Chapter 48 The Price of Silence
A fracture is not just a break in a bone. It is a break in the reality we have spent every drop of our sweat trying to build.
I am sitting on the velvet sofa in our Kensington sanctuary, the heavy black orthopedic boot looking like a gargoyle perched at the end of my leg. The silence in the flat is thick, broken only by the rhythmic clink clink of Caspian stirring honey into tea in the kitchen. He has been in there for ten minutes, move for move, as if he is trying to memorize the layout of the tiles so he does not have to look at me.
"Drink," he says, appearing suddenly and pressing the warm mug into my hands. He does not sit on the sofa. He sinks onto the coffee table, forcing me to meet his eyes, which are bloodshot and dark with a simmering, helpless rage.
"Cas, do not look at me like I am a ghost," I say, the steam from the tea stinging my nose.
"You told me in the infirmary it is a hairline fracture," he says, his voice a low, vibrating chord. "The nurse said six weeks. Zora, six weeks is a death sentence for the Showcase. It is a death sentence for your spot at the Vanguard."
"The nurse is paid to be cautious, Cas," I counter, the first lie sliding out of my mouth with the practiced ease of a girl who spent years telling social workers her bruises were from clumsiness.
"She said no weight, Zora. No impact."
"She said that is the standard protocol for a normal person," I lean forward, putting the tea down so I can take his shaking hands in mine. "But she also said that because it is a hairline, it is stable. She said if I stay in the boot for forty eight hours and the swelling goes down, we can manage the movement. She was just being dramatic with the six week talk to cover her own back."
Caspian's eyes narrow, searching mine for the flicker of a tell. "Manage the movement? You cannot even stand without wincing."
"That is the inflammation, not the bone," I lie, downplaying the white hot agony that pulses in my foot with every heartbeat. "I have danced on worse. In the Bronx, I did a whole production of Giselle with a double ear infection and a pulled hamstring. This is just a crack, Cas. It is a Janitor's crack. We patch it, we tape it, and we keep moving."
"If you are lying to me." He trails off, his grip on my hands tightening until it almost hurts. "If you dance on a break and it snaps, Zora, you will never walk the same way again. You will not just lose the Vanguard. You will lose the ability to stand."
"It is not going to snap," I say, my voice as hard as flint. "I know my body. I know where the line is. I am telling you, it is a one week problem, not a six week tragedy. But if we tell Halloway the truth, she will not care about the difference. She will just see a broken dancer and call New York to send a replacement."
Caspian pulls his hands away and rubs his face, a ragged, exhausted sound escaping his throat. "I hate this. I hate that we are starting our official life with a conspiracy against the school."
"We are not conspiring against the school," I say, shifting my leg and nearly blacking out from the lightning bolt of pain that shoots up my calf. I keep my expression dead calm. "We are protecting our investment. We did not run across the ocean just to be sent back because of a clumsy Finn and a cautious nurse."
"Soren," Caspian breathes the name like a curse. "I am going to destroy him tomorrow. I am going to make him look so incompetent that Halloway will not have a choice but to keep us as the leads, boot or no boot."
"No," I say, grabbing his wrist. "If you attack him, you look unstable. You play his game. We go to the Shoreditch studio. We rebuild the piece around my limitations. We make it so beautiful that by the time I take the boot off for the evaluation, they will not even be looking at my feet."
Caspian looks at the boot, then back at me. He wants to believe me so badly that I can see the logic of my lie taking root in his mind. He needs this to be a one week problem just as much as I do.
"One week," he says, his voice a hollow vow. "If you are not better by the board evaluation, we tell them. No arguments."
"Deal," I say, leaning in to kiss him.
He tastes like honey and desperation. As he holds me, his heart beating a frantic rhythm against my chest, I feel the full weight of the secret I am actually keeping. I did not tell him the nurse's real ultimatum. If you dance on this, you lose the foot.
I am gambling my entire physical future on a seven day miracle, and I am doing it by making the man I love an unwitting accomplice to my own destruction.
"I will get more ice," he murmurs, pulling away to go back to the kitchen.
I watch him go, my hero, the prince who would burn the world down to keep me safe. I am keeping him in the dark because I know that if he knows the truth, he will carry me onto that plane himself just to save me from myself.
I reach down and touch the cold plastic of the boot. It feels like a coffin for my career.
"Just one week," I whisper to the shadows of the Kensington flat. "Just let me last one week."
The London rain begins to lash against the glass, a frantic, rhythmic tapping that sounds exactly like a clock ticking down to zero.
I have seven days to learn how to fly on a broken wing, or I am going to take Caspian Thorne down into the dirt with me.