This night is sparkling
Don't you let it go
I'm wonderstruck, blushing all the way home
I'll spend forever wondering if you knew
I was enchanted to meet you
________________________________________________________________________________
I was secretly reluctant to trust Jinx's feedback in case she meant to play me for a fool, but the gown she chose truly is lovely: the exact black of my favorite strappy heels, with a sweetheart neckline and tiered off-shoulder sleeves, simple enough to allow me to accessorize however I please. I get carried away experimenting. When I'm settled, layered strands of gold loop about my waist, and three gold necklaces break up the bare plane of my chest. I wind my hair up in my hand and try on my half-mask in front of the mirror, vaguely giddy.
I wonder what Vi will think. She would sooner die than wear anything in its vein, but does she appreciate gowns and jewelry on other girls? I'm certain she supports me wearing whatever I prefer, but will she like it? Sincerely? Perhaps I should have asked. Not that I would let anybody's opinion besides my own dictate my choice in clothing. I am simply someone who values informed decisions.
Just as I'm about to start styling my hair, a knock sounds on the door. In case it's Vi, I stay behind it when I open it to hide my costume, but it's Ekko. Green paint and glitter frame his eyes.
"Oh, you look gorgeous!" I blurt out. "Are they meant to be firelights' wings?"
He laughs. "Yeah. Jinx did them. You probably look good too, but..."
"Oh! Come in!" I say, waving urgently. As soon as he's across the threshold, I close the door. "I'm not supposed to let Vi see me before the ball," I explain. "Jinx thinks it will make the reveal much more romantic."
"Are you sure she's not messing with you?"
The possibility hadn't even crossed my mind. "I hope not," I say. "She picked out this dress, and she wasn't messing with me then. Was she?" I add on second thought, scanning myself in concern.
"No," Ekko assures me, suppressing another laugh. "You look great."
"Thank you." I go back to the mirror to continue work on my chignon. "What can I help you with?"
"Nothing. I just have something for you."
I turn, surprised. He draws a closed hand from his jacket pocket.
"It's not really anything," he says. "But we have a refugee who does wood carving, so I commissioned them. I just thought you might like it."
He opens his hand, letting a chain dangle, pulled down by the weight of a pendant. I step closer and find that it's a tiny, precise, wood-hewn hourglass, with cutouts at the center of each bulb so that it resembles the graffitied symbol of the Firelights.
I reach out. Ekko drops the necklace into my palm and fidgets in my periphery as I take a closer look.
"I just thought you might like it," he says again. "You always seem to try to wear your Firelight accessories, but I figure there are times you can't do that, so I thought you might want something subtler."
I face the mirror and clasp the chain on. It's the longest of my necklaces, the hourglass sitting under all the gold, a focal point.
"You don't have to wear it tonight," Ekko says. "I know it doesn't go with—"
I spin and throw my arms around him. It's a good thing that I haven't done my makeup yet, because I feel tears prickle my waterlines.
"Whoa," he says after a second, hugging me back. "Good. I thought you hated it."
"It's wonderful. And so kind. Thank you. Who carved it? Would you give them my gratitude as well?"
"I will. Her name's Rune."
I let him go so I can touch the pendant again. I've never cared much for jewelry when not abiding dress codes, but I don't think it's ever coming off.
"Thank you, truly," I say. "This is the best gift I've received in a long time."
"Don't mention it."
"I'm sorry that I haven't been back to the fort," I say. "I know you told me I can visit whenever I'd like, but it just feels— entitled."
"How?"
"Taking up space and resources when I have no real reason not to use my own here. Playacting that I can relate to you just because I helped with the revolution. It's insensitive."
He shakes his head. "That's not how we look at it. As long as you're pulling your own weight like the rest of us, you're welcome to our resources."
"How do I pull my weight now?"
"Wash the dishes. Do supply runs. Take shifts on guard. If you're really worried, you can just stop by for a couple hours and not eat anything."
I laugh and hug him again. It feels like he's humoring me when he pats my back, but also like he's happy to do so.
"Wear your comm, okay?" he says.
"How come?"
"Just in case."
I humor him in return, digging for my comm in the clutter of my desk. "Promise me you'll try to enjoy yourself tonight. At least some."
"I'll give it a shot."
I see him out. I've done my chignon carefully to accommodate the comm and begun on my eyes— I'm taking a leaf from his book and incorporating a bit of gold, something new for me— when I see a flash of movement and have to lob a bottle of cuticle oil in its direction. Jinx cusses and reappears in the bathroom doorway after the resulting crash, hands up.
"Chill out, muffin," she says. "I come in peace."
I grip the edge of the counter, squinting to block out the sight of my reflection. "Jinx— please don't sneak up on me when I'm in here."
"Here specifically? Why?" she says, and when I hesitate, she lowers her gaze and says, "Oh."
I breathe through my nose and start letting the mirror back into my field of vision.
"Sorry," she mutters.
"It's all right," I say.
"It's kind of not."
