Page 52 of Queen of Volts

“Levi,” Enne started. She clutched a romance novel in her lap, and she stared at the page she’d dog-eared rather than at him. “I’m sorry for standing up your meeting. I’m sorry that you had to intervene with the Scarhands. Ever since what happened at St. Morse...” Levi noted that she didn’t use Jac’s name, and he was glad for it. He didn’t want to hear it spoken, either. Especially not by her. “I haven’t felt well. I didn’t asked to be a criminal, and I definitely didn’t ask to be a Mizer.” She dragged her gaze up to him. “It’s just a lot of responsibility. And there’s a lot I wish I could take back.”

Now you’ve done it, Levi scolded himself. He should’ve told Enne immediately that he’d failed. He’d gotten everyone else’s pardon except for hers, and even if he’d found a chance to earn it, it was a gamble. Maybe she was right; maybe for her, more than anyone, the world would only see her as a villain.

And now she was looking at him like he’d erased the past week and a half entirely. He was transported right back to St. Morse, before the world had fallen to hell, when they’d danced together and he’d told her that he loved her. The memory burned in him.

Levi wished he could take it back, too.

“I don’t hate you,” Levi murmured, remembering her question from yesterday. He wondered if it would be simpler if he did.

Then he cowardly turned away, returning to the orbs and prolonging his farce only a little while longer. He’d bought the highest quality orb-making sand he could find—it was sturdy, quick to melt, and quicker to cool. After he had blown the glass into shape and created a dozen orbs cooling on the rows of hot punty pipes, he cleared his throat.

“You can come over now,” he told Enne.

She slipped the book into her purse and treaded over, her gaze running over his workstation. She sat in the dust-covered chair in front of him and rolled up her sleeves past her elbows, exposing the skin where many deposited volts into their blood to make them harder to steal. Levi tenderly pressed his finger against her vein.

“Do you know what you’re doing?” Enne asked him, not unkindly.

Levi rolled up her sleeve a few inches higher. “The Revolution was seven years before we were born. Of course I don’t.”

“Will this take a while? It’s hard to breathe in here.” She wiped away some of the sweat accumulating above her brow and lips. He shouldn’t notice those things, not when he was still angry with her. But he did.

“Don’t swoon on me,” he muttered, unable to resist the joke.

She frowned at him, but it was crooked, like she was trying to keep from smiling.

Levi couldn’t keep staring at her and second-guessing himself if he was going to get this job done. So he tuned her out and focused instead on her veins in the crook of her arm, tracing them down from elbow to fingertip, searching for the energy in her blood that he’d only ever felt in glass. It felt strange to touch her like this, sterile in comparison to the other ways they’d touched before. He made sure to orient himself to put as much distance between their legs as possible, even when they sat face-to-face.

Hedidfeel the energy, a pulse fainter and faster than Enne’s own. He coaxed it out from her arm the same way he’d draw volts from orbs, like tugging on a thread until the spool unraveled. Strands of white light slipped out of her skin and coiled around his fingers.

Enne sucked in her breath. “That doesn’t look like volts.”

It didn’t. Volts looked like electricity, and though these strands glowed, they were limp instead of jagged.

And within moments, they disappeared, dispersing in the air.

Levi cursed under his breath. “We’ll try again.”

Enne peeled a sweaty strand of brown hair off her cheek and nodded. “Fine.”

“I’m sorry—I know it’s uncomfortable in here.”

She met his eyes, making chills prick out across his skin. “I don’t mind.”

Their conversation was not helping his focus, nor was the storm of his own thoughts. He could still hear his father as though he lurked over Levi’s shoulder, mocking his technique. He could still picture Jac the day he died, healthier and more sure of himself than Levi had seen him in a long time.

This time, when Levi coaxed the threads from Enne’s arm, he drew them lower, his touch grazing down her wrist, her palm, her fingertips. Her skin prickled beneath him.

The threads spilled out of Enne’s fingers and coiled around his own, more solid than the last ones. Enne’s aura cradled them. Levi had always been able to sense auras in volts because of his split talent, but this was the first time doing so didn’t bother him. Unlike the other Mizers before her, Enne’s aura was not stained with the same sort of tragedy.

When Levi looked up, he realized that tears had streaked trails down Enne’s cheeks.

“Are you crying?” he asked, worried he’d done something wrong.

She smiled awkwardly and rubbed the tears away with the back of her free hand. “I don’t mean to cry at everything, but I was just thinking that with my pardon, I don’t have to be anybody. I don’t have to be a street lord or a Mizer or anything I don’t want to be.”

In Levi’s opinion, Enne was an accomplished street lord—better than him, even, though his pride prevented him from admitting that out loud. Even if confronting the Doves had been a mistake, Levi had once run the Irons into ruin.

“What would you want to be?” Levi asked with surprise.