I wrap my arms around her. A sob escapes her, and I feel terrible for being harsh to her. I forgot how sensitive she is.
Just like I blame Warrick for her death, Mercy blames our mother. Mercy doesn’t like the fact that she broke the rules, knowing the consequences of opposing the regime. To Mercy, it feels like a betrayal. Like she purposely chose to abandon us.
“Don’t leave me, Haven,” she pleads. “You’re all I have.”
“Everything will be fine,” I say, shushing her. “I swear it.”
It feels insensitive to bring this up when she’s so upset, but in a few days, Ender Vale will come to drag me away from everything I’ve ever known, and I refuse to be trapped in another gilded cage.
“Mercy, we need to switch places,” I say, drawing back to look her in the eye. “I have to go to the Forge and you…well, you have to go with Ender.”
Mercy stiffens.
“Warrick will kill us,” she says. “I don’t know anything about Ender Vale, but if he’s anything like his father, he’s probably frightening. What if he finds out we deceived him?”
“Do you want to shoot people instead?” I ask. “Do you want to be knocked around by a bunch of wild-eyed recruits with nothing to lose and get maimed in the process?”
Mercy flinches. I feel an inkling of guilt for frightening her, but Grayson spoke often about his time in the Forge. He called it a ‘hellhole’ designed to break the strongest person. It will eat her alive, and as much as I want to run away from my destiny, I also fear for her. Warrick wouldn’t blink an eye if they returned her corpse in a few months.
“Of course not.”
“Then this is the only way,” I say firmly.
Her expression is resigned. She doesn’t want to marry the Commandant any more than I do. But at least this way we’ll both have a chance of surviving. I can face whatever torment the Forge has in store for me, but I know nothing about marriage.
“How do we do this?”
I smile.
“Leave it all up to me.”
chapter
three
Ender
The sky rumbles, lightning cutting through the dark like a silver blade. Trees flash past the window in a verdant blur as I speed towards my future.
My gloved hands tighten on the wheel.
An engagement.
The thought is laughable. I never imagined myself settling down, but I should have known better. After all, I am the son of Malric Vale, the Supreme Director, who has been carefully grooming me to take his seat when his term ends.
The regime hadn’t always been in power. Before they established the Director’s Office, the Continent had been trapped in chaos. It had been run by a long line of weak presidents who fought for states like a bad game of tug-of-war until it turned nuclear. In the span of days, entire pieces of land had sunk into the ocean bed, and radiation consumed the ones that remained, except for one.
Bane Vale, my grandfather, and a coalition of military leaders who served the president of Foundry––now called New Foundry––had led the Great Coup, liberating us and establishing the new regime. Statues of the old leaders were torndown, their names removed from the records, and the people were taught to view them as a distant memory.
Over the years, the Code was published and amended. And then came the establishment of the divisions, erasing the old state names. Military power increased, growing like smoke from a burning city.
The Council doesn’t approve of me as a candidate; they claim I am intimidating and menacing. That I am far too much of a soldier than a politician. So, the brilliant solution to this problem is for me to take a wife, to soften my image.
“She’s pretty,” Knox says, flipping through his tablet. “Nineteen. Likes cooking, dancing, and reading. A Common. Born in Division Eight, Oracle, to be specific. Mother was executed for treason and conspiracy,” he reads aloud.
His head is bent over the screen with fascination. His dyed azure-blue hair falls into his eyes. The silver piercing threaded through his brow winks under the light.
“Why did my father choose her?” I ask. “She sounds unimpressive.”
