“Wait, before I go, you mustpromiseme you won’t be using salmon pink or silver for your wedding palette! Promise on your life!” Ursa laughed lightly, then fixed Zada with a coldly intimidating stare. “Promise?”
“Promise,” said Zada solemnly.
“Fantastic!” Ursa blew her a kiss and swept out.
Finally, Zada dared to meet Daphne’s gaze. “No salmon or silver. Do you think her wedding theme is fish?”
Daphne’s lips quirked the way they did when she was trying not to laugh, and Zada felt a sudden soaring sensation behind her breastbone.
“Welcome, Miss Fallow!” said Madame Murray, who Zada belatedly realized had been waiting to get a word in edgewise for some time. “And Miss Chambers as well! I saw your engagement on the feed, how marvelous. My congratulations, to you and to Mr. Arnoth.”
After Madame Murray’s, they visited five other caterers. Their names and even the samples they offered began to blur together in Zada’s mind, which was not useful for her intended errand. They paused to catch their breath and digest a bit ona bench in front of the sixth caterer.
Zada closed her eyes to consult her to-do list on her lens. “There’s a florist not too far from here,” she said. Their agreement had extended no further than catering, but she was reluctant to disperse whatever spell had carved out this space where she and Daphne were on speaking terms again.
Daphne nodded decisively and jumped to her feet. “I hear the latest thing is custom orchids, bred to incorporate your and your beloved’s initials right on the petals.”
“Seems a little tacky,” said Zada, also standing.
“It’s a wedding,” said Daphne grandly. “It’s no place for taste. Onward!”
Several paces into the florist shop, Zada knew it was a mistake. The cloying scent of roses swelled up around them. It was so strong that Zada was sure it was being piped in from somewhere.
Daphne stumbled hard, nearly knocking into a glass display of floating stemless tulips. Zada instinctively wrapped an arm around her friend’s shoulders, righting her again. She could feel the answering stiffness in Daphne’s shoulder blades, and Zada let her arm drop, as if scalded. What was she doing?
“I’m sorry,” Zada said quietly. “Are you—”
“I’m fine,” said Daphne through gritted teeth. “It’s fine.”
When Daphne was seven, her father had come home early from work with a massive bouquet of red roses for her mother, only for his wife to confess that she was having an affair. Within minutes, he’d thrown the whole mess of roses down the disposal and reported the infidelity to the authorities. Tobetray your soulmate was unthinkable, a crime against all of New Ionia.
By the time Daphne arrived back from visiting her grandparents for the weekend, both Iphigenia Fallow and the man she’d been seeing had already been Extricated. Daphne had cried for days, begging for her mother, but no one would speak of her, not anymore. From that day on, Iphigenia Fallow ceased to exist.
“I didn’t even get to say goodbye,” Daphne had confessed to Zada once, in the dead of night. They were in the common room, staying up late to study, but that had quickly turned into hours of trading secrets and stories. Zada had taken Daphne’s hand then, laced their fingers together, and held on.
“They say space smells like burning metal, you know,” Daphne had whispered, “but I swear to you, Zades, the emptiest place in the universe, the reek of long-dead ghosts and gaping absence—for me, it’ll always be roses.”
It was a tragedy, of course, but it was also the system working as designed. Daphne’s father carried the weighty responsibility of living up to his ancestors’ legacy as the architect and intellectual force behind New Ionia. Some argued that Orion Fallow had been the most important Founder of all. He’d done more than simply amass a fortune by innovating in a world that had descended into crisis. He had created a solution to all the suffering, all the shortages and desperation. He’d designed the biodome that would become New Ionia and made it a reality. The imprint of his mind was a part of the Core for a reason, and it was thanks to his brilliance that New Ionia was such a beacon of hope.
As a member of the board that oversaw the day-to-dayrunning of New Ionia, Daphne’s father had carried enough on his shoulders before his wife had decided to betray him and, in effect, abandon her home, her friends, and her young daughter in a single act. She’d been punished accordingly, as any citizen of New Ionia would have been. She’d deserved it, for chasing momentary pleasure above her own family, even her own child.
A traitorous part of Zada wondered if Carine had really deserved the same fate. But that wasn’t for her to decide. (Founders Creed, rule three: “I will be faithful. I will not doubt the wisdom of the Founders, nor will I sow seeds of doubt in the minds of others.”)
“Should we step out?” Zada said. “We can go.”
“And why would we do that?” Daphne’s smile had gone stiff and forced, as if pinned on.
“Well, when we were younger—”
“When we were younger, I was terrified of snakes,” said Daphne. “So I made myself watch hours of archival footage of them. Now I could tongue-kiss a cobra if the occasion called for it.”
“Name an occasion where that would come up.”
Daphne fiddled with a lilac branch. “Suppose I was in a play, and the actor slated as my love interest was so literal-minded as to actually break a leg—”
“And what, the only understudy was a gigantic snake?” Zada broke in.
“With dreams of the stage!” said Daphne. “Who am I to quash a snake’s dreams?”
