Page 10 of Queen of Volts

“And I know a ruse when I see one,” Enne snapped. “We’re not going. What leverage do we have to negotiate for pardons right now?”

“And if I go alone?” Levi asked flatly.

A curtain of silence fell over the room. He couldn’t help but notice the way each of them stood: Levi and Tock on one side, Enne and Grace on the other, and Lola watching them all warily in between. Harrison should never have assumed Levi and Enne were partners—they were two separate pieces on a chessboard. Since Enne’s reckless actions at Jonas’s execution, which they’d barely escaped with their lives, he wasn’t even sure they were on the same side.

“Walking into a death trap is your own prerogative,” Grace growled.

But beside her, Enne’s already somber expression had darkened. “You’d do that?” It wasn’t a question—it was an accusation.

“You aren’t just a criminal—you’re a Mizer,” Levi replied. “Killing you has political ramifications. And Bryce, however shatz he might be, has a talent the world didn’t believe existed. And I’m an orb-maker, the grandson of one executed for it. The world isn’t desensitized to murder or havoc like it was during the Revolution. Since the Chancellor can’t just kill us, her only choice is to speak to us.”

Enne advanced toward him. Levi had a talent for reading auras, but it was only his split talent—and so he could only sense the auras of those he knew well. Hers was purple, and it whirled around her, uneasy torrents like a rising storm. Levi studied that rather than her lips. He focused on the smells of espresso and rain and not the phantom scent of his friend’s blood.

Maybe he was still a little drunk.

“Do you think I wanted Jac dead?” she asked, and Levi flinched at her words. “That it was my idea?”

Vianca’s omerta hadn’t instructed Enne to kill Jac—only to break Levi’s heart. And just two months ago, Enne had orchestrated a riot to stage the assassination of a man she hated, all while lying and manipulating Levi behind his back. Even if she hadn’t gone through with that particular plot, there was something dark in her, something he hadn’t seen when she’d arrived in New Reynes wearing pearls and white lace and the look of someone lost.

“No,” Levi answered coolly. “But that idea came from somewhere, and I think you don’t want to admit that.”

Enne cringed but didn’t back down. “No,youjust don’t want to admit it came from Vianca. Because the only reason Vianca gave me that order was because you betrayed her.Yourdecision. Not mine.”

Enne moved to jab her finger into his chest, and he caught her wrist before she could. He thrust her away, as though her very touch burned him. It did in more ways than one. “I betrayed her to save both of us. I dideverythingto save both of us.”

“Then stop hating me,” she demanded, her voice catching.

Levi didn’t think he hated her, but he couldn’t bring himself to deny it. She’d hurt him on more than one occasion, and so the saying went: fool him twice...

He wouldn’t be played again. Like Tock had told him this morning, he didn’t get to grieve or drink or break. And forgiving Enne seemed like the same as breaking.

Because until the moment he’d begun to hate her, he’d loved her. And he could never go back to that.

“I’ll go to this meeting,” Enne told him, “if you swear to look me in the eyes again.”

Levi saw pain on her face—some he knew he had caused—but he was beyond the point of doing anything about that. “I don’t make promises anymore.”

“Then give me something. You know I don’t want to do this, but I’ll go. For you.” She reached for him, then lowered her hand, seeming to think better of it. She glanced over her shoulder, and Levi realized with a start that he’d forgotten their audience. “Give me something.”

Levi didn’t know if he had anything left to give her, but he would do whatever it took to protect the Irons, and with militia still patrolling the North Side, negotiating peace with the Chancellor was the best way he knew how. He couldn’t do that without Enne.

And so he held out his hand to shake.

Enne stared at it, her lips a thin line. It was the gesture of acquaintances, of business, of formality. It wasn’t the gesture of two people who had faced the Shadow Game together and survived. Whose wanted posters had shared the front page of every newspaper in the city. Who had once kissed each other as though the world would end in the morning.

But it was something.

She shook his hand, her eyes glistening, then left the room without a word.

SOPHIA

Sophia Torren knew a bad idea when she saw one.

“Is this it?” the cab driver asked, peering at her through the rearview mirror. They had parked at the edge of a manicured lawn belonging to a large estate. The lights in the windows glowed, dim halos on each sill, but dark curtains obscured any movement inside. The bare-branched trees on the grounds swayed in the wind, casting briary shadows over the house’s gray stone, but even so—the house didn’t look as haunted as the legends claimed.

“I guess so,” Sophia told him, because even if it wasn’t, she couldn’t turn back now. She’d held her breath the entire drive, and now, light-headed and queasy, she needed some air.

She reached forward and handed the cabbie a glass sphere that sparkled with volts. The driver emptied twenty-three of them into his meter as payment, handed the orb back to her, and drummed his fingers nervously against the steering wheel as Sophia muttered a goodbye and stumbled onto the sidewalk.