“I requested this position.”
My jaw dropped.
“Does that surprise you?” Julian asked.
“Yes,” I admitted, before biting my lower lip until it throbbed. “There’s nothing here for someone like you.”
“There’s opportunity,” he said quietly, touching the edge of the spilled water, breaking the surface tension so it ran in a rivulet off the side of the table. “You’ll understand, someday.”
He had the power to send me away. To crush me to nothing by doing so. “Yes, Senior,” I said miserably, disbelieving. I’d never understand any of this, because I wasn’t meant to. It wasn’t my place to understand.
“Josephine, you will practice reflection in the conduction room tonight. I hope that a night of silence will help you focus.”
“Yes, Senior,” I repeated, my eyes growing hot.
“Honor the radiance within you.”
“Pulse of the stars, steady my heart,” I murmured reflexively, the blessing I’d whispered thousands of times in the great hall.
“May Progress light the way to tomorrow.”
I was accustomed to hearing dozens of voices at once, the response repeated so often that the words had lost their meaning. Julian’s quiet voice made it sound like a warning. Excusing myself with a hitch in my breath, I clumsily cleaned the spilled water and gathered the remnants of our picked-at meal.
Julian looked as if he wanted to say something else, his lips pressed together tightly, his posture too stiff. He tried to help me tidy up, and I snapped, “Leave it.”
His chest rose and fell sharply, but he said nothing and let me make my way down to the kitchen to clean. It was quick, familiar work. My hands were used to scrubbing. My knuckles were used to bleeding. But I wasn’t used to being quiet in the dark, alone with my thoughts. Dread settled heavily in my chest as I entered the cavernous conduction room.
The conduction chambers hulked on either side of me, as bulky as the huge train engine and smelling sweetly of clean grease. They were utterly silent, but I imagined them trembling inside, waiting for the influx of radiance that would set their huge gears whirring and rumbling. The conduction coils would glow, hot like sunlight and bright as fire.
Sinking to my knees on the cold stone, I began to cry. I’d been punished countless times at the House of Industry, but I’d never imagined myself angering my first Senior enough to be sent to practice reflection. It was a punishment reserved for great disappointment—for evidence that a Child of Industry might not appreciate their birthright, might not respect the authority of the House and the Elders.
Reflection meant looking within. Feeling the hum of radiance. Practicing gratitude for the opportunity to provide it to others. If I looked within, would I see my failures?
Would I see the curiosity that made me too quick to stray from the plain and simple rules everyone else followed without question? Would I see the anger that turned my radiance into a weapon?
Would I see the way Ezra’s touch set me aflame?
I closed my eyes, hiccuped with soft sobs, and felt desperately sorry for myself for a while. I didn’t want Julian to be disappointed with me. Not because he was my Senior, but because, for reasons I couldn’t fathom, I liked him. He was strange underneath all his standoffishness, and strangeness was much more compelling to me than perfection. I could tell by the way he swallowed back his smiles that he was hiding small joys, and I wanted to know what they were—and share mine in turn. Surely that would not make either of us incapable of fulfilling our duties and destinies.
I couldn’t get to know him if he thought I was beyond rehabilitation and distanced himself from me. Or worse, sent me away entirely.
A louder sob caught in my throat as I recalled his threat to send me home. I wiped my eyes and nose viciously and let out a few muttered curses. My back ached, and the cold floor numbed my shins and feet, but my resolve to make a home here in Frostbrook only grew. Perhaps here, in this wild place, I could find a way to tame myself.
When the Mission was finished, the people of Frostbrook would see that Progress could help them. Life would become easier. They’d have more time, more money, more people to trade with. I’d be part of that.
My tears dried and left itchy trails down my cheeks.
The story I’d always told myself about the future felt strangely hollow here in the dark now that I’d run out of personal failings to reflect on. I considered Ainsley and her small home, her meager garden, her young ward. I thought of the workers who slept in tents in the woods and would leave this place to build another Mission they would never see the glow of. I thought of Ezra asking me to consider my role in the ruin of dead trees and dying people that I’d been trying to ignore.
If there was one thing I could do from now on, it was learn.
Ezra and Ainsley had both called me small-minded, though not in so many words, and they were both right. I only knew what I’d been told, and I’d never questioned how much was being kept from me.
Surely Julian would not fault me for opening my eyes to more than what we’d been taught at the House of Industry. He seemed to love learning.
“I don’t want to be a fool,” I whispered to the unfeeling machines around me.
The long night stretched on, and as the full moon crossed the sky, pale beams shone from the thin, high windows far above. I reached for the watery light, letting it play across my palm while a gossamer thread of pale blue radiance stretched from fingertip to fingertip.
