Charlotte’s kitchen had gone quiet in the focused way that only happens when friends are doing something they shouldn’t be good at.


    The balms sat in rows. Vivienne’s fingerprint-locked cases on side. Charlotte steadied another tube, drew the brush along the rim with a painter’s care, and clicked it shut.


    “Don’t breathe on it,” Vivienne said, deadpan, as if exhaling could trigger a felony.


    “I have steady hands,” Charlotte repeated.


    “Your hands shake when your mother calls,” Vivienne said.


    Charlotte didn’t miss a stroke. “That’s muscle memory, not nerves.”


    “Hold it steady,” Vivienne muttered, leaning over with a precision that came from years of threading nes instead of syringes. Her bracelets clinked as she pushed a fingerprint-lock case closer. “One wrong swipe and you’ll put yourself under.”


    Charlotte rolled her eyes. “Thank you for the vote of confidence.”


    Vivienne ignored her, snapped another case open, and began slotting the balms inside. “You’re lucky I like you, Adams,” she said to me without looking up. “These cases cost more than my entire winter wardrobe.”


    “You say that every time,” I said.


    “And it’s true every time,” Vivienne shot back.


    I leaned against the counter, watching them work. It should have felt surreal—my friends dosing cosmetics like it was a parlor game—but nothing about our world had been surreal for a long time. It was dynasty. If you weren’tundering, you were smuggling. If you weren’t smuggling, you were coating lip balm with poison.


    “Careful,” Charlotte said again to herself, slipping the brush over another rim. She moved slow, deliberate, the picture of a girl who wanted her mother’s approval even when her mother wasn’t in the room.


    I smiled faintly. “You’ve gotten good at that.”


    “Don’t sound so surprised.” She twisted the balm shut with a sharp click. “Micro-dosing is an art.”


    “It’s lip gloss,” Vivienne said dryly. “Stop acting like you’re Michngelo.”


    Charlotte flicked her hair over her shoulder. “You’d kill for my hands.”


    “I’d kill for your inheritance,” Vivienne shot back. “Not your manicure.”


    The banter rolled easy between them.


    “So. The crash.” Charlotte nced at me.


    My throat tightened.


    Vivienne looked up, bracelets chiming. “You’re not allowed to die before I do. It ruins my brand.”


    “It was—” I started, then stopped. The lie felt heavy before it even formed. “Bastion pulled me out.”


    There was a beat of silence that wasn’t empty at all.


    Vivienne was the first to recover. “Of course he did.”


    Charlotteughed once. “Nothing like a Crow.”


    “You used to call them gutter kings,” I reminded her.


    “I was a child.” She angled the brush. “And my mother liked it when I said her lines for her.”


    “Your mother likes it when anybody says her lines,” Vivienne said. “It saves her breath for the mirror.”


    Charlotte snapped the balm closed. “You didn’t know this, but I was auditioning for the role of ‘good daughter’ for twelve years straight. The show was terrible. Zero stars. Do not rmend.”


    “You got the part,” I said.


    “I did,” Charlotte said, then shrugged one shoulder with a sadder smile than she meant to show. “And then I quit.”


    Vivienne slid a finished row into a case. “You only quit on paper. She still lives in your head.”


    “She pays rent,” Charlotte said. “Which is more than I can say for the men in mine.”


    Vivienne’s mouth curved. “Plurals.”


    Charlotte didn’t blink.


    The cases clicked as Vivienne arranged them into foam cutouts, velvet straps, tiny ck hex keys maized to the lid. “You know,” she said, eyeing me, “for someone who almost turned into a rumor on Dockway, you’re awfully calm.”


    “I already did my panic,” I said, which was true. It had been quiet and private and I had hated every second of it.


    “What was he like?” Charlotte asked, not bothering to pretend she didn’t care. “In the car. Bastion.”


    “Steady,” Itnded heavier than I wanted. “Like the storm was happening around us, not to us.”


    Vivienne made a soft sound that wasn’t quite augh. “Of course.”


