by Wren Weston
Tristan closed his mouth and stilled.
The silence stretched on, awkward and strange. Tristan’s bedroom had rarely been quiet. It was usually filled with moans or whispers or the sounds of deep breathing as they fell asleep.
Or the popping of a headboard.
It wasn’t used to quiet.
They weren’t used to quiet.
When the pain eased, Lila sat up. Her hand drifted to her belly, and her thumb stroked back and forth.
Tristan’s arm wrenched back as though he worried of hurting her. His face had paled. He opened his mouth opened to say something, but then thought better of it, clamping down on his tongue once more.
“I’m fine,” she assured him.
“You keep saying that, but I don’t believe you. I’ll get Doc to come up and check you out. He should—”
Lila grabbed his chin. “I’m fine, Tristan. It had nothing to do with the accident. Just let it go.”
“No, I won’t let it go. You’re not okay. You need to see a doctor.”
She slid off the bed and fumbled for her clothes, fingers aching, stomach sinking into guilt. She’d let Tristan start something without revealing that her birth control had changed.
Fuck.
She was a lousy excuse for a lover.
She slipped her tank back over head, her sweater far too warm in the heat. Dixon must have come back to the apartment while they tarried in the bedroom.
Tristan quickly dressed. “I’m going to get Doc. It will only take a moment. He’s right downstairs, and he’ll check you out properly this time.”
“I said no.”
Tristan paused at the door, clearly debating whether he should listen.
“I’m fine, really.”
His fingers worked at the doorknob. “I think I heard Dixon in the other room.”
Lila finished dressing, and they peeked inside the apartment’s main room. The purple walls shone brightly in the afternoon sun. The light glinted off the kitchen counter and coffee tables, made with wine barrels that had been stained to a deep shine.
Sure enough, Tristan’s brother had returned at some point. He wore nothing but indigo boxer briefs and a shamrock bracelet. His legs rested on the coffee table, ankles crossed as he stretched in a plush chair near the couch. He had a body similar to Tristan’s, a swimmer’s build, slightly muscular and rangy at the same time. He’d shaved his head close to the skull, highlighting the elegant planes of his face. Gauze wrapped around one of this thighs, a consequence of their shooting match with the Italian mercs less than two weeks before. A darkly stained cane leaned against his chair.
A sandwich sat on the coffee table next to a stack of books about the oracles and the gods. He pointed a remote toward the screen.
He retracted it as soon as they entered, his blue eyes holding amusement as Lila smoothed her hair. Both plopped down upon the couch beside him.
“Did Shirley tell you about Lila’s bike?” Tristan asked.
The tongueless man snatched up his notepad on the coffee table. No, what happened? he wrote.
Tristan absently intertwined his fingers with Lila’s as he explained about the accident, giving the back of her good hand a kiss as he explained about the motorcycle’s failed brakes.
Dixon worried the notepad in his lap, his pencil trapped and forgotten in the wire spiral along the top. As the son of a Holguín mother, Dixon had grown up as a highborn, rather than a slave. He knew exactly what had happened, for he had grown up in Lila’s world.
He didn’t need her to connect the dots, but Tristan did.
Tell him why someone would do that to an heir.
Tristan looked back at her, his eyes searching.
“There could be any number of reasons. May I have some Sangre?”
Tristan walked to a little locker in the back of the room. He took out a bottle of Sangre and a couple of black Jolly Roger mugs and poured Lila a glass.
The locker closed in the quiet.
Dixon whistled and pointed to his notepad once again.
“What is he on about?” Tristan said as he handed her a mug.
Lila shrugged and reclined into the couch. She dropped her boots on the scuffed coffee table and gave one last look to the apartment and the friends who occupied it. Tristan had called it home, as though it had belonged to both of them, but the moment she opened her mouth, it would all be gone.
Dixon whistled again.
The Sangre soured on her tongue. Her mother had banned the wine from her compound years before, some silly dispute between the Randolphs and the Holguíns. She shouldn’t have been drinking it at all. She was overreaching. She wanted things she couldn’t have. Perhaps Jewel and her mother were both right. She needed to grow up. A grownup Elizabeth Randolph couldn’t have Sangre.
She couldn’t have Tristan DeLauncey, either.
She didn’t deserve a happy ending anyway. She’d killed. Punishment and compensation had always been the price for such acts, if not death.
She didn’t feel like she deserved death.
But this?
She deserved this.
Lila put down the mug, drew herself up, and recounted the conversation she’d had with her mother the previous morning.
Dixon’s eyes flicked back to his brother, but Tristan didn’t say a word. Not when she admitted that she’d agreed to become prime, not when she spelled out the consequences. The brakes had been cut because another heir had wanted her spot.
Tristan crossed his arms at that.
As soon as Lila mentioned her purpose at the clinic, he hopped up from the couch and began prowling around the room, his scowl deepening. “So that’s…” He pointed at her belly.
“I shouldn’t have let you touch me without telling you first. I got carried away.”
