Chapter Text
Caitlyn fusses with her dress. She fixes herself while she still can, away from the discerning eye of Piltovan high society, but no amount of tugging at the delicate lace at her chest and buttoning and unbuttoning the delicate pearl at the wrist of her glove sets her mind at ease. A dozen girls are lined up in front of her, each dressed in sweeping ivory with a baby blue feather pinned in their hair, blue like the HexTech that has brought their city so much prosperity over the past decade.
“Stop that,” her mother says, swatting at her with the tips of her fingers. Not enough to damage her perfectly put-together façade, but enough to snap her out of it. Or, at least attempt to. “Honestly Caitlyn, you look about five seconds away from falling flat on this floor.”
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” Caitlyn says. She dabs the back of her hand against her damp cheek and forehead. Delicately, in the way her mother taught her to do since she was young, Everything is to be done delicately when you are a Kiramman lady, even if the women of their family are much harder underneath than others might think.
Caitlyn cranes her neck to look forward and finds several pairs of eyes looking back at her. Even among the debutantes, all eyes are on her. Every few moments the double doors open and another young girl steps inside, making the ones behind her even antsier as they await their treasured few seconds with the queen.
There is nothing more important in a young woman’s life than the morning of her debut. Caitlyn has been preparing for this since the moment she emerged from the womb, kicking and screaming her way into a society she never asked to be a part of but found herself tangled in nonetheless. As the only daughter of the Kiramman family, a line that has produced no male heirs across any of her parents’ siblings, it is her job to marry well and secure the family fortune. She must find a husband and produce an heir quickly—a boy, most preferably—in order to preserve her family name. Cassandra spent two and a half decades preparing her for this moment, polishing her to an unshakable shine.
She is the perfect debutante. She will not be defeated by some wayward nerves and one impressively itchy feather.
There are only a few girls in front of her now. She hears the announcement of each of their names and their mothers’ right before they step in, and the light clapping of the ton when they enter. Cassandra picks a few stray strands of feather from her impeccably styled bun as Caitlyn tries her best to smooth her breaths. In. Out.
“Remember to look the queen in the eye, but do not stare,” Cassandra says. The doors open again, swallowing another young lady. “We know she already favors you because of our prior relationship with her husband, but a single blunder could mean disaster for your season.”
“That doesn’t exactly make me feel better, mama.”
“Just keep your chin up,” Cassandra says. They move forward, forward, until they are the last ones left in the room. The silence, without the doting mamas and nervous chatter to fill the space, is deafening. “You look lovely, and it’s time the whole ton became wise to it.”
Caitlyn stares at the double doors. They are white with gold trim, just as the queen likes it. She hears the light clap of the people standing inside, their scrutinous eyes forward. She can imagine each pair, staring at her. Examining her like a piece of meat—or worse, some kind of odd specimen.
But it is her fate to walk in front of them. To stride like an angel with her head held high, just like her mother taught her to.
So, she pushes the nervous little girl inside of her down. She shoves and shoves until her anxiousness disappears, and there is nothing left but a poised Kiramman woman. It is like a cold tide has washed over her, a wave of sudden alertness. Her back straightens. Her teeth part in her closed mouth, softening her jaw. Her hands still.
The doors open.
“Announcing Miss Caitlyn Kiramman,” the announcer says. “Escorted by her mother, the right honorable Lady Cassandra Kiramman.”
The room is filled with people standing on either side of a long red carpet, gilded on the edges with brassy embroidery. The people are dressed in the height of Piltover fashion, the men with their tall hats, the women with their ornate fans fluttering coyly in front of their mouths. The moment Caitlyn and her mother appear at the doors and stride over the threshold, every eye turns towards them, but Caitlyn doesn’t falter. No matter how her gut turns, no matter how her palms sweat under the delicate satin of her gloves, she keeps her face cool. Serene. She doesn’t concern herself with who looks at her and who doesn’t. She just keeps her eyes forward, to where the queen sits on her golden throne.
