“This conversation is over,” her father shouted. “You both need to leave.”

When neither of them moved, he slammed his fist on the table. “Get out! Both of you! Can’t you see how upset you’ve made your mother?”

Avery exchanged a glance with Atlas, but he was shaking his head, as if to say not now. She knew better than to say anything. They just turned and walked in opposite directions, toward their separate bedrooms.

Only when she was safely ensconced in her room did Avery pull the article back up. It was still as ugly and hurtful as before. And beneath the lurid text, and the photo, there was now a stream of comments.

In the ten minutes that entire ugly scene had taken, the article had been shared and reposted thousands of times. Avery wasn’t all that surprised. She was the freaking princess of New York, wasn’t she?

She knew she shouldn’t look, but the words were practically leaping off the page, hurling themselves at her consciousness—

Don’t be fooled by her perfect exterior—that slut is DISGUSTING!

I always knew the thousandth floor was one giant orgy!

Ugh! I have a stepbrother. Excuse me while I go vomit.

I sat next to her once on a train, and she never even looked my way. What a royal bitch.

And on and on and on. Avery felt a knot of despair gather in her stomach. She had never imagined that so many people in the world—people she had never even met—could hate her so viciously.

She curled up in a tiny ball, squeezing her eyes shut to black out the world, wishing herself into oblivion.

RYLIN

RYLIN’S SNEAKERS POUNDED a vicious rhythm on the pavement of the outdoor track.

She usually loved running out here on the deck, past the basketball courts and swimming pools and jungle gyms. But today it felt painfully monotonous, or maybe just painful. No matter how far she ran, the horizon never seemed to change, as if any illusion of progress was just that: an illusion.

Still Rylin kept going, because even useless movement was better than stillness right now. At least if she kept moving, the air would hiss past her sweat-dampened skin, calm the heat pounding through her. She ran faster and faster, until her hamstrings were burning and she could feel a blister forming on her left ankle. Ahead of her was an artificial pond, where a group of small children were racing miniature hovercrafts, a flotilla of toys with colored flags waving in the breeze.

This was the point where Rylin usually turned back. But today she pressed onward. She wanted to run until she sweat out all the anger still clinging to her from last night, if that was even possible.

She couldn’t believe what Cord had done. How dare he get involved in her relationship with Hiral? It was so typical of him, of all the highliers, to think that he could bend and twist the world to his will. How gross, that he had used money to try to knock down the obstacles between them.

She remembered the Skyspear, the way their bodies had been intertwined in the dawn glow, and fought back a sudden sense of shame. Knowing what she knew now, the memory no longer seemed magical. If anything, it made Rylin feel rather cheap.

She couldn’t keep doing this. No more thinking about Cord or Hiral. Rylin was more than the sum of the boys she’d loved. She refused to let them define her.

Her contacts lit up with an incoming ping.

Rylin tripped from the shock of it, but managed to catch her balance before she fell. She slowed to a walk and turned around, toward the pond. Flecks of golden sunlight danced over its surface.

She hesitated another instant before giving in and accepting the ping.

“Hiral. I thought we agreed not to talk,” she said acerbically, lowering herself onto one of the benches.

“Chrissa reached out. She told me I was supposed to ping you?”

Rylin winced. She’d been banging around the apartment all morning, letting out loud angry sighs, until Chrissa bullied her into sharing what was going on. “It sounds like you need to talk to Hiral,” she had said. To which Rylin responded by grabbing her sneakers and escaping for a run.

“That sounds like Chrissa,” she muttered under her breath.

“I see. Younger sister, meddling again,” Hiral replied. Rylin heard a note of concern beneath the false lightness of his tone.

Rylin wanted so badly to be angry with him—royally pissed, in fact. But she found that she didn’t really have it in her.

“How is it?” she asked, because no matter what had happened between them, she still wanted to know that Hiral was okay.

“Awesome, actually.” She heard the excitement in his voice. “I’ve finished training and started work in the algae-harvesting pens. The only drawback is that I’m eating way more green-protein than I ever wanted to see. I feel like even my sweat is turning green.”

“Gross,” Rylin snorted at the unexpected image.

Hiral fell momentarily silent. “What was it that Chrissa wanted me to talk to you about?”

“It doesn’t matter now.”

“Okay,” Hiral said, as if he didn’t quite believe her. “For what it’s worth, though, I’m sorry. For everything I put you through. I know you’re still upset with me for leaving town without giving you much warning. But I also know that it was the best thing for us.”

“I’m getting really sick of everyone telling me what’s best for me, without any actual input from me,” Rylin couldn’t help replying.