Page 76 of The Enemy's Daughter

Enola pauses. Smiles. Then pulls me into the type of hug I wish my mother knew how to give.

Enola hands me a cookie and a cup of tea that isn’t made of fesber leaves, then sits down on the gooseberry-colored couch across from me. Her living room is a garden of soft fabrics and bright colors.“So, how is Tristan? I take it you two worked things out?”

“You could say that.” Fighting the deepening flush in my cheeks is a losing battle. I brush a strand of hair from my eye. “I’m going to stay and make Kingsland my home, like you suggested. I was hoping you’d help me find a place at the hospital. I want to study more under Dr. Henshaw.”

“Wonderful.” Enola’s eyes gleam with pride. “But it’s probably best that we continue to go together. In the meantime, I’ll speak to the staff and make it clear that you’re welcome there. They may be a bit cold to begin with, but I’ll see what I can do to help. How does going back tomorrow morning sound?”

“Perfect.” And just like that, my dream of getting to study old-world medicine is coming true. It makes me wish that Mum and Freia could meet Enola. I want them to see that a person could be educated and enlightened by some things of the old world without being tainted by its greed and corruption. But mostly, I want them to be as amazed as I am that a woman could run a hospital. Would that not open their eyes to the other possibilities we could have?

My posture slumps. No, it wouldn’t. At least not for Mum. She’d say Enola is being irreverent. Unnatural. Then she’d go on a rant about how women ruling over men is just another of their failed old-world ways.

Only, Kingsland is not failing, it’s flourishing. And the truth of that, as well as revealing all the other truths the clans don’t know, is exactly how I plan to stop the fighting. If Tristan is elected mayor and the clans understand that it hasn’t been Kingsland attacking us, maybe both sides can finally reach a ceasefire. We can stop this reckoning. Then, we re-address the heart of the issue for Father: security and supplies. Getting the clans their own electric fence ishow we’ll stop whoever’s actually attacking them. After we’re protected, we can focus on trade and accessing crucial supplies, like medicine. Only this time, it will be done the right way—without hurting Kingsland.

“There was something else I wanted to talk to you about,” I say quietly. I take a breath and meet Enola’s gentle eyes. “What do I have to do to help Tristan get elected?”

Enola bites back her smile, then stands. “I was beginning to wonder if you’d ask. But first, can I get you another cookie?”

When I return home, Tristan’s meeting is still going on. Or perhaps it’s another one. With a disappointed sigh, I take the stairs back to my room. As I fall onto the bed, prepared to wait until he’s done, I consider reading more from the new book I’ve started from a bookshelf in the living room. It’s about the creation of the Republic, and although its explanation of the constitution is interesting and not alarming like I expected, my gaze lands on the bedside table and Tristan’s journal. I didn’t hide it again after I wrote my goodbye note yesterday. I grab it and return to the bed to flip through it.

The door opens with a snick. I jump as the connection snaps tight.

“How was it?” Tristan asks, his voice gravelly as he steps inside.

I pause, but the smile on Tristan’s face tells me he’s not suspicious about the book I have in my hands. He’s genuinely happy to see me. “It went much better than I expected. How have your meetings been?”

“Well, none of the rest were as eventful as the first one...”

I tip my head to the side, playing coy. “You mean to tell me you didn’t enjoy that?”

He shuts the door, and the air suddenly becomes thick. He laughs, and his whole face lights up. “Remind me never to bring you to a town hall meeting.”

I return his smile. “I do believe you started it.”

His brows shoot up like he’s about to argue, but then his eyes catch on what I’m holding in my lap.

“I... I’m sorry, I was...” I lift the journal in the air. “Curious.”

Thankfully, he doesn’t seem upset as he sits beside me on the bed, then takes the offered book. He opens it to a rough sketch of a cube with a series of numbers and letters stretched across the bottom.

“What is it?” I ask.

“It’s an accumulator,” he mutters. “In the old world, they made these to store electricity to power things—this one’s for a motor vehicle. In my free time I’ll sometimes take things apart and try to make them work again. Drawing them helps me figure them out.” He flips to another page. “Some of these I’ve sketched so I could keep track of what I’ve requested from the traders. Specialty items.”

“And you’re running out of certain things.”

“We are. But we have been for decades, and we always find a way to make do. We fix what we can, trade for the rest. Some things we never get working again. That’s just the way life is here.”

“So you want to send more people and go farther in your search? How can you be sure there’s anything beyond the Republic?”

“I can’t. But if pockets of people exist here—small villages, trading posts, even the vagabonds and gangs—then maybe there’s something else beyond them. We’re lucky in that we’re pretty far away from most of them and can avoid their hostility, but it’s dangerous for our traders. For the most part, they’re happy to takeour lists and search for what we need to keep things running, but they’re only willing to go so far and risk so much. What if all we had to do was go a little farther to find everything we need?”

I knew people were out there. There had to be for trade to take place. But I was never really taught about the outside world beyond preparing for our most immediate danger—Kingsland.

“Enola told me you want to leave. Why?”

He hesitates. “Politics was never my thing.” He gestures to the journal. “I’d rather fix things. Find things. Discover the secrets of the past and how they can fit into our future rather than sit in bloody meeting after meeting. That’s why I became a soldier and trained to be in the elite guard—it was a way out of our borders that wasn’t the lonely, nomadic life of a trader. Well, that’s partly why. Learning there were mysteries like you beyond our fence also added fuel to the fire.” He grins, then grows serious. “I think I’ve always been curious, which has led me to dream of leaving for periods of time. Although now that you’re here with me, it’s different.”

“Where would you go?”

---