The queen is young, the youngest reigning queen in Piltover’s history in fact. She is without her husband the king today, as scouring the eager debuts is more a woman’s work than a man’s, but when she sees Caitlyn her honeyed eyes sparkle. The queen has never played the marriage game the way the other ladies of Piltovan society have—in fact, she was a migrant from Noxus, estranged from her noble family in the west, and was not even elevated in title to queen until the Talis family was granted the monarchy for her husband’s contribution to the city’s technological progress—so she is always eager to find her newest player.
She is, as always, the most beautiful woman in the room. It is by design—no one is more deserving of attention than the queen, with her shining skin, cascading braids of black and gold, and startling white dress. It ripples to the floor like a sparkling river, its satin glistening in the light that comes through the stained glass on the left side of the room. It is just a touch more revealing than the current styles of the ton, but no one would dare question the queen. She could step into the throne room stark naked and everyone would applaud her.
That is what it means to have power in this society. As a woman, at least.
The harpist plucks away in the corner. Even the queen’s entourage, a quartet of women who are beautiful in their own right, dressed in the same fashion as the queen, watches her intently as she walks towards the dais. She hears soft gasps on either side of her, few but sudden. They’re enough to make her mother preen, and they haven’t even made it to the queen yet.
When they come before Queen Mel, Caitlyn and her mother stop in concert. Caitlyn in front, Cassandra slightly behind, presenting her to the whole of Piltover as the heir to the family. Cassandra’s pride is contagious; even Caitlyn believes, for just a moment, that she is capable of all the mighty things her parents have planned for her.
Caitlyn takes her skirts in her hands. She drops her gaze from the queen’s, craning her chin demurely towards the floor as she dips into a deep curtsy. Her mother follows suit.
“Rise, Miss Kiramman,” Queen Mel says. “Let me look at you.”
Caitlyn’s fingers tremble where they clutch her dress, but she doesn’t dare let anyone see. She rises slowly, and only at the apex dares look up at her queen, who has risen from her throne and all but floated down the steps to meet Caitlyn. She puts her eyes on her, examining her face until Caitlyn can swear the queen sees her shaking.
The whole room waits as Queen Mel examines her. When she is finished, she smiles.
“There has never been a doubt,” the queen says.
The queen returns up to the dais. Caitlyn dares a look at her mother, whose eyes which are so like hers widen just a fraction. Caitlyn’s heartbeat skyrockets, but she keeps herself composed. Everyone is watching. She can’t afford to be afraid.
“A true incomparable,” Queen Mel says. “A veritable diamond.”
Caitlyn sucks in a quick breath. Manages a smile, soft and inviting. The queen’s entourage begins to clap, and the whole room follows. It isn’t exactly raucous applause, the type you would find at an opera or a boxing match or a good round of pal mal, but it signals the whole ton’s agreement with the queen. It’s Piltover echoing back at her, telling her that it is ready to receive her.
She stands tall, blue eyes forward, and like a proper woman accepts their praise.
* * *
“Are we there yet?”
Vi sneers in her sister’s direction, ready to catapult her skinny ass right out of this carriage if she says another word about their journey. It’s not long to Piltover by carriage from their little corner of Zaun, but the twin cities have a significant stretch of green space between them, so it takes a bit to parse through the trees. Not to mention, Piltover tends to be a lot more… spread out than Zaun, where they all sleep, eat, and piss so close together it’d make the stuffy Piltovan’s heads spin.
Not to mention, they’re hauling a lot of shit. That tends to happen when your whole life is uprooted from one place in favor of another.
“How am I supposed to know?” Vi asks. “I don’t know where this place is either. They probably gave us the shittiest plot of land they could find.”
“Anything’s better than the bar. The floors were always so sticky, and you could hear everything happening upstairs while we slept.”
“Hey. I loved that bar.”