“I thought I hurt you.” To his credit, he didn’t seem to mind that they’d nearly had sex without birth control.
It was more than she deserved.
“This is utter bullshit,” he said at last. “You’ve never wanted to become prime. You’ve never wanted a child. Now you’re suddenly prepared to throw your entire life away for both? Why?”
“For my family’s security, Tristan. The Randolphs need a competent prime. Duty is not always what one desires.”
“That’s a bunch of highborn twaddle, and you know it.”
“I don’t expect you to understand. I knew that you wouldn’t.”
“Is that some backward knock at me being workborn?”
“No, it was a very forward one. My family needs me.”
“They’ve been saying they need you for years, yet you’ve always told your mother to find someone else. Why agree now?”
“Because my mother has always allowed for my disagreement. Now she’s threatened to exile me if I don’t accept my birthright.”
“Then that’s her loss. You don’t need a family who would cast you aside if you don’t agree to their whims.”
Lila’s eyes narrowed. “It would be my loss, actually. Some of us like our families even when they’re a pain in the ass.”
“This is a more than just being a pain in the ass. You’re not thinking clearly right now.”
“Maybe I’m finally thinking clearly. The Randolphs are legion, Tristan. Every single one of them is depending on me to—”
“I forgot. You are Lila, the Chosen One, the only Randolph who can lead her family to greatness. Gods, no wonder you’re so arrogant. You believe your mother’s bullshit. She’s manipulating you, and you don’t even see it. Call her bluff. She’d rather have you as chief than not have you at all.”
Dixon held up his notepad. Matrons have no need for highborn who refuse their duty. Her mother would exile her as an example, daughter or not. She’d have to.
“No, she wouldn’t. But even if she did, who care
s? If your mother doesn’t want you as chief, then join me. I’ll take you on as a hacker. We’ve done a lot of good together, Lila. We can keep doing good together.” His eyes pleaded with her, and she knew his frustration wasn’t only about the prime role.
“I don’t want to leave my family.”
“Family? Family doesn’t force you to be what you’re not.”
There are worse things than doing what others want.
“Well, it’s pretty far down on the list. A real family doesn’t do that to one another.”
Lila pushed her mug around the coffee table. The scraping filled the silence. “Real families aren’t neat and tidy, Tristan. Just because you ran out on yours when it wasn’t perfect, doesn’t mean I should do the same.”
“You’d rather have sex at your mother’s command, Chosen One? Dixon left his family, and he’s okay.”
That was different, his brother wrote. Lila thought back to the countless times she’d seen Dixon’s back. Dozens of white scars slashed it. Someone had done that to him, tortured him, though she’d never found out why.
She’d always suspected it had been his highborn family, but he’d never explained.
I was half dead when we got away. I had to go. That’s not what Lila is facing. Being exiled is being cast out from your home, cast away from everything and everyone you’ve ever known.
Tristan’s feet stilled upon the wooden floor. “Not everyone you’ve ever known. I’m your brother. I’m here, aren’t I? Do you actually miss those assholes?”
Sometimes. Some of them, at least. They were my family. That was my home.
“I’m your family. This is your home. I’m the only one who gave a damn about saving you from that place. Doesn’t that count for anything?”
Is this my home, or is it a cause?
“Is that how you feel?”
Dixon closed his notepad and dropped it on the coffee table.
“Maybe you should leave, then,” Tristan said, retreating to the window. “Maybe both of you should. For oracle’s sake, why am I never good enough for either of you?”
“Becoming prime has nothing to do with you.”
“Doesn’t it? You’re going to attend that ball tomorrow night, and some highborn asshole is going to climb into your bed. You’re going to spread your legs and fuck him, and you think that has nothing to do with me?”
Dixon stood up and squeezed Lila’s shoulder. He pulled on a pair of pants abandoned on the floor and slipped on a sweater. His cane smacked against the floor as he retreated from the apartment.
Tristan watched him go.
“None of this has anything to do with you,” she said after the door snicked behind Dixon. “You’re not my husband. You’re my lover, and I have my family to think about. There is truth in what my mother said and in what she asks of me, whether you want to admit it or not.”
Tristan lowered himself into Dixon’s spot. The plush chair scraped against the wooden floor as he sat. “Gods, it really is that easy for you. You see nothing wrong with slipping out of my bed and climbing into someone else’s.”
“You knew what you were getting into. Don’t act like this is a surprise.”
“A surprise? I thought you were—”
Different.
Lila knew exactly what he would say. He’d said it over and over again as though trying to shape her behavior, as though she were a wayward puppy to be molded. If what she had done was on the list of things he liked, he’d say it with a smile. If it was on the list of things he hated, he’d say it with a sneer.
A sneer crossed his face this time.
“If you say different one more time, I swear to the gods that I’m going to walk out that door and I will never, ever come back,” Lila said, the phrase awakening something inside her, some fear she’d had since they’d begun seeing one another. “Gods, Tristan, do you even see me at all? Do you even know who I am, or am I just some woman you dreamt up because your idea of me was more palatable than the real thing? I have never once snubbed you because you were a slave or because you’re a workborn. I have never once called the workborn inferior. Yet you’ve done as much to me every day we’ve been together. Who’s the snob now?”