"Well, no. It wasn't all right at the time. But we're all right now."
She doesn't respond, so I take a tentative step in her direction. She's turned the fabrics she chose at the boutique into a skirt in silver, blue, and black and a ruched black halter top, and she even made a sash belt with a perfectly crafted rose. She chose asymmetrical fishnet stockings and fingerless gloves as her accents; more concerningly, she's acquired unmatched, beaten-up boots just like the ones she wore the first time I met her. I don't ask how she went about it.
Her hair is unchanged from how I styled it, aside from some extra silver. It feels good to know it measured up to her standards.
"What do you need?" I ask.
She jumps on the topic change. "Vi's gonna want to check on me constantly at the ball," she says. "Make sure she doesn't. I'll come to her when I want to."
"Why don't you want her to check on you?"
"Because you need to woo her and she can't be distracted. She has no idea that going with you is a big deal. This is gonna register as a forgettable night out to her unless you do something."
I raise my eyebrow. "Why are you so invested in my relationship with Vi all of a sudden?"
"Because you're the one Piltie in the world with an ounce of decency, and it's beneficial to have allies."
"You know, it's acceptable for you to simply want some independence at the party."
"Over-analyze my motive however you want," she says. "Just don't waste your chance with Vi."
"I'll rope her in tightly. Don't you worry."
Jinx starts flouncing out, then looks over her shoulder, scowling. "You look pretty," she snaps.
"Thank you, Jinx. You do too."
"No, I don't."
"You don't?"
"I look hot."
I cringe. "Yes. My mistake."
She cackles and flounces out for real. Miraculously, I'm able to finish getting ready without any more interruptions and with extra time available, so I put on my mask, slip my camera and ticket into my purse, and creep down to the parlor, where I last saw the others. Ekko and Jinx are there, but not Vi, so I'm able to drop in.
"I'm going to go down to the ballroom a bit early," I say. "Can you all get there on your own?"
"Yeah," Jinx says. I suspect that she's seen every inch of this place from the air ducts.
"Give me a warning when you're on your way. I want to be... ready."
"To woo?"
"Yes."
She rubs her hands together malevolently. Ekko rolls his eyes.
Mum and Dad have already headed down, so I follow, flashing my ticket and submitting to the metal detection even though the guards I've known for years tell me I don't need to. There will already be journalists inside, and I don't want to appear like I think I'm too special to follow the rules.
I used to run around in the ballroom as a child when I had excess energy. It's made up of stone pillars, vast windows, three chandeliers, and a polished floor off which my crisp footsteps echo. On the far side is a dais for the musicians— we hired a string quartet, who are tuning and setting up their sheet music— and the door that leads to the dining hall. Nearby is a pair of reporters, one of whom focuses a camera on me as soon as I walk in. I smile with what I hope appears to be surety and excitement. The excitement is genuine, the surety less so.
Mum and Dad are speaking with Councilor Heimerdinger, Councilor Lumley, and his wife in one corner. Mum was apprehensive about the ball when I first suggested it, but more open than I expected; Heimerdinger was immediately on board; Lumley was the second-to-last to agree (the last being Ekko), but he looks happy enough now. He looks up and spots me— fortunately, a voice calls "Cait!" before he can say anything, so I wave apologetically and hurry over to Jayce and Viktor.
Jayce's mask is silver, with veins of Hextech blue he must have put in himself. Viktor's is rather a shock: machinelike, it covers his face entirely and glows from behind, orange light raying out from its eye holes. He slowly turns his head toward me. Jayce laughs when I twitch.
"Your outer set of guards had a similar reaction," Viktor says. "The inside one tried to confiscate my lungs."
"The metal detector went crazy," says Jayce.
I take my camera from my purse. "May I commemorate this?"
They pose enthusiastically. I snap a photograph and tuck it into the hidden pocket at the hip of my gown. Viktor insists on taking one of Jayce and me as well, and the three of us set off wandering.
"I went to see Ren again," Jayce tells me casually. Viktor must already know of our scheme, given his lack of reaction, but I have to force my own calm.
"Did you?" I say. "When?"
"Well, a couple different times. Several times, actually. Actually, pretty much every day, but—"
"Jayce!" I yelp before I can stop myself. I take a breath. "You must be quite fond of her, then? And her of you?"
"Sure. I guess. But it's not like that's all it takes. I'm extremely busy, and—"
"You told me yesterday about the window in your guest room that would accommodate her bed," says Viktor neutrally, scratching at a smudge on his hand rest.
"Did he?" I say.
"No," snaps Jayce. "Well, yes, but I wasn't serious! It's insane to assume, just because I considered her room design, that—"
"Her room design? You thought about more than the bed?"
We go back and forth like that until guests begin arriving, at which point I have to wander alone as Mum and Lumley are doing to greet everyone. By their manner of speech and taste in fashion, I can tell most of them are Topsiders, but, having volunteered to attend, they're all in good spirits.
