The Equinox is humming with energy. Even though the island is on lockdown, nothing can take away from the excitement of today being May Day and the start of the hoverjoust tournament season. Everyone is wearing their guild colors and emblems and the occasional mismatched token to support their favorite players from other guilds. (The Bioscience team is clearly favored to win; their emblem––a hand of muscle and a hand of bone holding a double helix––seems especially common among the fans.) All the league players are getting a lot of attention, myself included.

I’m waiting for Rafe under the tree in the lobby where a giant Galilean thermoscope is set up to track hoverjoust player rankings. Inside a glace tube float small colored bubbles that represent each player.

Hopefully today I’ll get the chance to see my bubble rise, but that could be as high as it will ever go. Rafe and I are planning to leave the island tomorrow. We should be back before either of our teams compete again, but I don’t know what will happen in New York, and I can’t say for sure that I’ll be coming back at all. The thought of that shouldn’t hurt as much as it does. I’ve always known this could never be home. And yet…

“Good morning,” a silk voice whispers in my ear as I’m hugged from behind.

I immediately get all awkward and stiff-limbed.

“Relax,” Rafe scolds. “Everyone is watching.”

The whole Rafe-and-Ada-are-a-thing has been relatively subtle until now, but today is going to be the full-on Oscar performance.

Rafe may be a prince and all that, but what he is most celebrated for by the youths of Maker society is his hoverjousting prowess. With today being the opening games for the tournament season, every single eyeball on the island will be trained on Rafe. And therefore on me by his side. I’m really not looking forward to the attention, but everything we’ve been putting on this charade for comes to a head today.

As we navigate the crowded room, Rafe’s arm is warm around my waist. Too warm. But not in a bad way. In a too-good way.

“Why can’t we stay with our teams and just, like, blow each other kisses across the room?” I whine. “This feels like overkill.”

Not to mention, very dangerous territory. I have been vigilant about keeping things very hands-off between us during training—this did make it difficult yesterday for him to teach me how to induce a harmless faint by overwhelming someone’s vagus nerve, since I refused to let him touch my neck, so I’m hoping I won’t need that particular trick on our travels—but getting cozy for an audience on the day of a hoverjoust tournament is, apparently, a full-contact sport.