Page 56 of The Silent War

Charlotte flicked her hair over her shoulder. “You’d kill for my hands.”

“I’d kill for your inheritance,” Vivienne shot back. “Not your manicure.”

The banter rolled easy between them.

“So. The crash.” Charlotte glanced at me.

My throat tightened.

Vivienne looked up, bracelets chiming. “You’re not allowed to die before I do. It ruins my brand.”

“It was—” I started, then stopped. The lie felt heavy before it even formed. “Bastion pulled me out.”

There was a beat of silence that wasn’t empty at all.

Vivienne was the first to recover. “Of course he did.”

Charlotte laughed once. “Nothing like a Crow.”

“You used to call them gutter kings,” I reminded her.

“I was a child.” She angled the brush. “And my mother liked it when I said her lines for her.”

“Your mother likes it when anybody says her lines,” Vivienne said. “It saves her breath for the mirror.”

Charlotte snapped the balm closed. “You didn’t know this, but I was auditioning for the role of ‘good daughter’ for twelve years straight. The show was terrible. Zero stars. Do not recommend.”

“You got the part,” I said.

“I did,” Charlotte said, then shrugged one shoulder with a sadder smile than she meant to show. “And then I quit.”

Vivienne slid a finished row into a case. “You only quit on paper. She still lives in your head.”

“She pays rent,” Charlotte said. “Which is more than I can say for the men in mine.”

Vivienne’s mouth curved. “Plurals.”

Charlotte didn’t blink.

The cases clicked as Vivienne arranged them into foam cutouts, velvet straps, tiny black hex keys magnetized to the lid. “You know,” she said, eyeing me, “for someone who almost turned into a rumor on Dockway, you’re awfully calm.”

“I already did my panic,” I said, which was true. It had been quiet and private and I had hated every second of it.

“What was he like?” Charlotte asked, not bothering to pretend she didn’t care. “In the car. Bastion.”

“Steady,” It landed heavier than I wanted. “Like the storm was happening around us, not to us.”

Vivienne made a soft sound that wasn’t quite a laugh. “Of course.”

I hated the way heat rose in my cheeks. “He—he put his jacket over me. He used his body to cover mine when thecutters—” I stopped. I didn’t want to give them the scream, the way it had torn out of me, how his voice had anchored me to the world. “I’m alive because he was there.”

“Crow math,” Charlotte said lightly. “If something is going to break, first you put your body under it.”

“And then,” Vivienne added, “you dare it to try.”

I swallowed. My hand found the edge of the table because it needed something to hold.

Vivienne’s gaze sharpened. “Em.”