Every Day in May (grand prize winner) ✔

May 26th

I deserve your silence. 

I'm sorry, Theo. I'm sorry I told Graden about you. It was the wrong thing to do, but you can't just forget about our friendship and pretend the past few weeks haven't occurred. You can't unlearn everything that you read in my letters.

Only a few days remain; do not spend them icing me out, going about your normal Tower life like everything's okay. It's not okay!

Didn't you ever wonder, "Why now?" Why did Graden give me this month and this month only to contact you? Why did I insist that our weeks of letter writing end precisely on the last day of May?

Think, Theo. Hate me if you want, but just think about it. Where will your mother be when the month draws to a close?

Francesca's parents aren't permitted in the Tower and she's certainly not allowed to return to her girlhood home, but in accordance with Lotus Born tradition they are permitted to meet somewhere in between. Francesca often takes them to the summer home of one of your Father's chief advisers—a small but elegant cottage on a lake south of the city.  That's where she's going this time.  You know just as I do that she's scheduled to leave for this trip on the morning of the thirty-first.

Your mother will be out of the Tower, out of the city.  She won't know what's happened until it's already been done.  Graden has kept his plans from her; she has no idea I've been returning to the Tower to contact you.  She wants her husband removed from power, but not if doing so means putting you (or me) at risk.  She wouldn't like knowing I've been using her passageway to sneak back into the Tower and she will hate—hate—that she wasn't at the Tower to protect you during the assault.  She'll be alive, though, which is all that Graden really cares about.  He can't afford to think about her emotional state—or mine, apparently.

I still don't know what Graden and the Upper Council have decided to do, if they've even decided anything at all.  Over the past week, it's become evident that my brother is avoiding me.  I show up at the factory every afternoon, as soon as I can get away from school.  Every single time he's been too busy to see me.  Yesterday, I kicked the door to his office until the wood began to splinter, but he still wouldn't answer.  

That's not a good sign, Theo. Your palms are clammy now, aren't they? I hope that your self-preservation skills have kicked in. What I'm telling you should raise a sea of red flags.   

When he found out you existed, he stopped including me in the Dissent's plans. He knows I care about you; he believes I am blinded by this connection; that I have lost perspective. 

If anything, my perspective has grown a thousand-fold; I see with a clarity this impending war cannot mar; I see a way forward where Graden sees an obstruction.  He has created the impasse we find ourselves at.

He doesn't trust me anymore.

The feeling is mutual.