    I hated the way heat rose in my cheeks. “He—he put his jacket over me. He used his body to cover mine when the cutters—” I stopped. I didn’t want to give them the scream, the way it had torn out of me, how his voice had anchored me to the world. “I’m alive because he was there.”


    “Crow math,” Charlotte said lightly. “If something is going to break, first you put your body under it.”


    “And then,” Vivienne added, “you dare it to try.”


    I swallowed. My hand found the edge of the table because it needed something to hold.


    Vivienne’s gaze sharpened. “Em.”


    “I’m fine.”


    Vivienne and Charlotte exchanged a look.


    “I’m fine,” I repeated, slower. “I’m here. We’re doing war crimes at your kitchen table.”


    Charlotte pointed the brush at me. “Micro-dosing lip balm is not a war crime. It’s art.”


    “It’s premeditated flirting,” Vivienne winked. “Which is worse.”


    Charlotte smirked, but her eyes went softer when she looked back at me. “Do you know,” she said idly, “my mother used to tell me that Crows don’t feel things. That they learn the shapes of feelings likenguages they can perform.”


    “Your mother also thinks ‘grief’ is a scheduling issue,” Vivienne continued to put the balms in.


    “She thinks everything is a scheduling issue,” Charlotte rolled he eyes, “But she was wrong about that. The Crows feel. They just don’t announce it.”


    “How do you know?” I asked, trying to sound like I wasn’t asking.


    Charlotte’s smile went private. “Field research.”


    Vivienneughed outright. “Just say Rome. She’s sleeping with Rome.”


    Charlotte didn’t dignify it with more than a neatly raised eyebrow and an extra-slow click of a lid.


    “Field research,” she repeated, and the phrase sat there with too much gloss on it to be idental.


    “Rome is a bad idea,” I said, purely on principle.


    “So is oxygen,” Charlotte said. “Still inhaling.”


    Vivienne shook her head, amused. “And for the record, if we are doing confessions, I like knives and difficult men who pretend they have a soul. Which is to say—Niki.”


    “Of course it’s Niki,” Charlotte said. “He looks like a line you shouldn’t cross.”


    “He looks like a threat assessment,” Vivienne corrected. “And then he opens a door, and you think: oh.”


    “And after that?” I asked, because apparently I wanted to suffer.


    Vivienne’s smile wentzy, the kind that suggested secrets. “After that, you remember that my mother taught me to never leave without my own key.”


    “Your mother taught you to marry a treasury,” Charlotte said.


    “She taught me to be one,” Vivienne said, and slid thest balm into its velvet tray.


    “Well that exins the extra four months overseas.” I said, moving an empty tray towards Charlotte. I felt useless with one hand.<fnab65> This content belongs to fι?dnοvel</fnab65>


    Vivienne just smiled. I should have realised it was a man keeping her in those Dynasty halls, and not her grandparents.


    We let the work move our hands for a few minutes. Lids. Clicks. Cases.


    “What did Alexander say?” Charlotte asked, too carefully casual. “After?”


    “About the crash?” I asked.


    “About you being pulled out of a car by a Crow.” She didn’t look up when she said it, which meant she cared.


    “We haven’t covered that,” I paused for a moment. “Yet.”


    “Then he already knows.”


    “Probably,”


    Alexander knew everything, except the parts I buried where even I couldn’t find them.


    “They’re going to be at the reunion,” Vivienne finished clicking thest of the maic taps on.


    Thest thing we wanted was someone who didn’t know what the lip balm was using it. The owner fingerprint matched to the cap.


    Dynasty daughters knew what the balms where, but outside of that no one.


    “The reunion,” Charlotte repeated. “On the yacht.”


    “Of course it’s the yacht,” Vivienne moved a new line vial towards Charlotte . “Where else do dynasty children go to pretend the water can still baptize them?”


    “Floating court,” Charlotte said, eyes bright. “Floating confessional.”


    “Floating trap,” Vivienne added.


    I swallowed. “You two are making it sound like a haunted house.”


    “It is,” Vivienne said. “Only the ghosts wear stain.”


    “Are you going?” I asked.


    Charlotte’s mouth went sideways. “I am—how do I put this politely—very busy not attending. Unless I receive a… persuasive calendar invite.”