The stretch of countryside between Piltover and Zaun is nice to look at, if not a little overwhelmingly green. It’s the height of spring, so the trees are in full bloom, oaks and willows crawling with wisteria and honeysuckle line the dirt paths their carriages make their way down. They have two carriages with them to carry their personal effects from Zaun to Piltover, which is two more carriages than they had three weeks ago when Vander got a letter from the royal family of Piltover, some wide-eyed saps with big plans for the “future,” offering him land and a title as an extension of goodwill that intends to unite their two cities societally as one. Don’t get her wrong, she knew that there have been whispers between their two cities of some kind of amnesty agreement, something to alleviate the disparity between two cities who have been at odds for decades, but this? This is just kind of insane.
What’s even more insane is that Vander actually took them up on it. He gave the keys to his bar, The Last Drop, to Benzo and packed up everything and everyone and headed to the City of Progress. The Hound of the Underground is now Lord William Vander, Baron of Piltover, and as his oldest recorded child, Vi is his heir.
Great.
Her sister Powder, ever the brilliant mind, can barely contain her nervous tics within the confines of their stuffy carriage. She fiddles with everything she can get her hands on: the threads fraying off her purple pinstripe dress, the ends of her long blue braids, the chipping polish on her long nails. Most of all, though, she fiddles with the quill in her hand and the edge of her notebook, filled to the brim with scribblings and notes.
Her sister, among so many other things, is a gifted writer. She’s an even better inventor, but those two things go hand-in-hand. Turns out when your brain is as big as Powder’s, you tend to lap absolutely everyone you end up in a room with.
Back in Zaun her skills were admired, but in Piltover? A society that really only values how good a woman can stitch a scrap of fabric or plunk out a tune on the piano? Vi hopes to God she can protect a mind like that from bowing to the will of a city full of discerning strangers.
“What are you working on?” Vi asks, craning her neck to see Powder’s journal page.
Her sister recoils, pressing the open page against her chest to hide what she’s writing. She sticks out her tongue at Vi and says, “None of your business.”
“Oh, so you want to just sit in silence until we get there? That’s fine, gives me a break from your big fat mouth.”
“Hey!” her sister exclaims. After a moment of promised silence, consisting of Vi staring at her with her eyebrows raised and Powder continuing to fidget in her seat, Powder sighs and leans forward as if to tell her a secret. It’s a dumb gesture, considering their brothers and father are in a whole other carriage. “If you must know, I’m trying to adapt my column.”
This gives Vi pause. She frowns at her sister and asks, “The Zaun Gab Weekly?”
“The very same.”
Vi lets her surprise wash over her. Powder started The Zaun Gab Weekly when she was fourteen, on a bunch of scrap paper she found lying around in Vander’s office. It was a hobby, something to distract her ever-active mind from the rough streets they grew up in. She would traverse the streets, hugging the shadows to listen in on conversation between their neighbors, enough to compile into a little gossip column. When her best friend Ekko struck up an apprenticeship with one of the printers in the city in order to start making his living, they decided to print it for fun and hand it out to the people, have a bit of fun. She kept it up for four years, but now that she’s eighteen and an adult, Vi thought maybe she’d leave it behind in their old home.
“What do you mean ‘adapt?” VI asks. “Adapt it to… what?”
“To our new home, of course,” Powder says like it’s the plainest thing in the world. “If I’m going to be completely uprooted from the only place we’ve ever called home, I’ll at least make it a little fun.”
Vi wrinkles her nose. “What makes you think the stuffy fuckers in Piltover will want anything to do with some Zaunite’s gossip column? They don’t respect us. The whole reason we’re even moving is because it’s a slightly better life than we had in The Lanes.”
Powder snorts. “Slightly?”
“Shut up,” Vi says. “Fancy house or not, Piltover isn’t our home.”
“Well I’m not going to tell them I’m a Zaunite,” Powder says. “Actually, I’m not going to tell them anything at all. I’m just going to write what I hear, and the Piltovans can deal with it. They have just as much to hide as anyone in Zaun, if not more. Why shouldn’t someone write about it?”
