Page 177 of Queen of Volts

“I’m proud that you started here.” She tapped the medal. “Otherwise I wouldn’t have worn this thing.”

He grinned. “Then let’s hurry up. All those people are waiting in the cold.” He followed the servicemen down the hallway to the door.

Sophia trailed after him, Enne and Levi beside her. It was hard not to steal glances at Enne as the doors opened, as they walked down the marble steps. A crowd of hundreds—maybe thousands—spread across the lawn, including citizens of New Reynes and politicians from all across the Republic. If things had gone differently, Enne might’ve watched this same crowd from Liberty Square.

Enne must’ve been thinking the same thing, because she gave Sophia a weary sort of smile. “This is what lucky looks like.”

But Sophia knew a thing or two about luck, or destiny, or whatever the City of Sin liked to call it. And too many among them had died to call this day lucky.

“No,” Sophia murmured. “This is what winning looks like.”

ENNE

The Office of Auditory Responsibility in the National Bank had been dissolved, its departmental funds and staff reallocated instead to the most pressing matter of the institution: the creation and implementation of a new currency. The keys of typewriters and calculators clattered. Cats roamed the cubicles, knocking over coffee mugs and scratching the cushions of desk chairs. The Spirits had worked through the night, and the air smelled like it—of sweat masked with perfume, and the remnants of last night’s takeout.

Enne knocked on the door to the office next to hers, where Grace hunched over a portfolio of inflation graphs. “I was hoping I could talk to you,” Enne said.

“You’re here,” Grace said flatly. “You’re talking.”

Enne held her breath as she slid into the chair opposite Grace’s desk. A week had passed since Harrison’s newest inauguration...and since they’d buried Roy Pritchard. To Grace, however, Enne suspected that time had been a haze. She’d done nothing but throw herself in her work, and Enne, unsure how to help her, had merely let her. Enne had her own grief and uncertainties to figure out, and she knew both she and her friend needed time.

“You’re my person, you know,” Enne told her. “You’re the one I go to when I need to figure something out.”

Grace looked up coolly. She wasn’t wearing her usual rings of black eyeliner, and even her most lethal expression lacked its usual edge. “You’ve brought me a puzzle?”

“I’m leaving this—the Bank and the Spirits,” Enne spoke.

“To do what?” Grace asked, eyebrows raised.

“I want to rebuild the Ruins District, the museums, the historical sites. I want the history of the Revolution and the Street Wars to become more than the city’s scar.” Enne swallowed. “I asked Lola to help me, and she’s agreed, after she finishes applying to university. But I’d also like to ask you, if you’d want to join me.”

“I don’t know anything about history,” Grace grunted. “But I know fighting. And math.”

“You also hate math.”

“I like solving problems.”

“What happened to Roy isn’t a problem you can solve,” said Enne gently.

Grace grimaced, then she swept her arm out—pushing her calculator and portfolios off her desk to the carpet. She stood up. “So I’m broken now, that’s it?” she demanded. “I see how everyone tiptoes around me. I’m fine! Roy wasn’t supposed to be my problem. I had a plan for myself, and it didn’t include any gold medal–winning, honorable whiteboots dying on me before I got there. So it’s fine. I can go back as if it never happened. I can—”

“You’d rather pretend that Roy never happened?” Enne asked incredulously. “Roy made you happy.”

“Yeah, well, I always knew how to make myself happy. I paid back my debts myself. I’ll fix all this myself, too.”

Enne didn’t want to fight with Grace, but she didn’t know how to help her when Grace clearly didn’t want help. It disappointed Enne, to be leaving so many friends behind.

But then she saw tears spill down Grace’s cheeks, and Grace frowned and furiously rubbed them away. “He was considering leaving the Spirits, after we stopped treating him like a hostage,” Grace said, her voice catching. She cursed. “But I changed my plans for him. I convinced him to stay. And now he’s dead because of it.”

Enne stood and threw her arms around her. Grace stiffened but didn’t push her away. “None of this is your fault. And you can keep working at the Bank, if you want to. I won’t make you leave.”

“I don’twantto stay here.” Though Grace never broke into sobs, her voice wobbled. “But what’s the point of having plans if they don’t go the way you wanted them to?”

Roy had been Enne’s friend, but Enne obviously didn’t grieve for him in the same way as Grace. But she did know how it felt to have your future robbed from you. It’d happened to her time and time again, and it’d made her feel helpless. It was why she’d clung so fiercely to whatever story the world gave her—a lady, a street lord, a Mizer. To want and feel fiercely was to make oneself vulnerable.

But Enne knew her story now, and she hoped she could still write it with her friends beside her.

“You’re brilliant, Grace,” Enne told her. “You’re a planner and a problem-solver. You’re tenacious. You’re an excellent teacher. And you cannot give up.” Enne pointed to the horrifying beige walls and gray carpet of the office. “Thisis you giving up.”