I am too, up to the point of realizing that it's not most of them who are Topsiders, but all. Not a single trencher— aside, perhaps, from those disguised too well for me to notice— arrives on time, including the Undercity councilors. I search for Jayce and Viktor, panicking. I'm too afraid to comm Ekko. Is there some sort of trick being played? The journalists are watching everything. What will we do if half of the expected guests never show? If half of the councilors never show? The news will devastate our relationship with the public.
"Fissure folk don't know the quarter-hour rule," Viktor tells me once I've hissed all of my worries out in a single breath, his unconcerned voice muffled by his industrial mask. "It's a Topside custom. They will start arriving at the exact time stated on the ticket."
I gawk, then deflate in relief. They didn't know about the plus-one standard; of course they don't know about the quarter-hour rule.
I wonder how much else they won't know. I pray that the Piltovians are patient.
Just as I manage to calm myself, my comm buzzes.
"We'll be there in a minute," Ekko says.
"Get ready," Jinx adds. "Everything rides on this."
Vi's comm is tuned to the same wavelength as the rest of ours, so I wince.
"Don't get assassinated," Scar chimes in from across the river.
"At least if we got assassinated, we'd get to leave this thing early," mutters Ekko.
I move to the back of the room, tossing smiles and waves at those whose eyes I catch. The string quartet is playing ambient music now, and the players barely glance at me when I creep up onto their dais.
It's the vivid pink hair that I spot first. Ekko and Jinx are pressed close to her on either side, looking around warily, and I would find it endearing, except I can't focus long enough to conceive any thoughts beyond: "How sweet— shit."
It occurs to me that I never explained how she should go about dressing formally if formality was her desire, and if Jayce did, she took his advice as mere suggestion. She wears mainly silver and white, accented by the red of her extremely crooked tie and the fiery phoenix feathers that make up her half-mask. Rather than dress shoes, she went with her grille boots, though it appears that she's cleaned them. Her sleeves are pushed roughly up to her elbows, and— to my utmost awe— her shirt is unbuttoned all the way from the collar to the midpoint between her navel and sternum, and she doesn't have any bandages on. The result is a long slice of exposed skin that I've never known to see the light of day outside of closed doors. I feel my cheeks burn.
For a moment, I track her approach without starting mine. The setting makes it particularly apparent how differently she carries herself from the people with whom I grew up. Her body language has always been insouciant and masculine, and when you add that to the fact that she's the only woman in the room besides her sister who's not wearing a gown, and that she has never learned Piltovian terms of modesty, and that she's visibly capable of rendering all the rest of the guests comatose, she sticks out like a sore thumb. I adore it, but the way others are looking at her worries me.
If she notices, she doesn't show it. She speaks laughingly to Jinx and Ekko, who hang back together to entertain a journalist, and peers through the thin crowds. I feel the moment she spots me like a sliver of hot ice and force myself to step down from the dais.
In one stroke of good fortune, people deliberately move back to their own business as quickly as they left it, and no one in particular watches us meet. Vi gives me an obvious once-over and fixates on one of my hands, so I extend it, and am baffled when she takes it in one of hers and bows to kiss the backs of my fingers. Her eyes lift to mine and hold them the whole time.
"Ms. Kiramman," she says with a shit-eating grin. "Well met."
I keep my voice cool, refusing to let her think she's achieved anything. "Likewise."
"You look beautiful."
"As do you. Though 'handsome' may be more apt tonight."
Sincerity pushes the devilish element from her expression. Before she can reply, a bright white light flashes at our side, and she blocks her face with her hand. "What the hell—"
"It's just the reporters," I say, pressing her arm down. "Remember? They won't bother us too badly."
She makes herself look pleasant in time for a second flash. "Why do they need pictures? Can't they just write about it?"
"More people will read the article if there are pictures. They're exciting. Speaking of...."
I bring her back to Ekko and Jinx and free them from their journalist. "May I take a photograph? Just for us, not the papers," I say, pulling out my camera. They all look shocked— Jinx and Ekko are fascinated, while Vi is wary. "What's the matter?" I ask. "Don't you have access to cameras in the Undercity?"
"Not too often," says Ekko. "And not ones that look like that."
"How often is 'not too often'? You have pictures from your childhood, right?"
"I don't," Vi says.
"Diddly squat," says Jinx.
"I have a few," Ekko says, and the girls whip around. "I'll show you sometime," he says.
"I'd like to see them too," I say, caught up in the thought of Vi with chubby baby cheeks and Jinx— Powder— when she was happy. I hurriedly add: "If that's okay."
"Sure," he says. Vi, still wary, nods. Jinx glares, but doesn't object.
"From now on, I'm glad to take your photographs whenever you ask," I say. "We can start tonight."
They glance at one another and arrange themselves as they did when they walked in. I peer through the viewfinder. "Smile!" I say. Jinx bares her teeth with overzealous glee; when the others hesitate, she jabs Vi in the ribs, eliciting a laugh from her and one from Ekko a second later. I snap the photograph.
