briefly, then used a bulky set of keys to open the door, ushering Alex through and then closing it behind him. This left them almost face-to-face in the cramped quarters of the entry, under a flickering light, surrounded by a jumble of coats and umbrellas. For an instant, looking at her freckled cheeks and small, coy smile, he was certain that their faces did not actually need to be so close together, that the space was not as small as that. Then she stood up on her tiptoes to tap the light bulb, fixing the lighting and ending the moment. She hung up her sweater and he found a hook for his hoodie, full of regret and confusion.
Following her up the stairs into the apartment, Alex couldn’t help but watch her perfectly shaped calves flex underneath the fringe of her white dress — and then, for some reason, he remembered what Rebecca had told him about how he would be received here. He somehow managed to be simultaneously hopeful and embarrassed.
“So, you live here?” he asked, as they emerged into what was clearly the living room, a fairly large space with white stucco walls and an unusually high ceiling. The room was crowded with a table and a number of wooden chairs, a couple of couches, a large entertainment center, and a number of bookshelves. It looked homey and oddly approachable to Alex, like he hadn’t really expected for Cartel families to have books lying all over the kitchen table, or half-dead houseplants, or a sink filled with unwashed dishes. “I mean, I know you live at the Academy right now, but this is where you grew up, right?”
“Mostly,” Emily said, as if she was admitting to something, her eyes narrowing as she looked at the disarray. “Right now, only my sister lives here full-time. Which explains the mess, I suppose.”
Emily sighed and marched toward the kitchen.
“Go ahead and grab a seat, Alex. I just want to straighten up a bit. It won’t take a minute.”
Alex glanced around skeptically, thinking that it might take quite a bit longer than a minute, then looked around for some place to sit, eventually settling on an uncomfortably high chair, set on the other side of the long kitchen counter, opposite the sink. On the other side, Emily made a face at the accumulated dishes, then turned on the hot water and reached for the dish soap. It took Alex a moment to realize that she was furious.
“I’m sorry,” she said, a few minutes later, after she’d managed to clear enough room to get to work. “My sister can be quite… inconsiderate. She’s lived here a long time now while the rest of us haven’t been around quite as much as she’s made herself very much,” Emily grimaced, “at home. As you can see.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Alex reassured. “I lived in a damn trailer, my standards aren’t that high. Um, so, I was wondering… not to be rude or anything, but why did you invite me here?”
Emily glanced up at him momentarily. Alex wasn’t certain, but he thought she might have been annoyed with him.
“Well, you hadn’t seen anything of Central outside of the Academy for one, and clearly no one was going to make time to take you,” Emily said over the clatter of washing dishes. Alex had to admit that what she said was true — they had been so busy trying to get him into fighting shape that they had pretty much neglected to cover any of the fundamentals. He’d had to hit Vivik up for help finding the laundry room, earlier in the day, and he still hadn’t figured out who to talk to about getting his hair cut. “And, I thought I might make you dinner, since you’ve eaten at the cafeteria pretty much every meal since you got here. I cook, you know.”
“I didn’t know that. Well, I mean, I did, because of the lunches, you know, but…”
Emily laughed.
“Well, I do. Actually, I was raised with the full suite of domestic skills — something my parents seem to have neglected when it came to my sister,” Emily said, her arms elbow deep in soapy water. “Different children have different functions, I suppose.”
“What do you mean?”
Alex folded his arms on the counter and then leaned his chin on them, staring over at the girl washing dishes, totally puzzled.
“Why would they treat you differently from her?”
“They would have told you about me, I’m certain,” Emily said plainly, her smile rueful, her eyes vague and faraway. “The Academy staff, I mean. Someone would have, before we ever met.”
“Yeah.” Alex nodded, feeling slightly guilty. “They warned me about everyone.”
“Of course. Still, because of my… circumstances,” Emily said, blushing, “they would have warned you about me, specifically. Because it was so obvious I that I would have to approach you. Because I’m an empath, but an exceptionally weak one, and because my family is part of the Hegemony. It’s a bit embarrassing, honestly, to have it be public knowledge.”
Alex didn’t know what to say. Fortunately, Emily didn’t seem to require a response from him. As a matter of fact, she didn’t even seem like she was talking to him specifically. She continued to dry the plates with a hand towel, and then set them carefully in the drying rack.
“My father is a powerful man, and my family has been among the elite in the Raleigh Cartel since it was founded, though the cartel itself has seen better days. My mother is a diplomat and a powerful empath. My older sister graduated from the Academy with honors, and now handles the cartel’s representation in Central. Which is why she’s always here, not cleaning.”
Emily spoke without a trace of bitterness, her smile fixed and brittle.
“The old families — and the Muir family is very old — still use marriages to establish alliances. It’s very feudal, like medieval Europe,” she joked mirthlessly. “To a man like my father, there’s only one possible use for a daughter who is such a weak empath — my talents aren’t good for much, Alex, but I’d make some important man a very satisfying wife, wouldn’t I? Don’t you think I’m pretty, Alex?”
Alex nodded slowly, his mind reeling. He’d assumed, when he met her, that Emily would be one of the popular girls at the Academy. She was obviously upper crust, and yes, pretty — but this…
“That’s good, because that’s what I was raised to be. I talked my mother into letting me come to the Academy,” Emily continued sadly. “I told her I wanted the chance to develop my abilities, to learn useful skills that could aid me in my marriage later on. I think that she felt sorry for me more than anything, but she talked my father into it anyway.”
Emily smiled at Alex, but the smile was painful.
“Do you know why I wanted to come to the Academy, Alex?” she asked, continuing on before Alex could have even attempted an answer, had he any. “I wanted some time, before I had to become a bargaining chip for my father, before I got bartered off to someone. A few years before that happened, to be myself.”
She was so accustomed to counterfeiting it that her smile hardly even looked false.
“I actually got to the point where I thought I’d accepted it,” she said lightly. “It didn’t bother me that much anymore. And then, a few days before the start of second session, I get a message from my father, and I have to go rushing back home to learn all about you.”
Alex could only stare at her in shock.
“Do you know how weird it is, Alex, when you’ve only seen your father at family events, to have him suddenly pulling you into his office for little chats with the cartel advisors? When they act like you’ve always been there with them, as if you’ve always been important?” Emily paused, and brushed her hair back from her eyes. When she spoke again, her voice was more composed. “But, I’m not saying it was all bad.”
She put the dish down in the rack with more force than she intended, and the clattering made Alex jump.
“All of a sudden, for the first time in my life, my father is taking an interest in me.” Emily laughed as if it were funny, sponging off the water on the countertop. “Now I have my mother doing my hair, and confiding with me about whether to seduce you, or to try and make you feel sorry for me, or both.”
Alex felt numb. He couldn’t think of anything to say.
“It doesn’t really matter how I feel about you, or how I’d feel about doing something like that, or how you’d feel about it. Not to my parents. That’s the world I was raised in.” Emily shook her head sadly. “None of that really bothers me. But, because you showed up Alex, now everything is different for me. I thought I had at least a few years, here at the Academy.”
The bottom fell out of Alex’s stomach. He hadn’t realized until now, but it was obvious — Emily had come to the Academy to put off her inevitable arranged marriage. But, she hadn’t even gotten a full year of school before he’d arrived, and…
“I’m really sorry, Emily,” Alex said quietly, ashamed.
“That’s sweet,” Emily said brightly. “But, what do you have to be sorry about? It’s not like you had any choice in the matter. You’re like me, Alex, do you realize that? We’re both pieces in a game that someone else is playing.
