Arianna looked around the room, as if with fresh eyes. “Sort of, I suppose . . . Willard found me at seven, and we left due to differences in ideology when I was about ten.”
“When he joined the Council of Five and started the rebellion?” Florence helped herself to one of the seats facing Arianna.
“Indeed.” Arianna’s eyes drifted back to whatever it was she’d been working on and her hand reached for a pencil, no doubt on instinct more than command.
Florence let her work. She knew how Arianna was with an idea; there was no stopping her mind once it was coiled around something. If history had proved anything, it was that the world was better off for letting Ari’s ideas run their course.
The chair wrapped her in a cozy embrace, inviting Florence to lean into it. So, she obliged, and tipped her head back. She was going to allow her eyes to flutter closed, perhaps even sneak in a moment of sleep in this tranquil oasis amid a sea of war and questions. But the ceiling captured her focus.
Even there, schematics and equations were plastered. Notes written in multiple hands layered on top of each other, fighting for attention and maybe even supremacy. There was no discernible order, yet Florence knew that if she tried to move a single one, Ari would know instantly.
“You didn’t come to the station to greet me,” Florence said when the pencil finally stilled.
“By design. I knew Willard and Ethel needed to speak with you.”
“We needed you there, too.” Florence’s eyelids suddenly felt heavy, and she let them close.
“If you had, one of you would’ve called me.” Arianna appeared in Florence’s field of view the moment she opened her eyes. Her mentor’s hair was awash in the pale orange of the dim lamplight that only stretched a peca away from the desk. “I didn’t want to insult your status as a vicar.”
Florence wanted to tell Arianna that she still needed her, no matter her title. But she knew that crutch was long gone. She’d been moving away from it for months. So why did she seem to ache so fiercely at the idea of Arianna letting it go, too?
“We may have been able to make an exception for the Queen of Wraiths.” Florence grinned lazily.
Arianna chuckled, a deep, rich sound. She stretched out her long legs.
“A foolish moniker.”
“An upgrade.”
“Who really knows?” Arianna rested her head against the back of the seat in an almost mirror-image of Florence’s posture. Florence couldn’t help but wonder who had done it first . . . Was it her own habit and Arianna mirrored her? Or was it a trait she’d stolen while growing up with the Rivet? “Perhaps it’ll be of use to me when Loom is finally free.”
A free Loom. Florence had spent so much time fighting that she’d never thought of what she’d do when she had to live after. When the battles were won, what did soldiers become?
“Will you return to Dortam?” Florence was brave enough to ask the question and cowardly enough to fear the answer.
“Who knows?”
“I will be there.”
“I assumed so.” Arianna straightened with a sincere smile. “You are the Vicar Revolver now, after all. You, Flor! The Vicar Revolver!”
Florence stared at the kind, beaming face of her mentor. It was a gentleness that only she had ever seen, and all her life it had meant something profound. But it was in that moment when she looked into Arianna’s brilliant lilac eyes, full of so many emotions—pride, admiration, hope, compassion—that Florence realized they had never seen each other in entirely the same way.
“Ari…” Her throat closed, trapping the words. Florence forced them out; even if the shot missed, she had to pull the trigger or she’d regret leaving the canister in the chamber forever. “I love you.”
“And I love you, Flor.” Her expression didn’t shift in the slightest. Arianna continued to look at her the same way she always had—with the eyes of the proud mentor. Or as Nova would have it, an older sister. It was nothing more or less than that profound connection.
Not as I love you.
Surely Arianna knew. Surely she heard it in the crack in her voice and the odd jitter of nerves vibrating across her whole body. Arianna noticed the most minute details in complete strangers, so there was no way she hadn’t seen it in Florence.
Which meant every action Arianna took was a careful and measured response. In her own way, Florence’s mentor was attempting to communicate her desire for things to remain the same as they’d always been.
Florence didn’t know if this had been the response she’d wanted. But it was the response she was going to get. So, she chose not to dwell on “what if” and, instead, focus on how having any response was freeing in its own right.
“Thank you, for everything you ever taught me.”
“That is something you don’t need to thank me for. What you have accomplished with the rebellion is all the thanks in the world.”
“Hopefully, something I continue to accomplish,” Florence sighed softly.
“You will.” Arianna folded her arms over her chest.
“See this through with me, Arianna?”
“I think I should scold you for having any doubt.”
Florence wondered if Arianna felt it, too, the split in their parallel paths drawing near. Florence didn’t need a teacher any longer; she needed a partner. One like the woman waiting for her back in Ter.3.2. She couldn’t lead if she was constantly following in someone else’s shadow.
That night, her heart flipped the switch that would set them, eventually, on their separate paths. They reminisced of their time in Old Dortam, of grand heists and early failures, and Florence began to feel the last cloying hands of childhood and first love release from her soul. When she finally left, it was nearly dawn; Florence had not once brought up the idea of becoming a Perfect Chimera.
Arianna
It was almost as if Florence had never even been there.
Arianna’s student-turned-vicar had stopped into the Rivets’ Guild for a total of two nights, and they had spent both of them talking into the late hours. But by day, Florence was busy with Willard and Ethel, as well as setting up a new training program under a Master Bernard—one of the two Master Revolvers Florence had left, supposedly. But what were masters worth any more in a world where a Raven-born girl with nothing more than an outline on her cheek could become the Vicar Revolver?
She saw Florence off the morning of the third day.
“Take care of yourself.” Florence embraced her tightly but briefly. Her arms didn’t seem to linger around Arianna’s frame as they once had.
“I should be saying that to you.” Arianna righted Florence’s hat after it was jostled during their embrace. “Vicar Revolvers aren’t well known for their longevity.”
“I’ve already survived longer than the last.”
“As if that fact is supposed to make me feel better.”