They crowd in to watch it emerge. I watch them instead, delighting in their wonder.
"We can take a few so that all of us can have one," I offer.
"Are you gonna be in any?" Vi asks.
"If we can find some help."
I summon Jayce. He takes seven or eight shots before I shut him down. Vi, Ekko, and Jinx pass around and scrutinize each photo, eventually returning them to me to keep for later. I put them and my golden ticket in my pocket and hand my purse off to one of the three crystal-armed enforcers on the walls for safeguarding.
Our two pairs split up and reenter the arduous mingling portion of the event. There's an hour of it before dinner, with the dances following that, and I take it in stride, especially once the trencher guests have helped fill in the room as Viktor promised. I speak with everybody, many of them more than once. Vi shadows me and participates when she has no choice— each time we cross paths with Ekko and Jinx, tortured glances are exchanged. She tenses up whenever I have to reassure a politely-prodding Topsider that she isn't my plus-one the way they know it. I ask her if she would prefer to change our story, but she says no.
Selfishly, I'm happy she doesn't realize how serious this move really was. She never would have asked me to invite her if she did. I consider telling her now, but it's too late to go back on our arrangement— knowing would only stress her out.
A caterer passes us once with a tray of champagne flutes. I take two of them and hand one to her; she holds the stem in her fist and inspects the liquid suspiciously. "What is this?"
"Champagne," I say. "It's always the first thing served at parties."
"So I have to drink it?"
"It's not a requirement. I just thought it might make this a bit more bearable." I take a sip. "It's probably different from what you're used to, but it's good."
She swirls her glass, watching bubbles rise. "I just don't really drink."
"Don't you? How come?"
"It puts you off your game. Screws up your reaction time."
That makes sense. Physical inhibitions are a bigger liability within the lifestyle she's used to as compared to my own.
"That's fine," I say. "I'll take it off your hands."
She passes the flute back and we find our next guest to entertain, both of us reluctant. She actually does try to perform well— I can sense it, and I appreciate it. However, she becomes so sullen after a while that our conversational partners see right through her and are scared off. I'm plenty exhausted myself, so I draw her to the outskirts of the room for a breather.
"Do you want to sit out until it's time to eat?" I ask.
"No. It's not that bad."
"You're miserable."
"I chose to go with you. I knew what I'd be doing."
I look around the bustling floor. "Well, I'm miserable too," I say. "I've always hated these sorts of events."
"Really?" she says. "Then why'd you come up with this?"
"As I said: it's a political tactic." Also an opportunity to dance with her and let her see me in formalwear. "But I think we've done our part for now."
"We can't just stand over here and not talk to anyone."
"We aren't just standing here. Come along." Avoiding eyes, I lead her to the door.
"We should check on Powder," she says.
"Powder actually asked me to keep you away from her tonight," I say.
Vi looks affronted. "Why?"
"She didn't say, but I speculate that she's trying to pursue Ekko romantically."
"Ah." The offense fades, replaced by amusement. "All right. I'll let it slide."
"Let's go."
The guards nod at me, and I nod back, and Vi trails me until we're out of their sight.
The din of the gala is still audible from a distance, but the rest of the manor is expectedly deserted, most lights off and all doors closed. Those of us staying here are the only ones allowed to go anywhere beyond the ballroom, and the rest of them are still safely occupied inside.
I seize Vi's wrist. The only reason I speed-walk down the hall instead of running is because I don't trust my shoes.
"I think the champagne made you brave," she says.
"Perhaps so."
"What are we doing?"
"Exploring," I say. "You claimed not to have seen most of the house. I want to show you."
She lets me pull her through the glossy wooden doors of the library, but when I turn on the first lamp, she stops in her tracks. I look back.
"You're kidding," she says.
With ceiling-high mahogany shelves making up three walls, a row of arched windows on the fourth letting in the twilight, and a circle of plush furniture with a wide glass coffee table in the middle, it's a sizable space by Topside standards— I can't imagine how it feels to her. I give her arm a tug and she follows me further in, looking every which way as I put on the rest of the lamps. Yellow light glazes the carpet and the spines of the books.
"Wonderful, isn't it?" I say. "I spent a lot of time in here growing up. I must have read everything."
Vi draws her wrist from my grip and wanders closer to the shelves. "I've spied through those windows before," she says. "All the little panes got in the way. I thought I was just seeing things."
"Have you ever been to a library?" I ask.
"No. I don't even think there's any in the fissures. Too bad, because Powder read everything she could get her hands on, but we couldn't afford much from the bookstores."
"That's inadmissible," I say. "Everybody should have access to a library. I'll put it on the Council's radar."
She moves to the next wall, me trailing behind. There's a little ponytail at the back of her head, bound with one of my ribbons that must have come from Jinx, and it's inexplicably enticing.
"Is that ladder on a track?" she asks.
"Yes. You can take it all around the room to get to the higher shelves."
"What's in the drawers?"
"Note-taking materials, maps, newspapers, anything miscellaneous we want archived."