“That sounds like a recipe for chaos.”
Her sister grins, that same crazy grin she would flash at Vi when they were children, signifying her mind's next greatest scheme. It’s a grin that can only spell trouble.
“I love chaos.”
The road beneath them becomes bumpy as the carriage enters new terrain. The trees give way to buildings, which give way to town. They cross a bridge spanning a beautiful river, sparkling like none of the rivers in Zaun have sparkled in the decade since the HexTech boom demanded too much of their already crumbling industrial infrastructure. The City of Progress with its cobblestone paths and huge ivory buildings towers before them, and as they ride into the city center, a place with more green space than Vi has ever seen in a city, they come up on a square lined with beautifully ornate city homes. Vi knows that now her father has two properties, one in the city of Piltover and one in the countryside, but they will spend most of the social season in the city, a fact that Vi hasn’t even begun to swallow.
Society. Balls. Snotty-ass Piltovans with their gaudy dresses and stupid hats. She wants to puke just thinking about it.
As they pull up to their new home, Powder presses her hands to the window and gapes. “Is that our house?”
Vi looks too, albeit not as eagerly. The house before them is old, constructed in classic Piltover style, which means it looks the complete opposite of the downstairs apartment Vi grew up in beneath The Last Drop in Zaun, so she automatically hates it. The front is made of dark red brick and the house’s trim is so dark brown it is almost black. While most of the houses on the block are obscured by willow trees, creeping wisteria and jasmine, their house is coated in a thick layer of dark ivy that grows in huge patches around the gray stone of their carriage drive. There are benches out front made of twisted, well-crafted iron. A gurgling fountain. A round set of stairs leading up to huge double doors with a copper knocker in the shape of their new family crest, two hounds with their mouths open over an ornate V. It’s the newest thing in the whole yard, no doubt installed pending their arrival.
It looks so out of place. Vi feels just about the same.
Powder doesn’t even wait for the carriage to stop to kick open the door with the heel of her flat, pick up her skirts, and hop onto the stone drive. Vi groans and follows her, a much easier feat because she doesn’t have any skirts to speak of. The air is completely different here, crisp. Clean.
“Miss!” the driver calls as the carriage jerks to a halt, but Powder doesn’t turn. “Miss, please wait until someone is available to assist you before getting out of the carriage!”
“Tough shit,” Powder says, rushing up to the house.
From the carriage in front of theirs, the mammoth form of their father emerges, followed by Mylo and Claggor, Vi and Powder’s brothers. Vander is dressed in a smart brown overcoat with a watch chain hanging from the pocket. He has a hat, but he had to keep it off in the carriage because otherwise he just wouldn’t fit. Mylo’s hair has been tamed from its usual messy plume into something at least minorly acceptable for public appearance, and Claggor has traded his toolbelt for a proper leather one with a brass buckle. As soon as they stop the front doors open and five servants emerge and immediately start to unload their things. Chests, trunks, wooden boxes—all full of their meager things, things that will probably look silly in this new place.
“Ah, Lord Vander,” the head housekeeper says as she comes out to greet them. She shakes Vander’s hand, his huge mitt dwarfing hers. “Lovely to see you’ve all arrived in good time. How was the journey?”
“Very well, thank you,” Vander says. He might be a severe-looking man, but he’s got the manners of a saint. Vi can’t say the same. He tries to flag Powder down but she’s in her own little world. “Please don’t mind my youngest. She is… eager.”
“I’m not looking a gift horse in the mouth is what I’m doing,” Powder mutters, examining the leaves of the ivy bushes. “Is this house outfitted with HexTech lights?”
“In all the common areas, yes,” the housekeeper says. “The bedrooms have not yet been updated, so candlelight would be best after dark.”
“Could I possibly dismantle one of the lamps to take a look?”
“I, uh…” the housekeeper stammers. Her eyes dart back and forth between Powder and their father. “I don’t quite know—”
“Hey, pops!” Mylo says, dragging one of the chests off the carriage before a footman can. Said footman looks very disgruntled about that. “Where do you want the guns?”
