Page 72 of Because I Killed Him
“A lady offers her gratitude,” he says.
I edge toward him, forcing a sweet smile. “Thank you.”
He lets out a dry laugh, then steps down and sinks back into his chair.
My body screams in pain as I follow. At the edge of the vent opening, I lower myself from the ceiling and drop onto the table. My legs buckle on impact, and I crumple before Edmund, a shivering, blood-streaked mess.
“You look as if you have reached the seventh level,” he says, sliding me the daffodil brooch. “And yet here we are on the third. Why have you come, Miss Waldsten?”
The truth about President Reeve’s assassination rises in my throat, but I hold it back. Telling Edmund now could be a mistake. If he learns Reeve is dead, he’ll realize that being near anyone tied to the Bliss Prohibition Act is a liability and might decide that bringing me into his entourage is too risky.
With the Blues still out there hunting the children of the representatives who voted to ban Bliss, I can’t leave the Speakeasy alone. The only way to guarantee my survival is to walk out with Edmund as part of his entourage.
So I say nothing about the coup.
I grab the brooch and drag myself forward, smearing blood across the felt as I fold into the chair beside him. Pain throbs through every inch of me, but I manage to say, “To join your entourage.”
Edmund huffs a laugh, as if I just challenged him to an arm-wrestling match. But as I hold his stare, the doubt begins to fade, sharpening into a flat, pointed smile. “No.”
“Why not?”
“It is a very long line.”
“Perhaps. But given that I still have a request, I am cutting to the front.”
Edmund picks up his cigar from the ashtray, and his smile bleeds away. Smoke wafts around his face, tracing its angled lines until his eyes suddenly flare wide. “Fuck.”
I lean forward in my chair, a smirk on my face.Our bargain.He knows it’s incomplete. I asked him to save Jane, but Jane is dead.
“Is that a yes?” I ask.
“I did not say that.”
“So, it’s a no?”
“I did not say that either.”
With an irritated grunt, Edmund sets his elbows on the table and scansme as if taking inventory: my bloodied knuckles, my blistered feet, and the anxiety evident in every twitch of my body. “Tell me who injured you, Miss Waldsten. And do not lie.”
Formal speech feels too clean for a moment like this, but I still manage to string the words together, explaining that Blues murdered two students in the Gin Gallery in retaliation for their representative parents voting to ban Bliss.
A pulse flickers in his neck as I talk, faint yet fast, as if his blood is burning beneath his skin. But when I reach the part about Irene’s attack, something changes. A light touches his eyes, a sudden, hungry spark, like a match struck in a dark room.
I don’t understand it.
If Edmund brings me into his entourage, won’t that drive an even wider wedge between him and Irene? The only explanation is that he dislikes her enough not to care. It makes me wonder whether, like most high-citizen marriages, theirs was arranged. Still, Edmund doesn’t strike me as the type to give in to force, which means the payout must’ve been too big to pass up.
Treading carefully, I skip Irene’s offer to turn me into a spy and jump ahead to Sergeant Croft’s intervention and our escape. Edmund listens in silence, but halfway through, he lifts his cigar.
I go quiet.
Smoke rises between us in a twisting column, clouding his eyes as they drift toward the empty shaft where I was hiding. He blinks through the haze, absently brushing the scratch on the side of his neck.
The silence stretches long enough that I’m sure he’s calculating the consequences. How much risk will my membership in his entourage bring? How will the other high-citizens react? They won’t care that he’s honoring a bargain; they’ll care about public appearances.
And yet I can see by the ease of his posture and the slow pull on his cigar that he’s made up his mind.
“In my entourage,” Edmund says at last, tossing the cigar back into the ashtray, “there are rules, Miss Waldsten.”
