Page 16

In my fourth year at the Artisan school, I sat in the dark theater grandstand alone, covertly watching a stage play rehearsal.

I couldn’t sleep. For three nights it had eluded me.

I was tired of lying still and waiting for my body to settle when it wouldn’t.

My head would not quiet when I bid it, either.

It replayed the clinking glasses and muttered conversations of Lord Shop’s dinner party.

Eventually the echoes of those ambling monotones grew intolerable.

I found myself high in the red-back seats instead, watching these fine performers be berated.

Tomorrow, I would be sixteen.

Every year it grew easier to believe that I’d been born Artisan, and that Scurry was a fading dream. It disturbed me that I could not conjure the exact colors I would use to paint the place I’d come from.

Tumultuous thoughts plagued me. They swam round and round and round.

“Clarke?”

I jumped. At the end of the aisle, a silhouette stood—another phantom in the dark.

“Theo?”

I knew his shape and voice better than most. He sidled toward me, bent double like a porter, though no one looked up.

“Can’t sleep?” he whispered, the stage lights reflecting off his dark eyes. He settled into the seat beside mine.

“No.”

“Nor can I.” He smoothed his hair—a newer habit. I caught him looking at his hair in every reflection he passed to ensure its exactness.

We fell immediately into a companiable silence. It was easy to do. I spent more time with Theo than I did with any other. We were The Charmers. People suspected we were dating, even our closest friends.

He was much taller than me now, and if you looked closely, he resembled a man.

His modest politeness had turned to self-assurance, sometimes even boisterousness.

He would gladly charm water to put on a show for friends, making models in the air from the remnants of their drinking glasses to cheery applause.

I, meanwhile, remained quiet, though I’d grown in my own ways. My lips were fuller and my two front teeth didn’t seem so far apart. My chest and hips had swollen outward, my waist inward, and my legs were no longer thin knobby-kneed stalks. I was wholly a different shape.

Theo’s arm sometimes dangled over my shoulder in the refectory, where we shared a table with others, and I was ashamed by how starved I felt when it lifted.

Theo bumped my shoulder with his. “What’s keeping you from sleep, Clarke?” he asked. His tone was light, but there was real worry there as well.

I grimaced. “Same as always,” I lied. “Volcanic sediment.”

He smirked. It made a dimple appear deep in his left cheek. It was hard not to notice how handsome he was.

“Why are you awake?” I asked, folding my arms across my chest. I’d donned a woolen jumper before I’d left the dormitory, but I was suddenly very aware that beneath, I was only in bedclothes.

“My father visited today,” he said with a sigh. “Wanted to discuss a proposition—an opportunity, he called it. To work in the cabinet, then in the House of Lords come our fellowship.”

My eyebrows rose. “Theo! That’s fantastic.”

“It is,” he said. “I just wished it felt as fantastic as it sounds.”

“Why doesn’t it?” I asked gently. “Your father is a Lord of the House. You’re a Charmer. It makes sense that you’d be offered a position.”

He was quiet for a moment. And then, “He said you’d been offered the same position.”

I went still. I hadn’t been ready to voice such an admission. I hadn’t yet made sense of it.

“Were you?” he asked, waiting patiently for an answer.

I relented, nodding. “At the dinner,” I said. “By Lord Tanner.” The dinners with the Lords and ladies of the National House had become something of a regular occurrence this past year.

Neither Theo nor I particularly enjoyed them.

“The first woman in history,” he uttered reverently. “It’s remarkable.”

“It’s all I ever hear,” I grumble. “I’m remarkable, outstanding, perfection incarnate.”

He grinned. “Most people would be happy for the praise.”

“Except that I’m not any of those things,” I said hurriedly. “I’m a fair painter, a good dancer. I can draw a decent likeness, make an excellent sandcastle—”

He snorted.

“It wouldn’t matter how good I was, even at charming earth—they’d praise me the same.”

Theo was quiet for a moment, then sighed. “Will you accept the position?” he asked. He seemed desperate for my answer, like it might inform his own.

I only scowled. “It wasn’t presented to me as a choice.”

He seemed surprised by my reaction, and there, again, lay the difference between Theodore Shop and me.

He shifted, nervous. “You know, being a lord wouldn’t be so bad if you were a lady.

” He looked down at my lips. “We could help. We could change things . What Belavere needs is progressive thinking,” he said, touching my cheek gently, hesitantly, with the very tips of his fingers.

A current traveled from his skin to mine.

“Ministers who work with the Craftsmen. Ministers who aren’t one hundred years old . ”

I laughed through my nose, allowed my face to surrender to his cradle.

“We could do it, Nina,” he said. “We could change things.”

I liked the way he packaged us together. But Theo was merely a sympathizer of the working class; he didn’t know what I knew.

“I don’t want to say yes unless you’re saying yes with me.”

My heart sprinted. I almost said yes right then and there.

Instead, I stared into his beautiful eyes and stopped breathing, and he closed that final, infinitesimal gap.

His lips were on mine, his fingers were in my hair, and I thought that he was right, and wonderful, and everything a person like me could hope for.

And for a moment, I believed him. Together, we could tip the great scales of Belavere Trench.

Midnight struck.

I turned sixteen.