Bethany Hagen - Landry Park

Mother opted for the limousine. I hugged her good-bye.

“Your father and I will be back,” she said, wrapping her fur coat more tightly around herself. “Once your father wakes and regains his strength, Landry Park will belong to him once more. The Uprisen will never acknowledge Jack as their leader.”

“Maybe,” I said. She looked around the house one last time and sniffed in disapproval. I watched their car leave with a mixture of regret and relief.

But I knew she was right. Jack had plans, of course. Plans to pay the Rootless fair wages and give them legal rights. Plans for hospitals and schools. Plans to build solar panels and wind turbines. Plans that sounded idyllic and utopian, but made me wonder if they were going to be subsidized with blood and suffering.

And now that the Empire had all but revealed their alliance to the Rootless outright, I knew it wouldn’t be easy. The government would never stand for a revolt funded by the Empire and the Uprisen would never stand for an attack on their way of life.

Rumors began to swirl of tanks and plans on the other side of the mountains. Jack seemed certain that it was all for our benefit, but I could not summon up the same confidence. I could only remember the horrible pictures from the battle last year.

“We will prevail,” he said one night at dinner. “Perhaps within a few months, this city will change. And when it changes, the country will see how much better things can be.”

Nobody else at the table was listening. Cara and Ewan were whispering and nuzzling at one end, while Charlie was drawing a picture at the other, his tongue sticking out in concentration. Despite a dip in his exuberance and a certain twitchiness in response to sudden noises, he seemed okay. He was alive. Now Cara and Ewan were tracing each other’s features, as if they’d never seen a thing as wondrous as a face before. Jealousy pinged inside me.

“Excuse me,” I said. “I think I’m tired.”

“Go rest. We have been very busy these past two weeks.”

I set down my napkin and left the dining room for the staircase. Someone stepped out of the shadows and bowed. My heart lifted. David.

But it was Jude, smiling and square-jawed and dashing, but Jude all the same. He offered an arm and I took it. In the insanity of the past fortnight, I had forgotten about my debut, about his determination to marry me and have me be his perfect military wife.

“Sorry for the surprise, but I wanted to speak to you alone. Just for a minute.”

“Of course.”

We walked up the stairs, our footsteps muffled on the lush carpet.

“David told me that you and he had kissed.”

I stopped. “Oh, Jude.”

“And that he had feelings for you.”

“I am so sorry,” I said. “I never meant to lie to you.”

Jude shrugged, but I could see the pain in his face. “I won’t pretend that it doesn’t hurt. I had thought, at least, I had hoped—” and here his fingers found my ring finger. “I would have been a good husband, you know,” he said softly. “Anything you wanted, I would have given to you. Anything.” He leaned in and kissed my hand, his lips warm and dry.

A curious sense of regret tugged at me, along with the feeling I had when I first met him, of having known him before. Maybe I had been wrong in thinking he only wanted me for a partner in his ambition. Maybe he did really care for me.

I swallowed something I didn’t know was in my throat, feeling my chin quiver.

“Go get your coat,” he said, indicating my bedroom. “I will wait here.”

“Why should I get my coat?”

He smiled, a real smile, even though it was thin and small. “Because we are going outside and I’d like to keep my cloak on this time.”

Once I was clad in my coat, Jude led me downstairs and outside, where, in the light of a Cherenkov lantern hanging from the front of the house, David sat in a large sleigh. Two horses stomped impatiently in the front.

“Madeline!” David said cheerfully. “I’ve got enough sake to float this sleigh to St. Louis.”

“I forgot my gloves inside,” Jude said, and disappeared back through the door.

David jumped easily out of the seat and came toward me.

“Did he mention…”

I nodded, unable to bring myself to talk about it directly.

David looked downcast. “I had to tell him. We don’t keep secrets from each other.”

It seemed to me like Jude had kept my debut a secret from David for long enough, but if male relationships were anywhere near as complicated as the relationships I had with the women in my life, then I knew loyalty could coexist with doubt and omissions and outright lies.

“I understand.” David reached for me, and I couldn’t help it, I reached for him, too. His lips were just as warm, just as searching as they had been the other day in the park, and the same white fire as before lapped at everything with insatiable flames.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked hoarsely. “About Cara?”

His eyes dipped. “It was not my secret to tell. I could not risk another soul knowing that our relationship was fake. Initially it was to protect me, but then I began to suspect the truth about her attack.”

“Addison,” I said, remembering her pointed words in the parlor at the Lodge. So that’s why David had kissed Cara like that. To protect her from a second incarnation of Addison’s wrath.

“I couldn’t let her hurt Cara again.” David kissed me again, softer, his lips light as snowflakes on my cheeks and nose. “But you have to know how much it pained me.”

“Cara said that you wanted someone to help you seem normal, a girl to complete the gentry bachelor lifestyle.” I looked down at the snow swirling around his black shoes. “Why Cara? Why not me? I am rich, I come from a good family; I mean, I am a—”

“—Landry,” David finished for me. “You are a Landry. And I did not know I could trust you until the day you met Jack, and even after that, there were times I was not sure. You have no idea how like your father you are. Not only in the way you look, but in the way you carry yourself, the way you radiate ambition.”

“I am not ambitious,” I protested.

He traced my lower lip with his finger. “You are. You are full of this… zeal. And I could never tell what that zeal was for. Was it for the gentry? Or for something else?”

He tilted my face toward his, and I could feel the bite of the frost-scented breeze on my upturned face.

“You were not like any gentry girl I’d ever met. You were sharper, more perceptive. You were like looking through a telescope at the galaxies. I felt dizzy and small just seeing you. I wanted nothing more than you, which was terrifying, because I spent most of my time vacillating between what I wanted for my own life.”

“To be gentry or Rootless.”

“It is over now,” he breathed. “I do not have to wonder any more. About myself. About you.”

I slid my hands around his face. “No more ambivalence.”

His lips touched mine as he spoke. “No more lies,” he promised.

The cold air nipped at the heat between us as we separated just in time for Jude to emerge with his gloves.

Jude helped me into the sleigh, and then climbed in himself, his hand squeezing mine one last time before he let go. David hopped in the other side, all energetic bounce again.

“The Rootless and the working class are calling us heroes,” Jude said, settling into the furs and blankets. “All three of us.”

“Still don’t believe me about modern-day knights?” David asked me.

“I’ll believe it when I have a statue next to Jacob Landry’s.”

Jude offered me a flask of wine. “Then I will make sure that happens.”

“And I will make sure that it’s a full body statue. Maybe naked,” David said, taking the reins.