Page 95 of The Red Woman on Mars

And then he turned and limped away from her. Leaving the chamber.

Leaving her.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

“I still can’t believe I wasn’t there.” Delilah tapped her pencil against her sketchbook.

Next to each other on the Hayes House parlor’s tall sofa, Luz and Vivian exchanged a glance. “Be grateful you weren’t,” Luz said.

“I’ve been watching the vids. Viv, you were incredible … and a bit scary.”

Vivian rubbed the back of her neck. “I was desperate.” She let the memory of swinging the greatsword through a fragile Martian rib cage wash over her and away. In the days since Presentation Day, she’d started to try to allow the blood-soaked images to come freely, rather than repress them and end up trapped in vivid, violent dreams.

“Do you know what they’re calling you, Viv?” Delilah continued. “The Red Woman, since you’re famously not a mother at all.”

“You need to watch less news vids.” The Red Woman, indeed.Ridiculous.“Are you comfortable here?”

“I am.” Delilah smiled softly. “Caspian and Ivey have been so welcoming. They said I can stay as long as I want. And Ivey set up a little studio for me in a corner of the sunroom. I never thought I’d have a chance to learn to paint.”

Vivian didn’t ask her sister if she had any further hopes when it came to Caspian. It was too soon.

“What about you, Viv?” Delilah waggled her eyebrows, and Vivian was reminded, painfully, of how carefree her sister used to be. “Are you and Xavier …?”

“What do you know about it?”

Luz and Delilah both laughed. “Come on, Viv baby,” Luz said. “It’s painfully obvious to all of us. But—he didn’t wait for you, did he? After Presentation Day.”

“No.” She understood. He wouldn’t have wanted to put any obligation upon her after she’d just won her freedom. “He has a particular sense of honor.” Not to mention his aunt had just died. And Silas.

“Viv.” Delilah’s voice was suddenly small. “What’s going to happen to Mom and Dad?”

Vivian blew out a breath. “I’m going to get a job and send back as much as I can. Now that I know we don’t need to repay your payment, maybe I can figure it out. But the timing is tight for the rent on their trailer.” She bit her lip. “I just couldn’t do it. Not after knowing what it could be like with Xavier.”

“I held some money back,” Luz said quietly. “Just in case it didn’t work out with Wim. I sent most of it to my cousins in Jersey, but you can have what I kept. For your parents. Should be enough for a month or two on their trailer.”

Vivian’s heart beat with a wild kind of hope. “Are you sure you don’t need it?”

“I’m sure. I owe you a debt, Viv. You gave me a choice. Now, when I stay, when I become a mother, it’s not something just happening to me. It’s my decision.”

Vivian had suspected Luz would choose to stay with Wim, but it still was a surprise to hear it aloud. “Do you love him?”

“You know, I think I might.” Luz gave a helpless sort of laugh and covered her face with one hand. “Not like in those romance novels you’re always reading. But I like being the person he seeswhen he looks at me.” She turned to Vivian. “How does Xavier make you feel?”

Vivian thought about him behind her lending silent support as she spoke to the Council. She would wait to see him, she decided. Let this initial shock and grief pass. She wanted to come to him as an equal, not as a dependent.

“He makes me feel like I’m capable of anything.”

When they reached the train station, Vivian said to Luz, “I’ll join you later. I have a few things I want to take care of first.” She took the train going in the opposite direction of Luz’s home, back toward the shuttleport. At the tall, locked gate to the Red Mothers walled compound, she said aloud, “Intelligence, open the door for me please.”

“We don’t normally converse with non-augmented humans without an orb, Vivian,” a tinny voice said from the built-in intercom.

“The door,” Vivian repeated, and it swung open.

Her room was unchanged. She packed her dresses, hats, and shoes into a single bag and stowed Ren’s pearl necklace carefully at the bottom.

She left again through the front gate and walked down the wide streets of Arcadia. It was sparkling clean, she realized. And so walkable. So welcoming. A city optimized for the daily experience of its citizens. Tiny coffee shops and restaurants beckoned. A florist stand sold bright bouquets on one corner while another offered cups of sliced mango and watermelon.

The barracks were quiet and subdued. Flags hung at half-mast and the red-clad militia sported black armbands. They recognized her as she walked through, and every person who spotted her kept their distance and bowed low.