She reaches toward the shiny gold lettering on a book cover, mesmerized, then snatches her hand back. "Cool."
"You can touch it," I say. "You can look at anything. That's why I brought you here."
Visibly doubtful, she runs the backs of two nails over the texture and takes the volume from its shelf, opening it to a spot in the middle and turning to get a bit of light on it. I flinch at the way the spine cracks, but I say nothing. The way she holds it tells me that she's trying to be careful. There mustn't have been anyone to teach her how.
I glimpse the print and watch her eyes move, remembering what she once said about her reading ability. I wonder if she understands what she's seeing.
"Not really," she says.
"What?"
"You're wondering if I can read this. Right?"
"How did you know?"
"The way you were looking between me and the book."
I flinch again, this time at myself. "Well, it doesn't matter to me if it doesn't matter to you. I was only curious."
She puts the book back in place without replying. Her fists close and quickly reopen.
"Come here," I say. I bring her across the room and grab a smaller, brighter novel, bent and dog-eared— I didn't learn to take care of books for a while myself. "How well can you read this?" I ask. "It was one of my favorites when I was younger."
She chooses a random page again and scans it, an intent furrow forming between her eyebrows. "Fine," she says.
"Come here," I say again, and sit us down on a green corduroy couch. "Read a few paragraphs out loud to me."
"Why?"
"I'm still curious."
She scoffs, but picks another page. I lean in so that I can see it.
"Just skip anything you don't know," I say.
She misses several words, and the ones she gets don't come especially fluently. I watch a tremor in her knee turn into an overt bounce of frustration. When she reaches the end of her third paragraph, she drops the open book face-down on her other side and looks to me with a bit of a dare in her eyes.
"How old were you when that was your favorite?" she asks.
I keep my voice unconcerned and unsympathetic, as I know she hates pity. "Eight."
"Eight?"
"In fairness, I was quite a precocious reader. Most of my peers would read a novel of that sort at ten or eleven."
Her fists clench again. I can tell she wants to lash out, so I wait, and in a moment, she takes a deep breath and the crinkle of her nose softens.
"I'm not surprised that books weren't the first thing on your mind when you were young," I say. "You had a lot of responsibilities."
"Powder and Ekko still managed it. But it was always harder for me than them, and I didn't think it was worth the effort."
"Powder told me that you didn't enjoy your lessons," I say. "Any extra reading must have just felt like another chore."
"Yup."
"Why was it harder for you?" I ask.
"I don't know. Letters just... look weird."
I'm not sure how well I'm going to be able to work with that, but it's enough for now. "I can teach you," I say. "If you'd like."
"I know how to read, Caitlyn. I know the alphabet."
"Of course. And you can define far more words than you can recognize on paper— you just have to practice connecting their spelling with their sound. It isn't as daunting as it seems."
"It's not daunting. I'm just not really interested. You don't have to do anything."
"It would be my pleasure," I say. "I won't try to be your instructor or give you assignments. Perhaps I could just read aloud to you and you could follow along on the page? If you ever do find something you're interested in, I would hate for you to miss out."
Vi mulls this over. I scoot closer to her and grab the book, still open to the page she chose, from her other side.
"'Superior,'" I say. "'Capable.' 'Penalty.' Those are the words you skipped."
"Shit."
"You could enjoy this book easily if you listened to it. Well— this one, specifically, might not be up your alley, but there are plenty of others."
She snorts. "Did you read a lot of sappy romance novels when you were eight?"
"I found them sweet and comforting," I say defensively, smoothing the bent book cover flat. I notice my hip pressed against hers, one of the chains on her belt digging in, and my leg bared to the thigh by the slit in my gown. My hands fold tightly on my lap. "Consider my offer," I say.
"Didn't you say you were gonna draw something so I'd understand me and Powder's hair? I'd rather you do that."
"Oh! Yes! Wait here."
I speed-walk over to the drawers and pull out a piece of parchment and a pen. Vi smiles at me when I rush back, the feathers on her mask shining faintly iridescent where the light hits them. I kneel in front of the coffee table and she follows suit.
"Keep in mind that what I'm going to show you is just the basics," I say, drawing a box and splitting it in half both ways. "I only took an introductory genetics course."
"Got it."
"To begin: hair color is determined by what we call 'alleles,' which are simply different variations of a certain gene. You receive one allele for hair from each of your parents, so you end up with two. We put them here." I put a capital 'B' over one of the four boxes and a blank line over the next, and a capital 'P' and another line down the side vertically. "We can't know the second allele that either of your grandparents had, but whatever it was, the pink and blue were dominant. See, alleles are either dominant or recessive— you only need one dominant to get the dominant color, but you need two recessives to get the recessive color. The dominant allele is, in essence, stronger. Does that make sense?"
Vi is watching my paper closely, her forearm grazing mine. I wish suddenly that I hadn't chosen long sleeves. "Yeah," she says.
