Page 26 of This Cruel Fate

Having not found any signs of Atlas, Xolia decided to take charge. “Did Atlas tell you?”

Peter furrowed his brows. “Tell me what?”

“That we…” Xolia stuttered. Nothing in Peter’s face suggested he had any idea what she was talking about. “We met up, I just wondered if you knew.”

Peter looked like he wanted to press the issue of Atlas but decided against it. “Do you keep up with the news lately?”

Xolia could lie to most anyone if the past week had proved anything. She was exceptional at lying to herself, even if she always shoved that unbidden thought deep down as soon as it surfaced. She could lie to Marshall until the sun went dark if it meant saving herself, but she couldn’t lie to Peter. Not to the man who had protected her and offered her the world even after she had tried to kill him. She shook her head.

“I envy you,” Peter said.

Envy. No one had ever told her they envied her life before. Before the rebellion she had been little more than a useful pest. During the rebellion she had been constantly compared to Atlas, and after she had chosen her pursuit of quiet happiness, she’d faded into the background of society’s collective awareness. There never had been any room for envy before.

“You don’t mean that,” Xolia said. She didn’t envy her life, he shouldn’t either. Not when he had the highest seat of power in the country and she couldn’t even get a mid-level management position.

He smiled, wrinkles crinkling at the corners of his eyes. Xolia once thought she’d work with him, be the one next to him rather than Atlas before her life took another turn. The exhaustion in his frame reminded her that she chose her life because she already had given what she needed to. She had done the work, and it was time to reap the benefits. But with the first election coming up, those benefits were precariously hanging in everyone else’s hands.

“I do. Things aren’t good, Xolia. Seven years isn’t a lot of time for old prejudices to be washed away. And now these rumors that John Clemont is going to announce his candidacy?” Peter shook his head. “It’s all going to shit.”

Xolia blinked. Peter never swore. “There’s no way you won’t win the election; you brought unprecedented peace and freedom to the country.”

He scoffed, another unnatural sound coming from him. “You’re one of the few people left who still believes in me. A lot of humans aren’t happy with these changes, and variants are still displaced. Surely that is not news to you.”

It wasn’t. Families were still broken; variants were unable to get work. Since variants got pregnant so rarely, the few all-variant families had negligible access to prenatal care.

“You’ll fix it.”

“It’ll take a century to fix,” Peter said. “Speed is the cost of democracy. At least you’ll still get to see it.”

The words of a dying man. “Why am I here, Peter?”

This time when he looked at her, there was no smile, no gentle reminder of paternal care. It was just exhaustion. “This current administration isn’t working. All my promises have yet to be fulfilled, and at every point, I’m stalled by the Senate. All they do is argue themselves into circles.”

Peter dropped his head into his hands. Xolia wanted to cry at his state. “How can I help?” she asked.

“I want you to run as my vice chancellor.”

“Atlas is okay with that?” It was a stupid thing to ask, but she hadn’t been thinking when she blurted it out. How could she have been when she was still processing what he’d said?

Peter scoffed again; this time the sound was steeped in malice. “He is not my superior. I make my own decisions.”

“Right,” Xolia conceded. She leaned forward from her seat. “Why me, though?”

“There are so many humans who believe that variants are innately violent. They don’t trust them. Who better to show them the truth?”

A weight settled on Xolia’s chest. The guilt of the fight still sat on her mind, though that paled in comparison to the unyielding memory of how much she loved it. Xolia didn’t think variants carried some innate volatility, but she worried she did. That if she let herself free of these rigid constraints, she would burn through everything. Happiness had to come in small packages, or else.

“I know you’re done with war and politics, but they didn’t end,” Peter said, seemingly mistaking her silence as uncertainty. “The battleground is just different now. And there are fewer people to trust than ever.”

“I wouldn’t know what to do,” she said, voice quiet. This was everything she shouldn’t want, but thinking about standing next to Peter, enacting real change, thrilled her more than anything else. Being the vice chancellor was power. And maybe, maybe, power wasn’t the antithesis to happiness.

This was important to Peter. The most important person in her life. So it was important to her.

“Do you think anyone else wants me to lead them?”

He nodded. “I see so much of myself in you. We’re both idealists, and that is not a kind thing in these times. Especially when we are getting reports of variants causing an uptick in violent crimes; it’s easy fodder for the Clemont campaign. We need to show a peaceful and united front.”

This is what you’ve been waiting for. Just take it.

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