Page 172 of Queen of Volts

Narinder’s lips were a thin line as he picked at his food, not actually eating it.

Harvey smirked. Maybe Narinder thought this was how he said goodbye. That he cleaned an entire business establishment, brought someone takeout, and then left. Not even Harvey enjoyed cleaningthatmuch.

“Maybeyoucould be my guest, for once,” Harvey suggested coyly, bumping his shoulder into his.

A smile crept up Narinder’s mouth. “I’m not cleaning your floors.”

“I was thinking it could be here, on the Street of the Holy Tombs.”

“Here? No one wants to live here.”

“I like it here.”

“It’s creepy here.”

“It’s...sentimental.”

Narinder set his food aside and leaned into Harvey’s shoulder. “I’m proud of you, of what you did yesterday. I know it wasn’t easy.”

Harvey didn’t want to talk about Bryce, but he knew he should. It was better to talk about what happened than to do what he’d made a habit of—keeping it in his thoughts to haunt him when he should’ve been resting, when he should’ve been happy. Harvey might never be truly well. But what mattered was that he was trying. And he deserved better.

“Bryce tied the game to me,” Harvey blurted. “I think he really did care about me. And I...”

“People are never as good or as bad as we hold them up to be,” Narinder said gently.

“I’m glad I did what I did, but I feel like I betrayed him. Will that feeling ever go away?”

“I don’t know,” he answered. “But for what it’s worth, you made the right decision foryou.” He slipped his hand into Harvey’s. “I’m glad I took a risk for you.”

Harvey interlaced their fingers. His heart sped up in nervous sputters, and it felt good to wish for something without hating himself for it. A desire not laced with any guilt.

“Do you still want this?” Narinder whispered, moving closer. His fingers tapped against Harvey’s thigh, playing his skin like an instrument.

Harvey’s breath hitched. This morning, he’d been avoiding these thoughts, too. The moments in the stairwell, when Narinder had been so close to kissing him. He’d replayed them so many times that a flush crept across his cheeks—and he was certain Narinder could tell.

“Yes,” Harvey answered, with no guilt, no regret, no tricks.

And so he kissed him, the first prayer in a long time that didn’t beg forgiveness.

LOLA

Lola sat at the dining table in Madame Fausting’s Finishing School, aware of the other girls’ eyes on her as she dumped out the contents of her briefcase. Papers and files spilled across the surface, some of them hers, some of them Jonas’s. Now that Lola had regained her memories, she finally had the full truth she’d been looking for—but it was scattered, some of it in photographs, some in notes, some in her own recollections. It was time to make sense of it all.

She reached for the Scar Lord’s file on Bryce Balfour. She’d start there.

“I brought you coffee,” said Marcy beside her, her voice tentative and sleepy this late at night. She clutched a mug in one hand and a cat toy in the other.

Lola had forgotten how much she missed living here. The thought made her stomach twist into a knot of guilt. For months, her mind had been so twisted with anger over who’d betrayed her that she had betrayed everyone else.

“Thanks,” she said softly, taking the drink.

Marcy studied the mess spread across the table. “What are you working on?”

“A story,” Lola answered, turning back to her work.

“About what?”

“About what happened.”