"You can have two dominant alleles," I say, "but usually you'll have the same dominant allele twice— you could have two black alleles, for example. That's called a homozygous pairing. A heterozygous pairing is two different alleles, such as a dominant black and a recessive blonde. Both of those pairings will give you black hair." I draw new diagrams to show both. "But there's another option: heterozygous dominants. Your mum got this square." I mark it down. "Blue and pink, both dominant."
"So which one wins?"
"Neither!" I say, thrilled. "They both show up. Heterozygous dominants give you either an incomplete dominant or a codominant expression. She was incomplete, or in between the two. Purple. If she had been codominant, she would have had some pink strands and some blue."
Vi turns the parchment a bit. "That's... wow."
"What color was your dad's hair?"
"Brown."
I draw a new diagram. "You got one allele from him and one from your mum," I say. "Hers were both dominant over his— we know this because we see neither brown nor any recessive allele he may have carried on you, even though he appears in all four boxes. You're either the first or the third box: dominant pink and a recessive. Powder is either the second or the fourth box: dominant blue and a recessive."
Vi is leaning twice as far in now, so I slide the paper all the way over and watch her squint at it.
"I apologize if that was too long-winded," I say, irrationally disconcerted at her silence. "It's just something I'm interested in."
"No, it was perfect. I like that you're interested. It keeps it from being boring."
I don't know if it's the words or the glance she flicks over at me that puts heat in my stomach. "Are there any questions I can answer?"
She puts the paper down and gets back onto the couch. "What hair color would my kid be most likely to get if I had one?"
"I can't say without some information on the other parent." I join her, and she angles herself toward me, and I desperately want to fix her crooked tie. "My father is homozygous for navy hair and my mum is homozygous for brown, so I'm heterozygous, with the navy allele being dominant. If you and I, for instance, were to have a child together, it could have pink, navy, or brown hair, or it could have an incomplete dominant or codominant expression of pink and navy. It might even have similar hair to your mum."
I don't notice until I finish blabbering my daft point out that her expression has drastically changed and she's sitting straight again, perpendicular to me. That's what I get for running my mouth.
"I'm sorry," I say. "I didn't mean to suggest that— that your mum could be replaced, or...." In truth, I'm not certain of what I suggested. All I know is that it bothered her.
"You didn't suggest that," she says. "I'll tell you if I ever don't like how you talk about my parents. It's okay."
I'm relieved for a moment, until I replay my tirade. My heart sinks again. "Don't worry," I say lightly. "I promise not to try to have a child with you."
A soft smirk. "Same here."
I smooth my dress. "Do you want children? I wouldn't have guessed."
"God, no. Especially not any that came from me. You just seemed like you wanted to answer questions, so I asked one."
"Oh— you don't have to ask questions if you don't have questions. Please never feel as if you have to do anything like that." Shit.
"I don't," she says. "I just liked seeing you so excited."
"Oh."
I look at my hands. We're silent for a moment.
"Powder says having an heir is a big deal in your family," Vi says. "Is that true?"
I sigh. "Yes, regrettably. I'm supposed to bear at least one daughter in order to pass on the Kiramman name."
"What happens if you don't? Do you get disowned?"
"No, nothing like that. If you've tried a couple times and not ended up with a daughter, you're mostly off the hook. But not trying at all is just considered a shame, and you'll be nagged forever."
She puts a booted foot on the coffee table and quickly takes it back down. "Are you gonna try?"
"I don't want to. I've known since I was a child myself that I wouldn't do well raising children. And I don't think it would be a kindness to make someone else carry this name."
Rather abruptly, Vi gets to her feet and tears the diagrams I made for her and her mum from the surrounding parchment. "Can I keep these?"
"Of course. I could remake them more nicely for you, if you want. Bigger, with neater lines."
"I like these ones." She tucks them into her back pocket, sweeping a glance around the library. "Can I tell Powder about this place?"
"Please do. She's welcome any time. But let her know how important it is that she not do any drawing."
"Were you gonna show me anything else?"
I had forgotten that I was ostensibly giving her an house tour, not just sneaking her to a vacant chamber so we could be alone. "I was," I say. "Would you like to see the fitness room? It won't compare to the Undercity's infrastructure, but it has technology that you probably haven't used before."
"Sure."
I put the novel and pen back where I found them and turn off the lamps. Even with the champagne still fizzing up my spinal cord, I don't have the guts to drag her around by her arm again. We walk side by side instead. Partway to our destination, she stops and backtracks to peer through an ajar door.
"What's wrong?" I ask.
She points. "Is that a real piano?"
I look past her. "Yes," I say. There's a piano in nearly every home owned by the upper class, but it would make sense if she's never seen one in person. "This is the music room. We can check it out."
She pushes the door the rest of the way open. I close it behind us, puzzled— all the doors in the house were supposed to be shut.