    “That means if Rome asks,” Vivienne tranted.


    Charlotte watered the basil on her windowsill like the nt had personally offended her. “We cannot all be stoic and pure, Emilia. Some of us have appetites.”


    Vivienne’s bracelets chimed. “Niki texted an hour ago.”


    “Of course he did,” Charlotte and I said at the same time.


    Vivienne showed us her screen: Bring a case. Not for me<span>.


    “Not for him,” Charlotte repeated, smug. “Trantion: for her.”


    Vivienne slid the phone away. “It’s possible we are conducting a small market test on the west docks this weekend.”


    Charlotte lifted a brow. “Is it a you test or a balm test?”


    Vivienne looked scandalized. “Please. I market-test men all the time. This is business.”


    “Is business why you have a cufflink in your purse?” I asked, because I’d seen the N earlier when she’d searched for a lip balm scoop.


    Vivienne didn’t blush. “It’s coteral.”


    “What does Rome keep at your ce?” I asked Charlotte lightly, and she didn’t answer, but the faint red mark just under her jaw did.


    “Do your mothers know?” I asked before I could stop myself.


    “Mine suspects everything and admits nothing,” Charlotte stopped sorting the vials. “She pretends I’m still twelve and can be dressed into obedience.”


    “Mine knows and keeps a ledger,” Vivienne said. “Everything with her is ounts. Losses, gains, daughters.”


    “And mine,” I said, then stopped. The kitchen went quiet. “My mother would have told me to stop embarrassing the family.”


    Charlotte looked at me a long beat. “Your mother would have told you to stop breathing loud.”


    I didn’t cry. We are trained better than that.


    My mother choose freedom. Gave the Dynasty full control of me. To this day I’m only dragged to her events if ordered.


    Perhaps if our mothers had cared more about us, than the Dynasty, we might not be micro-dosing lip balms.


    Charlotte softened the moment by holding up a balm. “Here. Consider it a party favor.”


    “From my own party,” Vivienne said. “You’re giving away inventory.”


    “Add it to your ledger,” Charlotte said sweetly.


    Vivienne pretended to scowl, then tucked an extra into my palm. “Just don’t actually use it unless you mean it. You’d be surprised what a kissed wrist can do if someone’s blood sugar is low and their ego is high.”


    “Which is to say,” Charlotte murmured, “everyone we know.”


    I weighed the tube in my hand. It looked like any other gloss—chic, minimal, no hint of danger beyond the people holding it.


    Vivienne smirked, snapping the case closed with a sharp click. “Heirs will pay triple for something that makes them float and still lets them walk back into a g without anyone noticing.”


    “Gets them high,” Charlotte added, stacking the tubes neat. “Not dead. Too much mess in that. Don’t underestimate cosmetics, Emilia. Dynasty boys will lick anything off your mouth if you let them.”


    Luxury disguised as innocence.


    Charlotte watched me watch it. “We could have been normal,”


    “Normal never invited us,” Vivienne said.


    “Normal didn’t send you a Crow,” Charlotte added, and there it was: the truth they were dying to pull into the light.


    I gave them a look. “Don’t.”


    “You don’t have to pretend with us,” Vivienne touched my arm gently. “We saw your face when you said his name or should we say their names.”


    “I didn’t make a face.”


    “You made a face,” Charlotte nodded. “It was small and full of ruin.”


    I wanted to deny it again. “He—he put his hand on my cheek in the car,” I heard myself say. “He told me not to close my eyes. Neither of them left the hospital until I was discharged.”


    Vivienne reached for another case just to have something to do with her hands. “And did you close your eyes?”


    “I did. But only after he let me.”


    We all sat with that for a moment. Both of them remembered how they broke me. It was around the same time we started micro dosing lip balms.


    “Here is what I know,” Charlotte said, leaning back, looking like a judge in a trial. “If a Crow wants you, if he chooses you, if he decides you are under his jurisdiction, the rest of the city can fall into the ocean and he will still be there, holding your jaw, telling you to look at him. It’s not romantic. It’s insane. It’s also?—”


    “Useful,” Vivienne said practically.


