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Lila swallowed. It was a return of the old Tristan, then.
While driving back into town, she’d nurtured a small flame of hope within her. Perhaps they’d talk—really talk—about what had happened between them. Perhaps they could have the conversation she’d wanted to have all month, as difficult as it might be to begin. She would fi
nally tell Tristan how she felt.
She wanted to have that conversation, needed to have it, before she faced her trial, before she was hanged like all the others. But now that she heard the hardness in his voice, she realized how naïve she’d been. It would take more than a talk. It would take a great deal of time.
Time that she didn’t have.
“La Roux was never my fiancé. You know better than that.”
“I don’t know anything about La Roux. I don’t want to know, either. It’s absolutely none of my business who you take to bed or who you don’t. That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it? Apparently, it wasn’t even my business when we were together.”
Lila looked away. She shoveled a bite of lo mein into her mouth, too hungry to ignore the food in her lap.
Beside her, Dixon worried his notepad. Did he feel guilty for not revealing that Tristan didn’t want her in the shop, or did he feel guilty for not warning Tristan before he brought her?
Perhaps both?
Lila ate another bite. Perhaps she should tell Tristan what had really happened with La Roux. That the senator had been the Baron, that he’d hurt her, that he’d tried to kill her, that he had orchestrated the Great Purge. But as she chewed, she knew she couldn’t bear to admit a word of it. Highborns didn’t use violence, and yet La Roux had used it against her. It was embarrassing and all too common lately.
What was so wrong with her that everyone wanted to harm her?
Tristan kicked his heels upon the coffee table. “Why are you even here, Ms. Randolph?”
Ms. Randolph?
Lila put down her fork, the food turning to ash on her tongue. He used to call her Lila, his Bordeaux accent rolling over the vowels in her name, tonguing them, making her toes curl.
Even that had fled.
“The oracle asked for my help,” she said. “I don’t have much time, but I’ll do what I can for her and her sisters until tomorrow morning.”
“That’s right. You have your trial tomorrow. Would you have worked on her case if you hadn’t been called to trial? If you were still the great Elizabeth Victoria Lemaire-Randolph, soon-to-be prime of the Randolph family?”
“Yes.”
“I doubt that sincerely. You’d be back in your colorless bedroom, with your colorless life, and we’d be here alone, working the case by ourselves.”
He put his tea down and walked to the whirling heater, turning the knob down from Dixon’s heat wave. “Did you ever figure out what happened with the Baron, or did you get bored of that too?”
“I figured it out.”
“I didn’t hear about his trial in the news.”
“You won’t. It’s been dealt with.”
“Dealt with? I’m sure it’s been dealt with, just like the highborns captured in the Great Purge would have been dealt with, had their crimes not been sent to the press. Do you think it’s a coincidence that the lowborn and workborn have all been sentenced to death while the highborn have been granted leniency?”
“The highborn didn’t hack BullNet. They merely hired the ones who did. It’s not as severe a crime.”
“Imagine that. Your kind once again pawning off consequences to others. I suppose your case will be interesting. If the world is as fair as you say, you should be hanged. After all, you marched right into BullNet and stole from every database inside.”
Lila looked away.
“Ah, that’s right. Your father and Shaw will leap into the fray and save you in the end. That’s when this case will get truly interesting. What will the senate do when they find out your father and Shaw hired you to hack BullNet, especially with the whole country watching?”
“You’re enjoying this. You hope I’m hanged. You hope my father and Chief Shaw are hanged as well.”
