Page 5 of Queen of Volts

“You’re hesitating,” Grace Watson hissed, crouching beside Enne as she sputtered, Enne’s cheek pressed against the faux fur carpet of a spare classroom at Madame Fausting’s Finishing School for Girls. A slaughter of girls did live here, but they were far from students.

“I’m not.” Enne rolled onto her back, chest heaving, as Roy Pritchard backed away from her, an apologetic look on his face for knocking her to the floor. He shouldn’t be sorry, Enne thought. She was the one making mistakes, and since the world had learned the one secret Enne had desperately tried to keep hidden, she could no longer afford to.

“Actually, youarehesitating,” Roy told her. “If you’re going to disarm a—”

“I’m the instructor. You don’t get to speak,” Grace snapped at him.

Roy glowered, and he looked handsome even when annoyed. Two months ago, his perfect jawline and poreless, fair skin had made him the poster boy of the whiteboots...until Captain Jamison Hector tried to have him killed for threatening to expose the truth behind a cover-up. Now Roy remained a ward of the Spirits, something between a prisoner and an ally. At least, Enne liked to think of him as an ally. Since the events at St. Morse, she had precious few of them.

Which was why, even aching and dripping in sweat, Enne stood and readied her stance. “Again,” she ordered.

In the corner of the room, Lola Sanguick scowled, setting down today’s copy ofThe Crimes & The Timeson her lap. Twin photographs of Enne and the late Queen Marcelline grimaced on the front page, above an article uselessly attempting to draw conclusions about Enne’s ancestry from the matching light tone of their skin and chestnut hair. Any comparison between them failed there, as Enne’s delicate features bore little resemblance to the queen’s stern countenance.

Even so, the article frightened Enne. Already the public was forcing connections between her and a woman they’d executed.

“If an army of whiteboots arrives to escort you to the gallows,” Lola said morbidly, “it won’t matter if you know a dozen ways to disarm a single assailant.”

“Again,” Enne repeated, ignoring her.

Roy shot a glance at Grace for permission, who nodded and backed away. Then he sighed and grabbed his capped knife from the carpet.

The dull glint of metal made tremors shoot down Enne’s spine, and a memory rose to her mind, unbidden, unwanted. The gleam of her revolver as she trained it at Jac in St. Morse Casino. The sound it made when it fired. The moment he took his last staggered breath.

Don’t worry, he’d told her.I’ve beaten worse.

Roy lunged, his knife aimed at Enne’s abdomen, and, distracted, Enne reacted a moment too late. Before she could disarm him, he slammed his shoulder into her stomach. She landed painfully on her back, the breath knocked out of her.

Grace loomed over her, her expression unimpressed. The dozens of sharpened Creeds around her neck clinked as she crossed her arms. Grace wore them even though she wasn’t Faithful—she just liked desecrated, frightening things. Enne cringed, looking at them. Jac had worn a Creed. Unlike Grace’s, though, his had meant more to him than decoration.

“I trained you better than this,” Grace said. Even if Grace worked as the third and a counter in Enne’s gang, the Spirits, she’d never lost her daunting assassin air. Or maybe the intimidation came from her other choices of clothes; Grace donned black lacy corsets the way a soldier would opt for a bulletproof vest.

Enne fought to catch her breath. “Roy is fourteen inches taller than—”

“It’s the same-sized coffin,” Grace told her fiercely.

Enne scowled as she climbed to her feet. Her body ached—not just from the sparring, but from lack of sleep. Each night, she lay awake in bed, alone, her mind a nightmarish reel replaying all of the events of the past week. It felt as though the dust and the horror of what happened had settled, and now it coated her, smothering her. She sweated through her bedsheets each time she relived Jac’s death and how powerless she’d felt as Vianca Augustine’s omerta forced her to pull the trigger. She buried her face in her pillow each time she heard the phantom echoes of Jonas Maccabees, the lord of the Scarhands, outing her as a Mizer with his dying breath.

During the Revolution twenty-six years ago, the tyrannical Mizer ruling class hadn’t just been overthrown—they’d been exterminated. It didn’t matter that Enne had never been called a queen, that she hadn’t even known the truth of her talents until five months ago; her existence was supposed to be impossible. And to the so-called wigheads who now governed the Republic, her existence was a threat.

Enne didn’t feel like much of a threat to anyone, crying in the solace of her room, falling apart when she needed to be making herself stronger. Not just for her own sake, but for the sake of everyone she cared about, whom she’d damn by mere association should they all be apprehended.

As Enne readied her stance again, Lola stood up and stalked between her and Roy. “Enough,” Lola huffed. “What good is this doing?”

“I can’t just wait around and do nothing,” Enne said shakily.

“I’d argue that sparring away your problemsisdoing nothing,” replied Lola flatly. “We could talk about this. Just because the world has labeled you as dangerous doesn’t mean you have to rise to the mucking occasion.”

Enne nearly laughed. She’d never been given much say in her identity. At home in Bellamy, due to the powers of Lourdes’s protection talents shielding her from the rest of the world, Enne had wandered through life overlooked and discarded, a font of wilted ambitions without the sunlight to flower. In New Reynes, Vianca Augustine had taken advantage of Enne’s cluelessness and molded her into Séance. Enne had never considered her identity as a Mizer to be any different.

Maybe she could reject it. She’d ease the public’s concerns about her talent by fashioning herself into the very picture of innocence. She already knew what that looked like—a lost schoolgirl wearing pointed-toe heels and pearls, trembling with nerves as she stared up at the smoggy, menacing City of Sin skyline, a tourist guidebook clutched in her hand.

It would be easy. Despite all that had happened, that naïve girl did not seem so distant from who she was now.

Enne’s emotions threatened to overwhelm her. This was her true skill—bursting into tears at a moment’s notice. What a terrifying threat she posed, indeed.

“I don’t want this,” she choked out, forcing the tears back.

Lola’s expression softened.