I step toward her, slow and deliberate, until there’s just enough distance between us to avoid scandal and just enough tension to suggest it anyway.
“What I see,” I say, “is a temporary distraction.”
She lifts her chin. “You’re not winning this.”
“Winning,” I say, tasting the word. “There’s no prize. Only outcomes. And you’re not built to survive mine.”
“Try me,” she says.
I hold her gaze for one long, dangerous breath, and something shifts. It’s not surrender. Not yet. But it’s not pure war anymore, either. There’s curiosity now. And I don’t like that. Curiosity complicates things.
I turn and walk away before she can see that something about her voice is still echoing in my chest long after she stops speaking.
CHAPTER 5
CLARA
The problem with leading a small-town rebellion is that no one tells you how damn unreliable volunteers can be when the temperature drops below freezing. I’m out here on Main, four hours into lantern prep, with twelve poles, five cracked ladders, a tangled knot of half-lit string lights, and exactly three people who showed up. Two of them are over sixty, and the third is seventeen with a phone in his hand and earbuds in both ears. I don’t have the energy to chase him into participation. I don’t have the time.
The sky is already going that bruised purple color it does right before it dumps snow, and my gloved fingers are stiff from tying fishing line to hooks that won’t stay level. My boots are soaked again. My patience’s running thin. And every time I step back to squint at the lineup of crooked lanterns sagging across the street, I can feel my grandmother’s voice somewhere in the back of my head muttering about posture and pride and presentation.
“Clara,” Dee says gently from where she’s balancing a thermos on the hood of her truck, “you’re bleeding morale all over the sidewalk.”
“I’m bleeding exhaustion and disappointment,” I say, tugging on one of the lantern strings to try and force it into position. “Big difference.”
She watches me fuss for a second, then clicks her tongue and gestures toward the approaching shape walking up the road.
“Well, speak of the devil and look who brought his own shoulders.”
I freeze, mid-knot, when I see him.
Dralgor Veyr is not wearing a scarf. That’s the first thing my brain registers, which is stupid, because what matters is that he’s walking toward us with his sleeves rolled back, his coat open, and a face like stone under frost. He doesn’t slow when he reaches us. He just stops in front of the lamppost nearest me and looks up at the half-hung string of lanterns like he’s judging every angle of my failure.
“I thought you’d be supervising from a leather armchair,” I say, too tired to pretend civility.
“I offered manpower,” he replies, tone flat. “Your committee accepted.”
I whip around to glare at Dee, who shrugs unapologetically. “You said we needed help. He said he had time. I decided to live dangerously.”
“You decided to live with consequences,” I mutter, then turn back to Dralgor, who’s already sizing up the ladder with a kind of focused disdain.
“You know how to climb one of those?” I ask, narrowing my eyes.
“I build skyscrapers.”
“That’s a no, then.”
He grabs the ladder without another word and positions it under the nearest pole. The metal groans under his weight, but it holds, and then he’s up there, boots braced, arms reaching withan ease that would annoy me even if I wasn’t the one who tied the line too low in the first place.
“Left a little,” I call. “No, your left. My—what are you doing?”
“Fixing it.”
“That’s not fixing it, that’s manhandling it. You’re going to pull the post out of the ground.”
“Your knots are weak.”
“My knots are perfect.”