The music room is soundproofed, so the undercurrent of noise that followed us to the library stops at the threshold, leaving our breathing suddenly much louder. The dimness— there's no wall of windows here, just a small square pane with a plain frame— doesn't help. All I can see until I turn on the lamp over the piano is Vi's sharp silhouette in a strip of dusty silver. The lamplight drowns that out and brings her features back into view: she looks awestruck.
I blow dust from the piano's cover and keys and sit on the bench out of years-old muscle memory.
"Can you play it?" Vi asks.
"Passably. My parents made me take lessons when I was young, but I haven't touched it since I started working." I set my fingers on the keys and play a C scale; it comes out as easily as if I did it yesterday.
"Do that again," Vi says, standing closer.
"The scale?" I replay it and feel her at my back, watching my hands over my shoulder. I turn back in time to catch the look on her face. "Sit down," I say. "I'll show you."
"I don't know anything about it."
"That's okay." I scoot to one side on the bench. "We'll go slow."
She settles next to me, and I again notice the press of her hip to mine. Jinx wasn't kidding about the environment tonight.
"Let's start with just your right hand," I say. "See the pairs of black keys? Find the white key just in front of the first one. That's C." I demonstrate lower on the keyboard, and she finds her own unsurely and places her index finger on it. "Good. Just use your thumb instead."
She puts her thumb down, the rest of her hand tightly fisted. I hold in a giggle. "How is this C if yours is also C?" she asks.
"Music notes are named from A to G. See how the pattern of the keys repeats? On a piano, you get the same note multiple times in different octaves." I press my C along with the next one down. "They sound the same, don't they? One is just higher."
Vi presses her C so gently that it doesn't make a noise. "What's wrong with this one?"
"It just takes a little more force. You won't break it."
She tries again and jumps at the note that sounds.
"There you are. But let's sort out your technique before we go any further." I reach and take her fist, coaxing her fingers loose. "You want to keep these open and relaxed. Put one down on each of the white keys— like that. Perfect. And keep your palm up, as if you're cupping an orange. You don't want your hand to go flat."
She watches me demonstrate again, playing C, D, E, F, and G in succession. Like when I showed her the diagrams in the library, she's serious and focused. She imitates the arrangement.
"That's perfect," I say, and her answering smile makes me melt. "Now, your posture— you have to sit up to play, or else you can get sore." Unthinking, I place my hand at the small of her back, and her spine immediately straightens like a rod. When I look back at the keyboard, her fingers have partially curled back up. Her unused fist pushes down into the bench. "Keep these in mind," I say, sweeping my hand under hers to reopen it, and I glance up to see a red flush peeking out from under her mask. My cheeks burn in response.
"Are piano teachers supposed to be this familiar?" she says.
"Shut up and play your C again." As if familiarity is a concept she's ever cared about, the insolent scamp.
She studies her carefully-positioned hand, picks it up, closes it, presses the C with her index finger, and puts her hand back into place.
I am seated next to the most adorable human being in the world, and I'm not sure how to handle it.
"What happened to your pinkies?" I ask. It's not what I planned to say.
"Hm?" She follows my eyes to her scar-quilted knuckles, stopping on the last one, the one that forces her finger out in not quite the way it should. "Broke 'em."
"I assumed so, but how?"
"At Stillwater, before I learned the right way to punch the walls."
My attention lingers on her tendons, the knob of bone at her wrist. The scars again, white and pink and red. Things on which I don't often get to linger. "There's... a right way to punch walls?"
"Yeah. The wrong way breaks your pinkies."
I laugh faintly and touch the crooked knuckle. "You wouldn't have had them properly treated, would you?"
"Nope."
"Do they ever hurt?"
"Sometimes. Only a little." She plays a soft G. "They still work, so it can't be that bad."
"Good hand position," I say.
She plays the note again, more confidently. "This is just where you told me to put it."
"A moment ago, you pressed C with your first finger and just put it back afterward."
She seems to replay the last minute in her mind and half-laughs. "It feels more natural that way."
"It does at first. You'll adapt." I get to my feet and go around to stand on her other side, close enough to brush her forearm. "Let me guide you," I say, lifting her hand from the keyboard and placing it on top of mine. Her palm is callused and hot. "Stay relaxed."
She looks up at me, anything but relaxed. I smile and slowly begin a C-major scale. Her fingers jump a bit, struggling to remain aligned with mine when I move my resting position upward, struggling less when I move it back down. I cross my left arm over my right to end the scale with a chord.
"How'd you do that?" she asks.
"Like this." I press down my right thumb, middle finger, and pinky, producing another C chord. She presses down with the wrong combination of fingers at first, but adjusts in a second and laughs at the music. "Listen," I say, moving our middle fingers to the E-flat key. The new chord makes her laugh again. "That's C-minor," I say. "It was major at first. This black key is a half-step lower than the white one."
"Why did you go so long without playing?" she asks, pushing on my fingers to hear the chord a second time. "I could do this all day."
"There isn't as much thrill in it when it becomes a responsibility."
Vi brings her left hand to the keyboard and plays a D-minor chord, an accidental G included. "Fair."
