CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

RACHEL

Sylph, her mother, and her oldest brother are waiting for me in their main room. Sylph shoots me a quick grin as she puts on her cloak. “We’re going to get my final fitting at Madam Illiard’s North Hub shop. Can you believe the Claiming ceremony is tomorrow?”

She lingers over the word tomorrow as if her dreams are pinned to it. Maybe they are. I try to smile as she bounces next to me, chattering about her dress and the weather predictions for tomorrow’s ceremony, but it’s hard to pretend. Knowing I’m leaving day after tomorrow twists me up inside until I don’t know how to feel.

I want to stop wasting time. Stop lingering while somewhere out there, Dad is alone in the Wasteland. I also want to savor every precious moment I have with Sylph in case I never get the chance to see her again.

Sylph doesn’t notice my lack of response. We’ve fallen into step behind her mother and brother, and she’s whispering about her secret hope that Smithson West will Claim her. I listen with half an ear, nod at the appropriate times, and try to memorize everything I love about her while grief swells within me and makes it hard to breathe.

We’ve been friends since we shared a table at Life Skills, the few years of schooling deemed appropriate for a girl in Baalboden. We learned things like cooking, bargaining, sewing, and proper etiquette when out in public with our Protectors.

The boys received six more years of schooling and learned things like math, reading, the history of the Wasteland, the differing laws and protocols of the other eight city-states, and Commander Chase’s pivotal role in saving the citizens of Baalboden from the Cursed One.

I never thought it was fair that anatomy decided what my brain was fit for. Dad agreed, and I’d soaked up everything he could teach me. Once, I’d tried to teach Sylph the wonders of being able to open a book and understand the words inside, but she’d shrugged it off. She didn’t need to read. She’d have a Protector for that.

Now I study her dark green eyes, lit with pleasure at the prospect of our day, her black curls that constantly mock her mother’s attempts to conjure a ladylike style, and the excitement quivering through her softly rounded frame, and lean forward to give her a hug.

She hugs me back. We enter Madam Illiard’s shop, where fancy Claiming dresses hang near the front window and bolts of fabric line the walls in a feast of color. Two tables are set up on either side of the shop. One has baskets of useless things like beads, buttons, and rolls of ribbon. The other is empty of anything but a measuring tape and two pairs of scissors.

I don’t know how anyone can spend more than five minutes inside this place without going stark-raving mad. Sylph, however, bounces on her toes and hugs her mother as they examine the almost completed Claiming dress designed just for her. Seeing them pressed close to each other as they finger the fabric and admire a piece of lace sends an unwelcome shaft of longing through me.

I don’t usually miss my mother. How can I? She died right after I was born, and I never knew her. But at moments like these, I miss what we might have had together. I imagine our hair would’ve been the same shade of red. Our eyes the same shade of blue. Maybe we would’ve both loved lemon cake and hated spinach. Or maybe we would’ve both thought the only truly useful items in Madam Illiard’s shop were the scissors, because pointy things make excellent weapons.

I’ll never know, and thinking about it won’t help me escape Baalboden and find Dad, so I shove the longing away and follow Sylph into the windowless back room for her fitting.

Nearly two hours pass before Madam pronounces Sylph’s dress perfect. The dark green velvet hugs her upper body and falls in graceful lines to her ankles. Black lace panels shimmer between the skirt’s folds, and black ribbon laces up the back. When Madam Illiard and Sylph’s mother leave the room to haggle over the final cost, Sylph twirls in front of me and asks, “Don’t you love it?”

“It’s beautiful.”

“Do you think Smithson will like it?”

“I’m sure he will.”

She grabs my arm, and looks at me properly for the first time. “What’s wrong? You don’t think Smithson is right for me?”

“I think he’s a nice man,” I say, because Sylph’s heart is set on him, and because it’s true. He’s quiet, sturdy, and seems to want nothing more than a wife, a home, and a decent crop from his patch of farmland. “He’s perfect for you.”

She glows for a moment, but then her expression falls. “I wish you were in this year’s ceremony with me.”

“I’m not yet seventeen.” I try to sound as if I’m disappointed too, though I’m not. I can’t even think about wanting to parade across the stage in Center Square while one of the eligible townsmen decides I’d make a perfect wife. Besides, what do I know about being an obedient wife? There are much more important qualities to have than a docile disposition.

Logan seems to agree.

Warmth spreads through me at the thought of Logan’s fumbling attempt at giving me a compliment today.

Stunning.

His words feel like a gift I want to keep reopening when no one else is looking. What would Sylph say if she knew I’d almost kissed Logan? If she knew I sometimes watch him while he’s bent over his inventions and want to trace my fingers over the muscles in his shoulders for no apparent reason at all?

The secret trembles at the edge of my lips, but there are other secrets right behind it. Secrets about the Commander. Oliver. Treachery. Sylph can’t know anything about that. It’s the only protection I can offer her after I’m gone.