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“Quite a stroke of inspiration for a teenager.”
“It wasn’t my idea. A few of my advisors came up the plan, Randolphs both of them, obviously. I thought they were crazy at first, but the numbers looked solid, and I wanted it to work so badly. I didn’t care so much if it failed, either. I thought perhaps my mother would leave me alone if I failed spectacularly. She lent me the money to buy the blocks and set up what I needed. We bought a couple of lowborn apartment complexes and changed them to micro-leases for long-term patients and their families, leases that didn’t gouge them senseless. We bought two more apartment complexes just for medical staff, to give them a place to live near the hospital at a fair price. Then I built other things, restaurants in different price ranges, a gym, a grocery store, a movie theater, a toy store, florists—everything patients and their exhausted families could want and everything my staff could want. It worked.”
“Then Holly’s death paved the way for a lot of good in the world, especially if other families adopt the model in other cities.”
“Maybe.” Lila shrugged, remembering how Holly’s hair used to smell before she fell ill, like roses, and how it had smelled after, like damp. “I’d trade it all away for her.”
“You miss her.”
“Alex always understood the frustrations of being a highborn, but Holly always understood me.”
“And now, Alex is in a holding cell in Bullstow.”
“I had a footman bail her out this morning,” Lila said, shifting in the driver’s seat. “You’re angry at me for that, aren’t you?”
“Not if she hit you. If she did that, she deserves what she got.” He pulled one of her gloved hands from the steering wheel and intertwined their fingers.
“I’m trying to drive,” she muttered, pulling away.
“Trying is a good word for it. You don’t have to speed to every red light in the city, you know. It’ll still be red when you get there.”
The pair didn’t speak for the rest of the trip. Lila was glad for it, for her thoughts were consumed with two laughing children running through the grounds of the Randolph compound.
She soon pulled into the parking lot near the oracle’s sign, sliding into a spot between a sports car and a beat-up pickup truck. They hiked past the sign, emerging at the dock. Lila noticed the same couple from the day before, holding hands, toes skimming the lake.
Luckily, the rower had just tied off his boat, and the group hopped inside.
When they entered the main room of the temple, it was already crowded with people muttering meditations or sipping water on the couches. A few parents even held babies tight to their chests.
One of the lilac-robed women approached the pair and bowed to Lila. “The oracle said to keep an eye out for you this morning. She’ll only be a few moments.”
A man nearby frowned at the exchange. At least she didn’t have a Randolph coat of arms stitched onto her shirt this time.
Tristan sat on one of the couches and patted a seat beside him. Lila sat, worried he’d be inspired by the couple on the dock. Highborns never held hands in public or displayed affection outside of the bedroom. Only workborns staked a claim to one another so publicly.
But she and Tristan were just friends, weren’t they?
Tristan sank back into the couch and closed his eyes. “I’m going in with you. I helped.”
“No.”
“I’ll blow something up if—”
“Don’t even joke about that.”
“Too soon?” he asked, opening one eye.
Moments later a woman with a round belly emerged from the back of the room, waddling toward the front of the temple.
Another pregnancy blessed by the oracle. Lila wondered how many times a day the woman rubbed fat, baby-filled bellies.
She and Tristan dodged the pregnant woman and descended into the quiet fishbowl.
The oracle sat upon her couch and raised an eyebrow at Tristan’s presence. “You brought a friend.”
“He’s like static. Whenever I try to peel him away, he shocks me.”
“You trust him.”
