Page 59 of The Silent War
I didn’t cry. We are trained better than that.
My mother choose freedom. Gave the Dynasty full control of me. To this day I’m only dragged to her events if ordered.
Perhaps if our mothers had cared more about us, than the Dynasty, we might not be micro-dosing lip balms.
Charlotte softened the moment by holding up a balm. “Here. Consider it a party favor.”
“From my own party,” Vivienne said. “You’re giving away inventory.”
“Add it to your ledger,” Charlotte said sweetly.
Vivienne pretended to scowl, then tucked an extra into my palm. “Just don’t actually use it unless you mean it. You’d be surprised what a kissed wrist can do if someone’s blood sugar is low and their ego is high.”
“Which is to say,” Charlotte murmured, “everyone we know.”
I weighed the tube in my hand. It looked like any other gloss—chic, minimal, no hint of danger beyond the people holding it.
Vivienne smirked, snapping the case closed with a sharp click. “Heirs will pay triple for something that makes them float and still lets them walk back into a gala without anyone noticing.”
“Gets them high,” Charlotte added, stacking the tubes neat. “Not dead. Too much mess in that. Don’t underestimate cosmetics, Emilia. Dynasty boys will lick anything off your mouth if you let them.”
Luxury disguised as innocence.
Charlotte watched me watch it. “We could have been normal,”
“Normal never invited us,” Vivienne said.
“Normal didn’t send you a Crow,” Charlotte added, and there it was: the truth they were dying to pull into the light.
I gave them a look. “Don’t.”
“You don’t have to pretend with us,” Vivienne touched my arm gently. “We saw your face when you said his name or should we say their names.”
“I didn’t make a face.”
“You made a face,” Charlotte nodded. “It was small and full of ruin.”
I wanted to deny it again. “He—he put his hand on my cheek in the car,” I heard myself say. “He told me not to close my eyes. Neither of them left the hospital until I was discharged.”
Vivienne reached for another case just to have something to do with her hands. “And did you close your eyes?”
“I did. But only after he let me.”
We all sat with that for a moment. Both of them remembered how they broke me. It was around the same time we started micro dosing lip balms.
“Here is what I know,” Charlotte said, leaning back, looking like a judge in a trial. “If a Crow wants you, if he chooses you, if he decides you are under his jurisdiction, the rest of the city can fall into the ocean and he will still be there, holding your jaw, telling you to look at him. It’s not romantic. It’s insane. It’s also?—”
“Useful,” Vivienne said practically.
“—terrifying,” Charlotte finished, but she smiled when she said it.
“How is Rome terrifying?” I asked, because if I had to think about the twins any longer I would start shaking.
“He knows where every exit is,” she said. “He doesn’t brag about it. He just always stands with his back to the correct wall. That’s a man who lived without permission long enough to make it policy.”
“And Nikolai?” I asked.
Vivienne’s eyes went distant for half a second. “He makes you feel like your heartbeat is a secret only he can hear.”
