“I would have believed that not so long ago.” She would have, before her mother, and Lydie, and a little girl named Jubilee, alone and haunting her dreams. Before the girls sleeping behind the doors of the hallway. “I don’t anymore.”
Rose made a small noise somewhere between frustration and understanding. “You’re going to teach them, too?” From the way Rose voiced the word ‘them,’ she referenced the men of Fort Nevada.
“Maybe.” Lena lowered her head, thinking of the meeting she’d called for a few hours from now. “Depends on how the, um, convocation I just demanded goes.”
“What are you going to say to them?”
Lena rubbed her hands together. She reached up and tucked her hair behind her ears. “I don’t know yet.”
“But it’s about us?”
“About all of us, yes. You, the girls, me. The rules have changed now. I won’t have them do to you all what they’ve done to me.”
Rose’s face went cold and her lips curled back.
“No, no. They haven’t abused me. It’s…an issue of access. No.” She shook her head. That wasn’t it, either. “An issue of expectations.”
“If they’ve treated you badly, then why stay? Why not come back with me?”
Lena took her time answering. “Because they’re right,” she finally said with a sigh. “They’re right. The Council has to pay. And this place is…they…we are the best bet.”
“Am I allowed to ask about that?” Apparently deciding to move on, she eyed the light Lena’s skin gave off.
Lena shrugged and huffed a laugh. “You can ask anything you like. In this case, I don’t happen to have an answer. Don’t know what it is. Don’t know why it happens.”
“Don’t know if it’ll happen to the rest of us?”
She shook her head. “Nope.”
“It seems like it’d be a distinct disadvantage outside, especially at night.” She stopped and turned in front of Lena. “But it is arresting. Beautiful. Terrifying.” She grinned. “How long does it last?”
“Little more than a couple of hours?” Lena wanted it to fade before she had to walk in front of the collected men of Fort Nevada.
“Hmmm. Should be long enough.” It seemed Rose had a different idea. “If I were you, I’d use it to my advantage. A big meeting requires a big impression. We, men and women both, have ceremonial gowns we wear to address our people. Do you have anything like that?”
She didn’t, and it took them some time to agree on what she should wear. Ultimately, Lena was out-voted. After the girls woke, they’d brought them back to her room. Eventually, all of them were gathered there.
She looked around at the girls in their borrowed clothes. Thomas had provided Ward uniforms for the girls after their baths the night before. They were all so thin that their bodies were swallowed up in folds of material. They’d belted and folded where they could. The girls would need clothes made to fit them, Lena told Thomas before he’d left for the night, and soon: just the first of her demands on behalf of the girls.
She hoped she wasn’t making a huge mistake. She stood before the girls, the glow emanating from her skin magnified by the buff-colored clothing she wore. Rose had wrapped her in a long length of natural linen and tied it around Lena’s hips. She’d then wound a long shawl of pale, raw wool around Lena, crisscrossing it behind her to knot at her waist.
The girls looked at her in awed silence, the light of her reflected in their wide eyes.
She felt ridiculous. She moved her shoulders restlessly.
“Stop fidgeting,” Rose told her. She made a final adjustment to the crisscrossing section over Lena’s breasts and stepped back. She wore a satisfied smirk. “Now, you glow. You’re a vision. Intimidating from the moment you walk in.”
Lena took a deep breath. “Thanks.” She hoped she could pull it off. She looked at the ring of expectant faces. She had to make it work. “Before we go, you have to prepare yourselves. There’s going to be…a lot of energy in there. And it will all be directed at us. It’s going to be—”
“We know,” Phoebe told her. “We can feel it.”
“We’re used to it,” Marin added. “Our guards were Sparks. They liked the way we felt.” She shrugged and looked down at her hands.
Constance and Charity shifted, moving closer together.
Lena’s stomach turned over. Her furious gaze snapped to Rose. The woman stared back at her in silent confirmation. Her shoulders were back, tight and squared, and her hands fisted at her sides.
Hania had been looking off into space, her upper teeth scraping over her lower lip again and again. Now she brought her gaze directly to Lena. “Will they do that to us here?”