Chapter 200:


    Isolde went still. She looked where Effie pointed. It was the precise core of the problem — a w she perceived in numbers and equations, but one Effie saw simply as an angry color. Effie’s synesthesia wasn’t just a quirk. It was a diagnostic tool.


    “You’re right, baby,” Isolde whispered, a n beginning to take shape through the fog of her fever. “It is too angry. But I know how to make it calm.”


    Her hands were clumsy and nearly useless — the right immobilized in its cast, the left wrapped in thick bandaging. She couldn’t type. She couldn’t use a mouse. Frustration, hot and sharp, pricked at her eyes.


    “I can’t —” she started, her voice cracking.


    “You don’t have to,” a voice said from the doorway.


    And was there, as he always seemed to be when the walls began closing in. He had let himself in with his emergency key, carrying a tray with a bowl of soup and a ss of water. “Talk,” he said, setting the tray down. “I’ll be your hands.”


    He set up a holographic keyboard and a secondary monitor on the desk facing the floor-to-ceiling windows. For the next hour, she didn’t simply rebuild her old engine — she dictated the creation of an entirely new one. She spoke, and And typed, his fingers moving across the projected keys, tranting her vision into reality.


    “I want them tounch,” she said, her eyes fixed on the screen with quiet intensity. “I want them to stand on that stage, with the whole world watching, and unveil a machine that is fundamentally, fatally wed. And then —”


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    “Then?” And prompted, his own eyes gleaming.


    “Then I unveil mine,” she said. “The one that works.”


    The dining room at the Lancaster Estate was a cavern of mahogany and shadows. The chandelier overhead had been dimmed, casting long, skeletal shapes across a table that could seat thirty but was set tonight for three.


    Victoria sat at the head, looking like a monarch on a fading throne. Isolde sat to her right, having agreed to this dinner only after Victoria threatened to freeze the trust that covered Uncle Saul’s medical care. Effie sat across from her, legs dangling from the tall chair, too short to reach the floor.


    Grayson’s chair was empty.


    Victoria stared at the vacant ce as though her gaze alone could materialize him. When it didn’t, she turned her attention to Effie.


    Effie was carefully moving peas around her te with a fork.


    “How is her schooling?” Victoria asked, taking a sip of wine. “Is she showing any useful aptitudes?”


    “She’s doing very well,” Isolde said, keeping her voice even. “Her teacher says she has a gift for mathematics. She’s already working with abstract geometries.”


    Victoria set her ss down with a sharp clink. “Mathematics. Isolde, you are being naive. You know what this family does with assets, and a child with a gift for numbers is an asset. She needs to focus on etiquette, art, French — things that will make her appear refined. We don’t need another mechanic in the family.”


    Isolde’s hand tightened around her fork. “It’s not an asset, Victoria. It’s her mind.”


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    Message from Noa: Lovely readers, I hope you have a great time these days. God loves you and Noa wishes you all the best. (─??─)


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