneven pulls. “Oh, Hilly—” She edges closer, torn, aware of how Hillaire hates being touched, but she can’t stop herself. She leans in, wraps her arms around Hillaire’s neck, and holds on as if she doesn’t care that she’s wrinkling her dress. Hillaire stiffens but allows it, resting her robotic hand against Vivian’s back.
Then her eyes lift, finding mine over Vivian’s trembling shoulder. “Ask yourself what you’re doing here, Loredana. What you’re living for. If the answer’s nothing, then I can’t help you. You might as well be dead already.”
I hold her stare, letting it cut through my fear, guilt, and heartbreak, all the way down to the part of me where the answer lives. It’sthem. It’s always been them. Hillaire. Vivian. Dad. Mom. Charlotte. The people I’d run through fire to reach, even when I forget it. Even when I lose myself in things I shouldn’t want.
For half a second, I nearly ruin it. I almost tell Hillaire I’m sorry for that storm, for the boat, for the hand she’ll never feel again. But I know her. She didn’t keep that story locked in her throat all these years because she wanted pity. If she wanted an apology, she would’ve forced it out of Vivian and me the moment she dragged herself home, dripping river water and blood onto the front portico. She saved it for now, intentionally, becauseshe needed us to see her the way she sees herself.
“I understand, Hillaire,” I say. “I won’t waste it.”
She nods and wipes her eyes again, still holding Vivian close. None of us speaks another word.
When the call ends, I stay on my bed, my fingers curled in the sheets, watching the faint glow of my Bond fade to black. I haven’t given much thought to what I’m living for. I’ve been too busy surviving, obeying rules with little concern for whether they’re fair. But as I consider the question now, I realize that Hillaire is right. Anyone can claw through day after day to make it to the next. But truly living means choosing something worth fighting for and holding fast, even when the river pulls you under.
I need to find that reason, my own piece of the world to stand on, something that doesn’t shift with someone else’s footsteps. To do that, I have to get over him.Edmund.
My heart laughs loudly and mockingly at the thought. Throw him away, it says, and you’ll throw me away, too.
So be it. If I’m going to live out the answer to Hillaire’s question, everything has to change. My path. My choices. My fear of punishment.
I roll onto my back, the Florence Engine still projecting images of trees overhead. As sleep pulls at my eyes, the trees begin to stir, rustling and shifting across my bed. Branches shudder. Bark thickens. Roots drive down, then rise through the darkness, one by one, creaking upward, tall, broad, and strong.
A forest waking up.
Some men kneel to evil for wealth and power; others kneel to shield those they love. Yet whatever the reason, the truth remains: if the price is anything less than your own life, then you are for sale.
—THEODORE REEVE,
27thPRESIDENT OF THE CIVILIZED WORLD
CHAPTER 51
On Friday morning, I eat breakfast while staring at my empty inbox on my Bond. There’s no cancellation notice from Professor Jerome or a disciplinary alert about the rock I nearly caved in his head with. The fact that he hasn’t reported me for assaulting him, or even threatened to, makes me wonder about him.
All my first-year professors were cut from the same cloth: polished, distant, quick to draw the line between teacher and student, authority and obedience. But Jerome, whoever he is, keeps one boot outside that mold, as if he wants to track mud straight through it. He’s not the kind of man Grandmaster University usually hires. He’s too relaxed with the rules, too comfortable prying into students’ business. There’s only one reason the board of directors would overlook all that and keep Jerome on staff.
He must be smart. Irreplaceably smart.
“Miss Waldsten.” My Pinkie’s voice pulls me out of my thoughts. “It is five minutes before seven.”
The omelette curdles on my tongue. I wash it down with a sip of water, push back my chair, and step onto the balcony, where the spring breeze cools the sweat gathering on my temples. The surrounding balconies are already crowded, low-citizen students clutching the railings, dreading to watch their classmates be executed. I knew things would change themoment I left Edmund’s entourage, but I hadn’t accounted for this. I hadn’t considered that I’d be forced to stand here again, stripped of privilege, returned to the daily, hellish spectacle I used to be shielded from.
I step closer to the railing and look down at the Guillotine Yard below. Four low-citizen students await their turn to die, their faces unfamiliar, but it makes no difference. They might as well be my sisters. They might as well be me.
I know exactly what I’m about to see, every scream scorched into memory, every blood-drenched image waiting like a stain I can’t scrub away. Yet witnessing death feels harder today than it ever has.
The executioner guides the first student toward the guillotine, her sobs drifting through the yard like a thin, fraying thread. I reach for memories of my family to steady myself, but my mind offers nothing whole. It gives me only Dad, and the vast, lonely rooms of Waldsten Mansion left behind in his absence.