    “—terrifying,” Charlotte finished, but she smiled when she said it.


    “How is Rome terrifying?” I asked, because if I had to think about the twins any longer I would start shaking.


    “He knows where every exit is,” she said. “He doesn’t brag about it. He just always stands with his back to the correct wall. That’s a man who lived without permission long enough to make it policy.”


    “And Niki?” I asked.


    Vivienne’s eyes went distant for half a second. “He makes you feel like your heartbeat is a secret only he can hear.”


    “Gross,” Charlotte said. “I like it.”


    “Are you two warning me,” I asked, “or advertising?”


    “Yes,” they said together, and weughed in a way that felt like breathing.


    When the cases were full, Vivienne locked them with her thumb, then pressed a secondary key sequence only she knew. She stacked them like treasure and slid the whole thing into a matte travel trunk.


    “Delivery?” I asked.


    “Dispersal,” she corrected. “One to the south warehouse. One to the docks.”


    “Now as for the yacht. You don’t have to go,” Charlotte said.


    “Yes, she does. If she doesn’t, the story writes itself without her.”


    “I hate when you’re right,” Charlotte told Vivienne.


    “You love it,”


    I moved my hand over the travel trunk’s lid. “It’s just a reunion.”


    “It’s never just a reunion,” Vivienne said. “Not on that boat.”


    “Stop being ominous,” Charlotte told her. “She knows.”


    “She doesn’t know everything,” Vivienne said, and the way she said it made me lift my eyes.


    “What?”


    Vivienne weighed the moment. “They’ll be there,” she said that as if she hadn’t warned me about that a few moments ago. “Luca. Bastion.”


    “Trantion: don’t be alone on any balcony.”


    “Or do,” Vivienne corrected, “if you can live with what happens after.”


    “You think I can’t?” I asked. Because a part of me needed them to tell me if I could.


    “I think you already decided to drown once,” Vivienne touched my hand, “And you survived. That makes you dangerous.”


    And perhaps it made me stupid to go back knowing how this ends.


    We stood there a long moment, three dynasty daughters, surrounded by lip balm that could kiss a man intopliance.


    “I have to go back to the penthouse after this,” I reached for my phone to check if Alexander had messaged. My car ident had been an inconvenience.


    “Take a case,” Vivienne said.


    “Leave a case,” Charlotte countered. “At my ce. Or his.” She said his in a way that could have meant the twins or my brother; that was the problem with girls like us—we knew too many pronouns and not enough safe nouns.


    I slipped the extra balm into my pocket and pretended not to feel its weight.


    “Text us from the elevator,” Charlotte said. “Lie and say you’re fine.”


    “Send a picture,” Vivienne already tucking her hair behind one ear. Most likely nning which dress she was going to wear to the yacht.


    “Of what?” I asked.


    “Of you,” Vivienne said. “Alive.”


    I looked at them—Charlotte with her ridiculous brush, Vivienne with her cases.


    My girls. My proof that something of me still existed outside hospitals, Dynasty events and two crows that kept me up at night.


    “I’ll send a picture,” I said.


    “Good,” Charlotte said. “And if you see Rome?—”


    “Tell him you said hi?” I offered.


    “Tell him I said nothing,” she replied, smug. “He will know what it means.”


    Vivienne set the trunk gently into her car like it was a person. Charlotte locked her door and slid an extra balm into the mailbox for luck.


    “We should do face masks,” Charlotte said suddenly, as if she needed to swing the pendulum back to something pretty.


    “We literally just weaponized the face,” Vivienne said.


    “I meant the hydrating kind.”


    “We’ll do masks after the reunion,” I said. “If we still have skin.”


    Charlotteughed, relieved by the joke she hadn’t been able to make herself.


    Vivienne started the car. Charlotte hummed a song that had lived on the radio when we were ten, the year our mothers still believed the world would shape itself around us instead of the other way around.


    We hadn’t be our mothers.


    We hadn’t be normal.


    We had be girls who knew how to build a thing that could pass for either salvation or sin, depending on who opened it.


    Which, as Charlotte liked to say, is a kind of art.