Page 53 of Spearcrest Queen

Well, that makes two of us.

Immediately, there’s a wave of something unexpected in my chest: a weird defensiveness. I don’t know anything about Inkspill, but something about Dad’s blunt statement that it’s failing makes me want to push back, to say something passionate and dumb likejust because it’s struggling now doesn’t mean it’s doomed forever.

Dad slides a file across the desk. “If you can turn it around, make it profitable, then we’ll talk about your future. You’ll have the freedom to choose any role in the company. I’ll mentor you personally.”

I look down at the file, but I don’t reach for it. I don’t know the first or last thing about academic publishing, and he knows that. I narrow my eyes at him in realisation.

This isn’t an opportunity: it’s an execution order concealed beneath the veneer of corporate tact.

He’s looking at me head-on, like he’s expecting me to say no, to turn from the challenge, to quit before I’m fired—all the things I desperatelywantto do. But I don’t. I meet his gaze head-on, eyes still narrowed.

“How exactly are you expecting me to do that?”

“You’ll be working as a strategic consultant,” he says, as if the words should mean something to me. “You won’t be incharge, that responsibility belongs to Inés Alfaro, the head of the imprint. She’s been fighting tooth and nail for her imprint and her team. You’ll report to her, work alongside her, and find a way to make Inkspill profitable within the next year.”

A consultant. Is this a trap? Is Dad handing me a sinking ship and waiting to watch me drown? But that doesn’t sound like him. My father is direct, high-handed rather than underhanded. If he wanted me gone, he’d tell me outright.

A year ago, I wouldn’t have even pretended to try. I would’ve let the inevitable happen, watched success slip through my fingers like everything else. But now, after everything—after Sophie—I can’t.

I don’t know what I want, not really, but I know I don’t want to benothing.

“And what if I fail?” I ask.WhenI fail, I think, but keep it to myself.

“Then you’re out. Permanently. What you do after that is up to you, but it won’t have anything to do with KMG.”

I look back down at the file.

The nameInkspill Publicationsis printed in bold across the front, along with a brief tagline:Publishing Knowledge, Preserving Minds. The logo is an inkpot spilt over a page.

Sophie would love this. An academic imprint, built to preserve knowledge, to elevate academics. This is the kind of thing that would matter to her, the kind of thing she’d talk about with that quiet, austere passion of hers, the way she used to talk to me aboutHamletandPersuasionand Mr Houghton’s model essays.

If Sophie was in my life, if Sophie was still mine…

The thought hurts like hell, but I can’t help it. If I was with Sophie, if my Dad had given me this ultimatum and I’d spoken to her about it, lying in bed one night with her dark head onmy chest and her fingers idly tracing the veins in my forearm, she would have given me a serious frown and told me I should do it, I should save Inkspill.

She would’ve told me Icould.

The image dissipates like a vanishing ghost. Holding on to the dream of her is pointless. I need to let her go—I should’ve let her go a long time ago. I should have let her go after Spearcrest, after the summer, after she told me she wanted to break up.

I swallow thickly, glance at the file again. Work is supposed to help me get over Sophie, give me a purpose with which to fill the gaping vacuum she’s left behind, a knight’s errand to give me something else to do than pine at her feet. Not a test designed for me to fail—but a quest.

I pick up the file and stand.

“Okay. I’ll do it.”

26

Golden Ticket

Sophie

I learn a lotin my first term back at Harvard.

Second year is a new beast: the pressure is still here, of course, but it’s different. It’s no longer about survival, it’s aboutstrategy. Picking the right classes, the right professors, being seen at the right places with the right people.

The foundational tenets of 1L secured, we move on to specialised electives and practical work. I study, I watch, and I learn—not just the things I’m being taught, but the ugly undersides, too. If laws are the stone slabs paving our world, I make sure to lift those slabs, to notice all the worms and grubs and slugs wriggling in the dark.

And law isn’t the only thing I’m studying.

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