“Please sir, have a footman take care of that for you,” the housekeeper says.
“What?” Mylo balks. “I’ve got two hands, might as well use them.”
The housekeeper looks quite pale, and all Vander can do is sigh as his children file into the house among the servants and trunks, leaving him and Vi out front. Vander turns to the housekeeper and says, “This is my eldest daughter, Violet. She’ll be helping me run the estate while we get settled with our new title.”
She sticks out her hand to the housekeeper and the woman shakes it, shaking slightly. “Call me Vi.”
The housekeeper pales even further as her eyes dart over Vi, taking her in. Her eyes widen into saucers. “My, what unusual dress for a lady. Is this what the women are wearing in Zaun these days?”
Vi doesn’t even flinch. She knows she looks odd here, with her dark wool pants, dark suspenders, white button-up and dark red overcoat that has a few too many holes to wear in good company. Her shoes even belonged to Mylo once, and became hers when he decided he didn’t like the style any longer. She knows she sticks out like a sore thumb here, as a woman dressed in clothing deemed better for men, but also as a woman who wears clothes marked by the soot and grime of the Undercity, clothes she’s had for as long as she can remember. Even the housekeeper’s simple black housedress seems more well-constricted than her coat, and she’s technically titled now. Imagine that.
“Not really,” Vi says. “But I think dresses should be outlawed on principle, so you probably won’t catch me in one.”
The housekeeper loses her words entirely, so instead she just turns heel and leads them inside the house.
Vi feels even more uncomfortable inside the house than outside of it. There is furniture inside, but it’s a stranger’s, dingy and old. The old Baron, some sorry sap who died earlier this year and left a vacant house with no heirs to speak of, didn’t exactly have the best taste in decoration, and as the servants begin piling the trunks one on top of another and start unlocking them like worker bees, ushering their contents away into the house, Vi finds it difficult to reconcile that this is really their new home. They are going to live here in Piltover, not Zaun. They have people working for them. They have a roof that doesn’t leak.
They did nothing to earn this, while they just left behind everything their family has ever worked for in the only city Vi has ever loved. And for what?
Vander must notice her brooding because he gives her a big clap on the back. “Worry not, my darling girl. It might not look like home now, but we’ll put our own spin on the place. Zaun it up a bit.”
“It needs a coat of paint,” Vi mutters, crossing her arms.
“It needs a good family to come make a life in it.”
“Whatever possessed you to take this kind of offer—” Vi steps quickly aside to avoid a servant swinging around a large rug, “—I will never know. Vander, we didn’t need to do this. Our life was good. We didn’t have a lot, but we didn’t need it. And the people of Zaun didn’t need to call you Baron to know that you were the man in charge.”
Vander sighs, ushering her out of the servants’ way. They stand in front of a sitting nook in their large living room, facing a massive window that overlooks their front yard and the square beyond, lined with more huge houses just like theirs. People are walking through the square. Piltovan people, who crane their necks to try and catch a glimpse at the new Baron. If only they knew who exactly that new Baron is.
“I know you are upset,” he says, holding her by the shoulders like he would when she was a child. It still works on her now; she immediately calms down. “And I know you think that by accepting this offer of a title, that I’ve sold out to Piltover. That I have turned my back on Zaun and the life we built there.”
“That’s the understatement of the century.”
“The reason I accepted the offer,” Vander says, “is because of you. You and Powder and Mylo and Claggor, all the people in the world who matter to me. I spent so many years of my life fighting, running, scrounging what I could to piece together a life I could be proud of. I never wanted that kind of life for you four, but you’ve had to live it because of the confines of our station. Now, I can provide you all a better life. A comfortable life.”
“I don’t want a comfortable life,” Vi whispers. “I want our life.”
“This can be our life,” he replies. “No matter where we are, no matter what we’re called, we’re all still a family. We’re together. Piltover or Zaun, that will never change.”
