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In a slow, disbelieving voice, I try to clarify, “Are you telling me this whole movement… Antiro… it spread out to the masses after being started inSt. Camford?”
“A real underground, people-powered movement,” Rory adds with a sense of unimpressed irony as he picks up the thread of my fraying thoughts. “Priding itself on being aggressively progressive,self-consciouslyprogressive… and started by the relatives of ambassadors and diplomats and attachés to kings around the globe.That’swho’s leading the revolution?”
“Rich kids,” Danny concludes.
At a loss, Jonie spreads her hands sadly. “Antiro’s credentials have never been as they seem, no. Benji made sure of that.”
It makes sense, I guess — the many iterations of Benjamin Moncrieff, constantly reinvented to conceal his true, privileged identity. At least his brother is an unchanging barometer with which to measure him against — andhewas well-educated, a damn teacher at St. Camford.
The wool has been pulled over everyone’s eyes. Benji has never been a man of the people. A man for himself, sure.
“You call him Benji,” I point out, intrigued. “No one else does.”
“Yeah, well,” Jonie scoffs, and then grows silent. She says nothing for so long that I don’t think she’s going to answer. But then she murmurs in a slow, distant tone, “We go back years. He’s always been Benji to me.” When she meets my eyes, she gives a soft, mournful sigh. “We were — well, cards on the table, yeah? We were each other’s firsts.”
My jaw swings open. Beside me, Rory tilts his head sharply as if he may have misheard. “What?” he barks, all pretense of keeping neutral flying out the window. “Someone willingly went out with that toad?”
Jonie’s laugh is sad. “Now he thinks he needs a glamorous new name for his glamorous new role. King James? Don’t make me laugh. It’s all part of his brand. It’s marketing.”
My mind is still reeling. I think about Benji’s long hair shining beneath my fingertips, the admiring way he’d called meDancer. Those unwavering attempts to recruit me for Antiro — and how I’d almost been swayed to his side by his passion alone.
The crush of his mouth against mine.
The taste of his sweetened, silver tongue.
How I’d once, almost, considered himmine.
Jonie catches my eye, and it’s like she’s watching the sinking of my heart in real time. “He’s very charming,” she says knowingly.
I thought I’d beenhis. I thought he’d cared aboutme.
“Very charming,” she ruminates, “very smooth. Thinks he’s entitled to women. Takes, takes, takes what he wants from them. Took, took, took from me.”
She doesn’t go into detail but I can tell from her wistful, almost guarded tone that in some way Benji hurt her, violated her. It’s the covert warning sign from one woman to another about the appetite of cruelty within a man.
I recall that forced kiss — several of them — and of Finlay standing up to Benji because of it, of Finlay somehow seeing it’d been wrong before I’d even had time to blink.
He takes, takes, takes what he wants.
He took, took, took from me.
“No doubt that made the spell tougher to break in my case,” Jonie murmurs, “but if I can do it then so can others.” She leans back onto her hands. “I’ve lost countless friends to this cause. I’ve been attacked, stalked. My grades are in the shitter. I’ve sacrificed a fuckload just to cross to the other side… and it just seems like Antiro gets more and more powerful. But ask anyone on the street, and you cantellthey’re uneasy with the way things are heading. They’re just too scared to say so because — well, Antiro are effective at silencing their enemies. Or you talk to some people and they don’t even realize the debate’s moved on, that it’s not about being for or against the monarchy anymore but about supporting Benji as king. For an easy life, people would rather go along with this King James nonsense than be brave and defy it — and I don’t blame them because I’ve lost pretty much everything in the process.”
“There’s no one?” Danny asks, looking upset. “Truly no one?”
Jonie’s expression hardens with determination. “I’ve managed to build an underground network,” she declares in a low, resolute voice, and Rory raises his head in interest. “We started small but this recent business with Antiro has shone a light on how bad things are getting, and more and more people join every week. People invite their friends along if they’re of a similar mindset, and slowly the group’s blossomed into decent numbers. Everyone’s thoroughly vetted beforehand. We have secret meetings, secret symbols and codes. There are staff members who are sympathetic to our mission, who help us out with meeting room access. All this fuss just so we pass undetected.” She gives a small, lopsided grin. “Not gonna lie, it can be pretty thrilling.”
“It sounds like the Cold War,” Rory mutters, his expression uneasy.
“There’s some of that. But there are also a lot of pub meetings, and we haven’t been thrown out yet because they assume we’re an eclectic study group. In becoming anti-Benji, it seems by default we’ve become pro-Lucas.”
“Call him Luke,” Rory murmurs. “I think he’d allow that from you.”
Jonie beams at him. “You know, out of everything, I’ve found it’s the censorship that’s the most sinister aspect. We have no major platform, the same way Antiro do. No one’s willing to talk to us. But despite this, we’ve found a way to connect and let our numbers organically grow. Now we’re planning on holding our first demo today, in front of the entire uni, as a show of strength. That’s one point Antiro’s right about — thereisstrength in numbers, after all.
“So thereareothers,” she says, giving a wistful sigh. “I’m just one of the loudest because I have very little to lose anymore, and everyone else is shit-scared. You can’t understand the sheer relief I felt when I heard you three talking so blasé. Our voices have effectively been suppressed here — with you three, it was like witnessing a miracle.”
“St. Camford seems like it’s on another level. Maybe we should shut up,” Danny murmurs, but Jonie’s already shaking her head before he finishes talking.
