The Kingmaker

I let his words hurt. I let myself feel the full weight of his contempt and his disappointment. His eyes gleam darkly like volcanic glass. Even in defeat he looks simultaneously frigid and like he might drown you in hot lava at any second.

“I won’t fail.” My words carry no bravado, only confidence, because I have every intention of proving him wrong.

“You will,” he counters with as much certainty. “You are unsalvageable.”

Unsalvageable.

I should have known he’d find a word that went beyond disowned. Beyond disgraced. A word that would cut to my core character as if it was something he’d tried to save and failed miserably. And now there’s no hope.

The car comes to a stop. Our fight has frosted the air. Tension coats the interior of the car. I’m surprised the windows haven’t fogged.

We both exit our respective sides. The Cade jet idles on the tarmac, awaiting my father’s bidding like every other subject in his kingdom.

He starts walking, stopping to turn when he realizes I’m not with him.

“Come on,” he snaps. “I have more important things to do than indulge your temper tantrum.”

“You have never paid one tuition bill,” I say, not addressing his insulting words. “Never paid my rent or room and board. And you haven’t even noticed.”

The look on his face should bring me some satisfaction, but it only reiterates how little he cares about me as a person; he hasn’t seriously concerned himself with the details of my life because I’m not where he wants me to be.

“Grams left me a little money that I received when I turned eighteen, if you remember,” I say with a painful, wry smile. “Not much by your standards, but it lasts if you’re careful. I’ve been on my own for years and doing better than fine.”

“You wouldn’t last a year without my name.” His thin smile relishes the probability of my failure.

“You know what? I might fail. I might end up broke, but I’ll be my own man. It’ll be hard, but I’m determined to make a life for myself that has nothing to do with the Cade name.”

And then I see it on his face, in his eyes. This is the moment that breaks us. It comes as suddenly as the gargantuan icebergs I’ve been studying. One moment, whole and solid, and the next, severed into two distinct walls of ice estranged from each other. That’s what we are. Separate. Frozen.

“Say what you really mean, Maxim. It’s not just the name or the company you want nothing to do with, is it?”

“I want nothing to do with you. You’re not cutting me off, Dad,” I tell him, slinging the words like stones catapulted over a wall. “I’m the one cutting you off.”

I have no idea where we are. The airfield is in the middle of nowhere, but I turn away from my father and his private planes and corrupt kingdom, and start on a path I can’t even see in front of me. I don’t exactly know how I’ll do it, but I’ll prove him wrong, and all while leading a life free of him and his expectations and his constant disapproval.

I walk away, and I don’t look back.

4

Lennix

Defeat and dust mingle in the clear morning air. We gather on a cliff overlooking the sacred ground we fought so hard to keep and watch helplessly as the bulldozer’s sharp, jagged teeth devour the earth. T

he trucks plow a careless path over our memories and sift through our holy soil like a conquering soldier pillaging the pockets of the fallen.

This battle is over. The field, lost.

Mena clutches my hand, tears streaking her cheeks. She has been there for me since she stood as godmother at my Sunrise Dance. She wiped away the sweat when I thought I’d die from dancing, from kneeling, from running those four days. She reassured me through every grueling hour. And when we realized Mama was gone, was never coming back, she held me, wiped my tears, and shed her own for her best friend. It wasn’t always easy for my father raising a teenage girl alone, especially one with a cultural history as complex as mine. I had to navigate his world, but also be a part of my mother’s. The community embraced me fully even after Mama was gone and I was attending the private school miles away from the reservation. And this woman, her best friend and my auntie, has been my greatest guide.

Mr. Paul bows his head, shoulders slumped and despondent. Dozens from the reservation and many of the Apache who live in town like I do have come to witness one more desecration. One more broken promise.

“Senator Middleton should be ashamed of himself,” my father mutters, his gray eyes as pained as if this is his land, too. “We can only hope the voters make him pay at the polls next year.”

“They won’t,” Mr. Paul says. “The politicians, the corporations, the government—they take and take and take. They promise and they lie and they trick and betray, but they never pay for crimes against us. We never get our due.”

“How ironic that the pipeline is here,” my father says. “So close to Apache Leap.”

I imagine those brave Apache warriors, with the U.S. Cavalry and certain defeat before them and certain death behind. They chose death over surrender, leaping over the cliff’s edge and into the next life.