Vi keeps her jaw clenched but her shoulders go slack. Vander feels her relax, just a little bit, and breathes his own sigh of relief.
“I’m going to go set up my study,” he says. “You have your pick of the bedrooms, if your raucous siblings didn’t find their way to them first. At least try to get settled—we’re expected at the Hoskel ball at the end of the week, and I want us to at least try to make a good impression. As my eldest daughter, even if you aren’t necessarily on the marriage market, everyone will be looking at you as much as they will be looking at me.”
Vi scoffs. “Impossible. You’re so big nobody could possibly ignore you.”
“Even so,” Vander chuckles. “You might find a place for yourself here.”
“Or I could make a complete fool of myself and drive right back out of this city with my middle fingers hanging out the window.”
“Only time will tell.”
Vander leaves Vi alone in the living room, with the trunks and the dust and the ivy that just kisses the outside of the huge windowpane at the front of the house. She tucks herself into the sitting space beneath it, disturbing moth-eaten pillows that will definitely be the first thing she decides to chuck when the time comes. There are a few birds splashing in the fountain beyond, and Vi has to admit, it’s kind of cute. The quiet of this city calms her mind. She surrenders herself to it for a moment.
She thinks about what Vander said and sighs, tracing her finger along the seam of the window. She knows he’s right, but part of her is still boiling inside, raging against all those stuffy people walking outside with their frilly umbrellas and feathered coats, people who don’t give a single fuck about the people of Zaun they have been exploiting for years in the name of their own progress.
Vi’s eyes trace over these people, one by one, until her eyes fall on one of the houses just across the square from theirs. It is far and away the most stately, dwarfing the houses around it. It’s shrouded in shady willow trees, but even through them Vi can see an impressive white and blue stone exterior, outfitted with HexTech lights that cast a peaceful baby blue glow on the doors and windows. White jasmine blooms around its roof and down its sides, their little petals scattering whenever the wind blows. There is no way in hell that anyone actually lives in a place like that, so polished and perfect, any Piltovan architect’s wet dream.
Through one of the bay windows, with deep blue curtains half-drawn over the glass, Vi can just barely see the shape of a woman, and it’s only when this woman tips her face and the inside of her book into the light to read does she really see what she looks like. Even then it’s only in glimpses—a waterfall of dark blue hair pinned away the face, the sleek line of a cheekbone, the ghost of a pink tongue at a plush lip as she licks her finger to turn her page. Even these little pieces fit together into one beautiful whole, enough to make Vi blush where she sits.
Vi’s eyes tick over to the front doors of the house, which are emblazoned with a crest. Not a knocker like their house has but an etching in the very wood of their doors, just slightly darker than the surface around it.
Two keys interlocked, their tops forming curling K’s.
* * *
Vi has never attended a society ball before, so she’s not really sure what to expect. The closest she’s gotten to experiencing any kind of social event in her life was the parties she’d attend in basements, on crumbling rooftops, after-hours at The Last Drop once she got old enough. She’d drink her grain alcohol straight from the bottle and she never had to worry about what she wore or what others thought of her. She could wear what she wanted, say what she wanted. She could be exactly the woman she was meant to be.
The minute she enters this party, though, she feels immediately judged. Even the Baron Lord Hoskel’s servants eye her warily when she and Powder emerge from one carriage, her brothers and father from the other. Everyone is dressed much better than they were when they arrived at Piltover at the beginning of the week, thanks to Vander’s new fortune and willingness to rush-order new garments. They still have their Zaunite flair, found in the deep browns and reds of their outfits that signal them as a unit, but Vi still feels strange wearing a well-tailored maroon coat that echoes her father’s and pants made of finer material than she’s ever felt on her legs. She wears leather riding boots that Vander picked out for her, but she misses her heavy work boots. This outfit is her, but at the same time it is not.
So, she pops the inner collar of her button-down, enough to see it above the fine embroidered collar of her jacket. Fuck conformity.