“It doesn’t make me a snob. It makes me observant.”
“Observant? How observant can you be? I am a highborn, Tristan. This is who we are. I never hid myself with you. Highborns sacrifice the wants of the individual for the needs of the family.”
“For years, you didn’t do that.”
“Because I thought I was needed in the security office. Because I believed that my mother could pluck another heir to become prime. I was wrong.”
“Now the needs of the family dictate sleeping around?”
“We have a great many children because it preserves us. We take a great many lovers to do that.”
“Because it binds your kind with one another and earns you more and more money. That’s all your kind cares about.”
Lila clenched her hands into fists, her injured knuckles crying out. It was like she’d bent time to several weeks before and now stood in front of the old Tristan. “You don’t give two shits about the money or that I’m going to become prime, so stop arguing about it like you do.”
“I do care about that, actually. I care about that an awful lot. Apparently, I care about it more than you do.”
“No, you don’t. You’re pissed because in your mind, you have some special claim on me. This is why I resisted us being together. I knew you wouldn’t be able to handle a relationship with a highborn. People aren’t meant to have only one lover, just as they aren’t meant to have only one friend. We’re not meant to be monogamous, Tristan.”
“Yes, we are.”
“So workborn don’t cheat on one another?”
“Don’t do this, Lila.”
“I’m not the one running, Tristan. I know I should, but I’m too invested in this.” She waved her hand vaguely, unable to explain her feelings any more than that.
It was far more than she should have said, but Tristan didn’t seem to care. “I’m not going to be your toy on the side, Lila. I watched my mother do that all her life. I have more respect for myself than that.”
“How is it a question of respect? Does Shirley get angry that you’re friends with Doc? Does Doc get angry that you’re friends with Shirley?”
“That’s different.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Yes, it is. For oracle’s sake, Lila, I’m in love with you!” He looked away and sank his head into his hands. “Is that all this has ever been for you? Are we just friends who sleep together? I thought I meant more to you than that.”
Lila played with her sweater. Tristan had never said love before, though Dixon had hinted at his brother’s feelings more than once. Love implied marriage for the highborn, which was a great deal more than it implied for workborn. What particular shade of gray did Tristan even mean? “There’s a difference between lovers and friends.”
“Not much of one. Not for you.”
“Tristan—”
Tristan hopped up from the chair and slipped into his room. He came back seconds later, carrying the bag she’d left the day before. He dropped it next to her with a loud thump and backed away. “I guess the oracle’s prophecy has come true after all.”
“Tristan—”
“Just go, Lila, and take this with you. You won’t need it here any longer.”
The room went silent. He stared at her, daring her to say or do something.
Lila didn’t know what he expected. She snatched up the bag with her good hand, slinging it over her shoulder, then gave him one last look before she turned and walked out the door.
He didn’t call out for her to return.
Chapter 13
Lila ducked into her bedroom, the straps of her bag cutting int
o her good hand. She dropped it and changed into a much more expensive version of her outfit, a sweater marked by her family’s coat of arms and a pair of woolen trousers. Then she stuffed her old clothes into the bag and shoved it in her closet’s secret compartment.
Just like that, all evidence of her time with Tristan had disappeared.
It was for the best. They didn’t work. They never had, and they never would.
At least no one in her family had found out where she’d been on vacation. It hadn’t helped that she’d been forced to take a cab back to the great house. Shirley had refused to abandon her broken Firefly into her care when she’d tried to leave the shop. “I’m still looking into it, Hood,” Shirley had said, her shrewd eyes meeting Lila’s behind the mesh hood. “Take a cab today, then steal a new car as soon as you can. A Nostaru Y-class if you can swing it. It might not look like much, but they’re hard to tamper with and they’re full of airbags. It’ll take a beating, and it’ll protect you.”
“I’ll be fine.”
Shirley shook her head. “I’m not sure that you will. Only luck got you out of this today. Someone wants you dead. Someone smart. I don’t like the look of this at all.”
Lila hadn’t liked it either, not when her eyes slid to Shirley’s workbench. Two plastic cubes had been melted into the brake lines, but the mechanic had refused to hand them over. “They were rigged to blow from some signal. There was another one on your kill switch that never went off. Like I said, Hood, you were lucky. I’m looking into it, though.”
She had said no more.
Lila didn’t like the confused looks that Sergeant Hill and his rookie had given her, either. She’d walked several blocks from where the cab had dropped her off and ducked under the southern gate on the Randolph compound.
They’d eyed her bag curiously, a bag she’d need to unpack.
But not today.
Lila sat down at her desk and pulled up her search results.
A knock sounded on the door.
“Commander Sutton is downstairs waiting for you,” Alex said, peeking inside. “Also your mother requests your presence at dinner this evening.”
“Who else—”
