“Kid,” Mama began, “this isn’t something you just—”
“I think maybe we should talk alone,” interrupted Pru. Her pulse drummed a steady rhythm inside her throat, but she met her mother’s eyes. “You and me. Please.”
Sophie Wu’s fiery gaze softened, just a fraction, the shift in her face probably invisible to anyone who hadn’t lived under her roof for seventeen years. She nodded once, sharp, and turned back into the Head Representative’s office. Pru, biting back a curse, cast a desperate look at the Lamarque men, who were staring after Pru’s mother with identically raised brows that would have been comical if the situation weren’t such a shitshow.
Gabriel Lamarque smiled, or tried to. His facial muscles, usually so obedient to positivity, didn’t seem inclined toward the expression just then. Again, he rubbed the spot on his jaw where Mama had socked him. “Take your time,” he said. His voice, habitually rich and friendly, sounded thin, like he’d spread it beyond his means. “Maybe she’ll listen to you. I’m afraid she’s not in a mood for hearing much of anything from me.”
Pru, chewing on the inside of her cheek, ducked past him into the office. The door shut behind her. Inside, Mama was sitting on top of Gabriel Lamarque’s great oak desk, stilettos shucked and ankles crossed. A long white cigarette jutted from the corner of her mouth, which she lit with irritable efficiency. “So,” she said around the plume of smoke, “we seem to find ourselves at an impasse, kid.”
“You can’t smoke in here,” said Pru.
“Watch me.”
“You also can’t go about punching the leader of the last free cities of the continent in the face. God, I still can’t believe you punched him in the face.”
“It’s a very pretty face, but surprisingly sturdy. It shall recover.”
Pru buried her palms against her eyes. “I don’t get it, Ma. I thought you’d be pleased about me making something of my education.”
“Aw, kid.” Her mother sighed explosively around the cigarette. “Yes. The Coalition—and Gabriel Lamarque—will make something of you, and your education, if you let them. But is that what you want? Really?”
“I don’t know!” snapped Pru. “Why does everyone keep asking me that, like I have to know my whole life plan and career path at the age of seventeen? You guys are worse than the university admissions counselors back at school.”
The corner of her mother’s mouth curled. “Admissions counselors? My only child wounds me!” Sobering, she plucked the cigarette from her mouth, and said in a low voice, “Look, I get it, okay? This is probably my fault on some level. I should have told you about my history with Gabriel Lamarque, and the kind of person he is, a long time ago. I don’t like talking about the Partition Wars.”
“Did something happen between you two?” Pru pressed. “Please don’t tell me the Head Representative of the Barricade Coalition is secretly a supervillain, or a scorned ex-lover of yours, or something equally horrifying.” A terrible thought struck Pru. “Oh god, we’re not secretly related, are we? Is this why you never told me who knocked you up during the war?”
“Well, he’s not a supervillain,” Mama conceded. She sounded like she thought she was being pretty magnanimous with that pronouncement. “Quite the opposite, really.” She pulled a face, mouth twitching. “And no, he’s not your secret bio dad, so you can quit worrying about whether you’re being accidentally incestuous every time you make eyes at young Alexandre.”
“Oh my god!” Pru was going to die. She was going to sink through the floor of the Head Representative’s office and die, right here, right now. “See, this is the kind of talk that most family therapists would have a field day with. Where are you even getting that from?”
Mama snorted. “I may be over the hill, and one of those wretched career women who the Barricader’s Daily columnists are forever ragging on for sending their kids to boarding school, but I’m still your mother. Give me some credit here. I know what you look like when you’re sweet on someone.” She batted long eyelashes. “You have my eyes.”
“No one says ‘sweet on’ anymore,” said Pru. She also didn’t have Mama’s eyes, but Pru didn’t say that part aloud. Mama, with her wide brown eyes and timelessly neat bone structure, had been blessed with the sort of careless beauty that followed its mistress happily into middle age. Pru wasn’t bad looking, not really, but some asshole’s genes—probably her father’s, all things considered—had bequeathed her limp hair that framed a bowling ball of a head, a forgettable face, and eyes that mostly made Pru look like she might doze off at any moment. Which, given her sleeping patterns lately, was probably kind of fitting.
“Whatever,” said Mama. “I only wanted to give you your due diligence on Lamarque men. There’s trouble that’s worth the pair of cheekbones it comes with, and then there’s trouble that’s not. The Lamarques are the latter.”
Pru, frowning, crossed her arms. “So he’s not evil,” she mused aloud, “and he’s not some terrible floozy who got you pregnant and, like, abandoned you to the trials and tribulations of single motherhood. But something still went sour with Gabriel Lamarque during the war, didn’t it?”
Mama took a long drag off the cigarette. “Sure. It was me. I soured.” She tapped the ashes off the side of the Head Representative’s desk. “Specifically, I soured on Prometheus. Nothing personal, mind you. We partnered together for a long time. Worked well together, everyone said.”
“But?”
“But nothing. Prometheus and I just stopped seeing eye to eye at a certain point.”
“How come you keep calling him that?”
“What, Prometheus?” Mama exhaled on another cloud of smoke. “Because he brings fire to the people. I expect that much will always be true about him. He brings warmth and light and more passion than is sensible for anybody. You ever wonder why the UCC’s most infamous weapons of choice were wyverns—not bombs, not cyborg shock troops, but mechs literally, deliberately constructed in the shape of mythical predators?”
“I don’t know, Mama,” said Pru. “Melodrama? Boredom? The thwarted artistic dreams of a creepy weapons engineer who watched too many monster movies?”
“Fear,” said Mama. “Because make no mistake, my girl, the Executive General wanted us scared. Too scared to think, and therefore biddable. Killing will win you a war, if you spend enough blood, but fear—real, mindless fear—will win you subjugation. When I was seventeen, practically the entire continent had already Incorporated. The Barricading movement was a joke. Revolution was barely a child’s fantasy. Until Gabriel Lamarque showed up.”