Powder is a sight, certainly prettier than Vi will ever feel at one of these silly balls. She’s wearing a pale blue dress with beading on the bodice that rains down into her waist like droplets. It’s that same HexTech blue that seems to be in fashion with the Piltovans these days, the very same tech that has captured her attention from the time she was small. Figures she would be eager to learn from the very city where the tech was invented, even if she still misses Zaun with all her heart. Vi wishes she could muster even half that excitement.
Mylo and Claggor sidle up on either side of her and stick out their arms for her to tuck her gloved hands into. Vander smirks and offers his own to Vi, who rolls her eyes and takes it.
The Hoskels’ Piltover home is slightly larger than the Vanders’, made of thick black stone that glistens under the HexTech streetlamps. Vi thinks it looks distinctly like a fancy cave wall, but when she tells Vander that he swats her hand and she shuts up.
She can hear the music from outside, even before the servants open the doors to the main entry hall. A string quartet, bowing and plucking away. When they are escorted inside there are few people at the entrance, as most people have already joined the party in the ballroom, but the few people that do see them arrive gasp when they see them. Some look at Vander’s hulking form, a workman’s body wrangled into fine dress. Others look at Mylo’s hair, which could barely be contained with a whole canister of gel and has already started popping out of its coif.
Mostly, though, they look at Vi. Especially the women, and not in the way Vi likes.
They enter the ballroom as a family, and the scrutiny only gets worse. Vi glances at the society women she passes, who cover their lips with fans to hide the fact that they’re obviously talking about her. They’re all dressed like Powder but even more extravagant, and it’s clear they’ve had many more years to get used to wearing money than their family. One woman eyes her pants and pales, pressing a hand to her chest like she’s bound to swoon if she looks any longer.
Vi sneers at the floor. Fucking drama queen.
“Chin up, poppet,” Vander murmurs. “Don’t let them get to you.”
The ballroom is decked out in sweeping jewel tones, carmine reds and forest greens and decadent purples. In addition to the curtains that cascade over the huge windows lining the back of the ballroom, overlooking a modest but well-kept city garden in the back, there are huge swaths of fabric hanging above them in fluttering canopies. The quartet is in the center of the room with a polished dance floor carved out of the middle where men and women dance with one another in practiced styles. Vi knows a couple of them—Vander kind of forced her to, so she wouldn’t “cling to the wall” or whatever—but mostly they pale in comparison to the lively dancing they have in Zaun. Dancing she’ll probably never get to do again.
Vander approaches an older woman dressed in a lavish red gown. Despite the fact that it’s May, she’s wearing a full mink shawl. Despite the stares, she embraces Vander with open arms.
“Ah, Vander!” she says jubilantly. “Or should I say Lord Vander now. How time has a funny way of changing things.”
“It’s been a long time,” he says. “How is your husband these days, the rascal?”
“Cold,” the woman hums. “And yet somehow even in a grave he is more bearable than he once was.”
Vander looks a bit uncomfortable, but she laughs enough for the both of them. Awkwardly, he recovers and places a hand at Vi’s back, ushering her towards the woman. “May I present my eldest daughter, Violet. Vi, this is our host, the Baroness Lady Alana Hoskel.”
“Dowager Baroness,” the lady says, shaking her hand. “And please, call me Alana.”
“Then you must call me Vi. Everyone does.”
“Wonderful,” Alana chuckles. “I’m quite fond of the flower for which you are named. I should find it keen to plant some this season. Tell me girl, are you on the marriage mart this fine year? You seem… what, twenty-and-four?”
“Five actually,” Vi says, chuckling nervously. “And no, I don’t have any interest in marriage. I’m just adjusting to life in our new home.”
“Yes, I’m sure you should find it very different from the tromping ground of your youth,” Alana says. “But alas, you have time! When I was a girl, my father put me on the mart when I was naught but eighteen. These days spinster age doesn’t come around ‘till thirty, and most girls don’t start the hunt ‘till their mid-twenties anyway, which is a welcome thing. I’m sure you’ll find a respectable husband before long, and at your own pace.”
