Perfect Gravity (Wanted and Wired #2)(93)
Her team arrived, and the updates started rolling in, and she forced nose from navel. Her hodgepodge rebel media group, led by Fez and Rafa, all crowded around Fez’s big portable dinosaur monitor and watched the live-stream inauguration. They could have logged into a holocast and VR’d the whole thing, but cramming themselves around a screen, all pressed up together and munching overnuked popcorn, was a whole lot funner. Plus, it gave them a sense of being on the same side, on the same mission. As, of course, they were.
Astonishingly, Angela, sans gloves or any other bio-deterrents, did not catch cooties.
During the middle of the swearing-in, one of the high justices interjected, saying the election was being investigated for irregularities and that going beyond this point could in essence give legitimacy to a fraud. A huge chunk of the in-person audience standing around the cold Denver Capitolina cheered like crazy people. But ultimately the ceremony had continued.
Damn it. That had been one of her potential pause points. If things had gone differently there on the capitol steps, she could have stood down, let time and government take their course.
Fucking justices, going through with it anyhow, despite the petitions and the congressional special session. Now she had to get dressed.
The process of costuming for this ball felt very vintage. And by that, she meant a shitload of work. By the end of it, the sun was about an hour from setting, Angela looked terrifying and commanding—a pretty trick for someone her size—and Rafa was a mess of self-congratulatory and gorgeous tears. She also had a lot more respect for, say, Queen Elizabeth I. Vid makeup and costuming professionals. Cinderella’s poor overworked godmother.
The gown was backless, fitted, with a double row of shiny, useless buttons down the bodice, a point-collared, abbreviated Lolita jacket, and LED-backlit ebony Kuba velvet to the floor, worn snug. Whoa snug. Uncomfortably snug. Rafa had literally sewn her into this rig, and she was never allowed to piss again.
“You look…” he began, kissing forefinger to thumb, but trailed off in adorable sobs.
She handed him a hanky, pulled from a pocket that, strictly speaking for a dress this tight, should not have existed. “I know. Magnificent. Now, let’s go bring down a government.”
? ? ?
Entrances are important. All the best queens realize this. Thank the makers, then, Angela had expert guidance. Fez arranged for a helicopter to transport them from the airfield to the wide plain of the Colina Capitolina, in case there was traffic. Which there was. Also, protesters had packed themselves in near the capitol complex thick as fleas, so anybody trying to get to the inaugural ball overland was going to be embarrassingly late.
Angela timed her arrival just after the bulk of guests had arrived but before they’d been admitted to the event. While the privileged class, those who hadn’t come in underground via pods, stood in the sec-check line out front, bundled against oncoming winter, her helicopter touched down like a dewdrop, and her team helped her out. Fez and Rafa and the rest fanned out to either side, live-streaming everything, working for good angles and light. The psych-emitter beneath her scalp heated and hummed. Transmitting.
Determination. Beneficence. Resolve. Don’t fuck with me.
She walked the full length of the mall alone, beneath the weight of all those gazes. All those expectations and hopes. Hundreds right here, millions across the world. Billions, maybe—Fez was just that good.
The pressure hurt, physically hurt, but it wasn’t new. She had been trained for this.
The building towered, a marvel of sustainable architecture and big-area additive manufacturing. It was meant to look vaguely Romanesque, hence the name, but really, it reminded her of an obscenely large wedding cake topped with a nipple and a flag. It was lit by a gazillion light cans of free-fae.
Chloe would have a fucking field day with this thing.
She smiled at the thought, let it wick away some of her nerves, and strode on. The sec-check line was just starting to realize who she was and what that might mean for the evening’s festivities. A rumble of whispers begun behind fans and coat sleeves rolled out across the twilit mall. She couldn’t see their individual faces yet in the twilight and the weird free-fae shadows, but she hoped they were shitting bricks.
Right on the verge, where the fake grass met faker marble and she struggled not to show her bone-deep chill, suddenly, she wasn’t alone.
He was there. Kellen.
In a tuxedo. Black, white waistcoat and tie. No tails. Slim fit.
Holy all-the-fucks. No one in the entire history of hotness had ever worn one of those things and looked so goddamn fine.
He winked and extended an elbow. She threaded her black-gloved hand through it. He was wearing gloves tonight, too. How adorably proper. Made a girl want to peel them off. With her teeth.
He arced his long body over hers, his mouth way too close to her ear, heating up her whole shivery self, and said, “True beauty dwells in deep retreats, whose veil is unremoved till heart with heart in concord beats, and the lover is beloved.”
It wasn’t forgiveness. Not in so many words. Other, better words were support. Partnership. Care. Him. Love?
She knew she ought to continue forward, but it was so hard not to look up at him and just stare. For hours, she could do this. (No, probably not. Not unless he let her take the tux off, have a nice thorough peek, put it back on, take it off again, and so on. For a long time.)
He was impossible and amazing and heart-stoppingly gorgeous and most importantly here and hers, her very own, and for the whole rest of their hike up the capitol steps, right past the dinky UNAN sec-check crimp, that’s about all she could manage. The thinking, and the looking. Then her brain caught up and she stopped, paused momentarily, and asked, “Wait, Wordsworth? Again? And also, how the fuck did you get here?”