35. Twisted Metal

New Toledo, Vidako

Imperium Stellarum
October 5, 2847

Arc had a difficult time sleeping all that night, though the wine and the brandy should have made it easy. Part of it was that the room was too large, the bed too wide, and the sheets too soft. The pillowcases were actually silk—he knew it for a fact,because after he felt it for the first time, he looked for the tag tucked inside to be certain. ‘100% organic Zuran Silk,’ it read.

He was still buzzing from the kiss, and he couldn’t stop thinking about the taste of Cassie’s lips, the feel of her bare back beneath his hands. He tried to picture what it would be like to show her around Silk City, Avataran Shahar back home, and to introduce her to his parents. To Teo and Rashmi. He couldn’t picture it, but Phoebe would have liked her, he knew.

And at that thought, he felt an intense stab of guilt, even anger at himself. Here he was, the taste of brandy still on his lips, brandy so expensive it would probably have cost his father a month’s salary, his head resting on a silk pillowcase, a princess imperial sleeping in her room across the hall. And his sister was dead. Phoebe hadn’t drunk anything tonight, she wasn’t sleeping anywhere, she didn’t have a lover or a husband or even friends anymore, because a pirate had scattered the atoms of her body across a thousand kilometers of void somewhere between Zurah and its L2 gate.

He’d come to the academy to put himself in the right place, at the right time, to kill the Pirate Queen of Nepenthe. He hadn’t expected to make friends like Pika, Rain and Vee. Even like Vijay Iyer, he supposed, or Natalie Ramírez, the tech student that he and Cassie had dragged with them, a Vidakan Spiked Terror on their heels. He certainly hadn’t expected to kiss a princess. It felt, Arc realized, as he lay there alone in the dark, like a betrayal. As if, in forgetting why he’d come to the academy, he’d also somehow forgotten his sister.

Sometime in the long, dark hours of the night he did sleep, fitfully. In the morning, he scoured his skin with water so hot that it was almost painful, the first private shower he’d had since coming to this world. As promised, his things had been delivered, and his cadet uniform had actually been laundered during the time that he and Cassie were making themselves into a spectacle on the duke’s behalf. He dressed himself, tucked the cap under his arm, and left his dress whites hanging in the garment bag he’d used to bring them on the VTOL.

They ate a morning meal with the duke’s family, and there Arc and Cassie met the children who Commander Esteban and his husband, Marcus, had mentioned the evening before. Two boys, Diego and Íñigo, clustered at one end of the table with their cousins, all four of them busily chattering away over a tablet while sneaking glances at Arc and Cassie.

When the duke’s butler came to tell them that the grav-car was ready, amidst exchanging farewells with Duke Alvarez and Duchess Nicté, the boy Santiago, who’d been so enamoured of the idea of mech duels the night before, tugged at Arc’s arm and tilted the screen of his tablet so that it was visible.

Princess Imperial in Whirlwind Romance! The headline read. There was a picture, in sharp color, or Arc helping Cassie out of the car the night before, both of their faces caught clearly. You couldn’t tell, he thought when he looked it over, that she was wearing a wig.

“Thanks for the warning,” he murmured, and reached out his hand for the boy to clasp.

“When you come back for Christmas, you’ll be here for more than one night,” Santiago said. “You have to tell me all about your training.”

“I will,” Arc promised, and then there was no more time to talk. They were out the door, loading into the car, and the procession of soldiers and mechs once again wound its way through the city streets, this time in the light of morning. It wasn’t until they were safely back in the cabin of the Saker and up in the air, when Jessica had confirmed that she’d swept the cabin and it was clear of listening devices, that they finally felt comfortable enough to talk.

“I hope that wasn’t too horrible for you,” Cassie said. The wig had been packed away, and once their caps were off, all three of their bare scalps glistened where the silver tracery of the neural lace scrawled along their skulls.

“No, it wasn’t,” Arc said, but she kept going, the words tumbling out.

“I know it isn’t what you’re used to,” she said. “And I just wanted to say that—I’m really grateful you came with me. It makes it easier, you know, to have someone with you. To sort of lean on. But it wasn’t really fair to make you do it.”

His thoughts skittered across the idea of her being escorted around a hundred glittering parties, just like that, a thousand, back on Terra, with the son of some duke, like Santiago, or perhaps the son of an Admiral, like Cal Madine, on her arm. Young officers like Fletcher Radecki. Arc found that he didn’t much like the idea of that—not at all.

“It’s alright, Cassie,” he said. “I actually had fun.”

She raised her eyebrows, clearly skeptical.

“Not all of it.” Arc was honest. “But I liked talking with Commander Esteban, and even Santiago. He wants to see us again, by the way, just so he can interrogate us about what it’s like to be a pilot.” Arc couldn’t help but grin at that. “But most of all, I liked it because I was with you.”

Cassie glanced away, to the other end of the cabin where no one was sitting, and then back to him. “Good. I mean—I know we had a bit to drink. If you’re having second thoughts about—you know.”

“Kissing you?” The words were clumsy and numb on his lips, and he stumbled over them like a stone on the jungle floor.

“Yeah.” Cassie nodded. “I just want you to know that I won’t make it awkward, if—if you want to pretend it didn’t happen. We can still be friends, nothing has to change.”

You’re here for Phoebe, Arc told himself. Everything else is a distraction. And then he reached over and took her hand in his. “I’m not. I mean—I don’t want to be friends, Cassie. That doesn’t sound right,” he scowled at himself. “Of course we’re friends, but—I’d like to be more. If that’s something you want.”

Of course she wants it, Iceni grumbled, in the back of his mind. It’s obvious, isn’t it?

“I’d like that.” Cassie smiled, and squeezed his hand. “Yes. That’s why I asked you to come with me, you know.”

“I know.” Arc settled back in the seat, the awkward, barely padded military seat that had been designed with everything but comfort in mind, and by common consent the two of them leaned into each other, to doze the flight away.

𝝮

When the Saker touched back down on the tarmac at the south end of Academy Hill, Arc roused himself, unbuckled his safety straps, and slung the garment bag which contained his dress whites across his shoulder. He stepped up to the door of the cabin, ready to jump out first and help Cassie down, but when the doors opened he froze.