"Are you ready to use both hands?" I say.
"Yeah, but you lead."
"Scoot the bench back."
She does, and I sit between her splayed legs as demurely as I can manage with her amused scoff right up against my ear. "How's the thrill now, cupcake?" she mutters, and feather-light hands cup my waist and move away before I can look down to see them; even with the phantom heat left behind, I would think it had been my imagination, if not for the audible grin in her breathing as she sets her chin on my shoulder.
"Do you want to play or not?" I snap. She surrenders her hands and lets me place them on mine with the most disobedient obedience I've ever encountered.
Old habits come back to me. I improvise in C-major, my tempo unhurried, emphasizing the maneuvers that seem to please her: double-octave chords, runs, syncopation. Her foot taps chaotically to the beat, sometimes knocking into mine. As punishment for her teasing, when I'm ready to stop, I play around with resolution— I trick her into thinking each measure is the one, and I unravel it, build it back up, unravel it again, rattle her in the dissonance like a storm until she hisses, "For fuck's sake, Caitlyn—"
"What's the matter?" I say.
"I don't know! Fix it!"
I smile to myself and we crash home into C-major. Vi keeps her hands on mine and lets the sound resonate into silence before slumping against my back with a groan.
"Was I too rough with you?" I ask.
"Just rough enough," she murmurs, drawing her fingertips up my sides and down my arms and stealing back my advantage just as quickly as I gained it. I can't say that I mind.
Disregarding, that is, the fact that we're supposed to be minding ourselves at a crucial political event, and as far as anyone knows, Vi is here only as a favor— certainly not so that we can shirk our duties and have trysts in music rooms. The thought of an attendee stumbling across us in this state pushes me to my feet.
"We should head back before we're missed," I say, glancing at the clock. "It's almost time to eat."
"Already?" Vi turns around on the bench and rests an elbow on her knee as though she hasn't a care in the world. "Aren't you gonna show me any more fancy hand tricks?"
"Another day," I say. When I reach the door, she's still seated, but her impish expression is gone. Now she's searching.
"What was it like for you?" she asks.
"What was what like for me?"
"Everything. Growing up with money. Your mom being one of the most powerful people in the nation. I get the idea from you that it wasn't as great as it looks."
I nod ruefully. "It was as safe as it looks," I say. "It was as privileged as it looks."
"And?"
"It was suffocating."
She slides to one side of the bench and draws a line between me and the open space with her eyes. Glancing skyward, I go back and sit down.
"There were so many rules," I say. "That was the biggest thing. You've seen some of them already. What I was supposed to do, how I was supposed to look, who I was supposed to speak to and when— it was all prewritten. As I told you, I seemed to struggle so much more than anyone else to meet the mark and not embarrass myself. And embarrassing myself meant embarrassing my family by extension, which just worsened the pressure.
"One night in particular has always stuck with me, because it was when my resistance began in earnest. By that, I mean my habit of sneaking out my window and arguing with my mum. It wasn't much, but it was something."
"What happened?"
"My cotillion ball. Cotillion is essentially an etiquette and dance class, but we mainly used it to make and strengthen social connections. At the ball— ah." I stop, cursing myself.
"What?" she asks.
"Never mind. Just— this took place just after the Undercity rebellion. It's very petty compared to what you and Powder were going through at the time. It's tasteless to share it with you."
"I don't mind."
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah." She touches my shoulder lightly with hers. "It's not like me and Powder have a monopoly on shitty experiences."
I cross my ankles. "Well, at this ball, we did our routine and were meant to mingle and dance for the rest of the evening, but I went out to play on the patio with two other girls. I was crushing on one of them— Councilor Lumley's daughter, actually; her name is Lydia. We eventually went to the ground to race, and I fell in the mud. Mum caught us. She went off on me about my immaturity and insufficiency and threatened to cancel my sharpshooting program if I didn't shape up. I was livid and hurt. In some ways, I feel like I missed my own childhood."
I regret that last sentence as soon as it comes out, but Vi doesn't look to mind. "How old were you then? Twelve?" She snorts. "Your mom's lucky you waited that long to defy her. If I hadn't already, I would've ran off the minute I heard I had to go to 'cotillion.'"
I laugh, relieved. "I'm sure you would have."
"Did you and those girls have fun while it lasted?"
"We did."
"Good." She gets to her feet and offers me a hand. "You were always a little rebel, then, weren't you?"
"Shut up."
"It's nice to know it's not just me who corrupted you." I open the door; she nudges me through in front of her, making infuriating contact with my waist again, and adds, "Not all me."
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Intro lyrics from "Enchanted" by Taylor Swift.
I want them to have a simple & sweet Taylor-esque love someday because they deserve it, so I gave them a taste. I didn't think I cared about any of these tropes much until these two. They literally rewrote my view of romance in fiction. No one's doing it like them
i know i said i'm giving you these every other week now, but AO3 has me almost at 500 kudos, so a reward was in order for them and therefore for this gang too <3 enjoy