Vi grits her teeth. Vander’s hand tightens around hers, not a warning but a reminder. Keep your head. “Of course. A husband.”
Alana scans over her outfit, her keen eyes just as cool and discerning as the rest of the ton. Vi doesn’t shrink away, but she does feel the cold curl of disappointment in her gut when she realizes that this woman, however warm her welcome, might judge her the same way the rest of these people are.
“Although,” Alana says, ticking her head to the side. “According to your demeanor and manner of dress, a man may not be of particular interest to a woman like you.”
Vi is so caught off guard, she barks out a laugh. She slaps a hand over her mouth and chokes on the sound, leading her father to stare at her concernedly. She waves him off and Alana laughs even harder.
“You must think me a stuffy hag!” Alana says as Vi collects herself. She turns a twinkling eye on Vi and whispers low, “Though you have much to learn about this ton and the rules therein, you must take this old bird’s advice: there is leeway everywhere, for everything. You just have to know which lines are for crossing and which are not.”
“Wonderful advice, Lady Hoskel,” Vander says with a warm smile. He pats Vi’s hand comfortingly and says, “We shall make our rounds now. We will return with farewells before we depart.”
“And a drink, we should hope. These balls can get dreadfully boring. Lord knows we need something to lighten things up a bit.”
Vander takes Vi away from Alana and she finally releases her father’s arm. As soon as they are out of ear and eyeshot of the lady, he stoops down and whispers, “The Hoskels are old business contacts with Undercity interests, so it’s best to have a good relationship with them going forward. You did great back there. I’m proud of you.”
Vi’s chest swells with pride, and she walks a little taller into the crowd. She doesn’t look away when the women stare at her now—in fact, she looks right back. She even locks eyes with one particularly fine blonde woman and winks, something that causes the other woman to sneer and turn away, albeit with the ghost of a blush on her cheeks.
Maybe Lady Hoskel was right. Maybe this place isn’t so different from Zaun after all, she just needs to learn a whole new set of rules for a whole new ball game.
Vander parts to speak to a few men in a corner, guffawing and offering firm handshakes when he sees them, so Vi seeks out Powder. It’s hard to find her when so many other women are wearing a very similar color to the dress she has on, and everything blurs together in a crowd like this.
Her eyes don’t find what she’s looking for, but instead land somewhere entirely different: on the other side of the room, in the middle of a crowd of men fussing like birds around her, she catches a glimpse of a familiar curtain of dark blue hair.
She stares across the dance floor, eyes hungrily moving over the woman’s form, a body she has only seen in glimpses before through her window. The longer she looks the more she is completely certain this is the woman who lives in the house across the square from them, who spends so many of her days reading in the bay window in a satin slip and shawl. Tonight her hair is impeccably done, pinned all on the top of her head except for a single long, shining curl that hangs across her delicate right shoulder. Her pins are all topped with pearls, creating a little white constellation in her dark hair. Her dress is not light blue like many other ladies, but a deep navy blue complementary to the color of her hair. Its puffed sleeves hug her upper arms, slightly defined with muscle, still ladylike but different from what Vi has seen thus far on these society women who have all but balked at Vi’s own rough physique.
One of the men bows before her, takes her gloved hand in his, and kisses it. The woman’s face is neutral until he lifts his eyes to her, then she summons a perfectly presentable smile. She has a gap in her front teeth, such a simple imperfection on such a beautiful woman that it almost makes Vi laugh. He gestures to her dance card and she jots his name down, and he sweeps her onto the dance floor. The woman behind her, who looks remarkably similar to the woman, smiles proudly as they go.
The quartet chooses a new song, something a little more joyful and fast-paced. The dancers line up in groups of four, preparing for a quadrille, and as the dance begins the two men and two women each trade off partners, but each time the man and the blue-haired woman come back together, he looks at her like she hung the moon. As Vi watches them make pass after pass, him muttering things to her that no doubt would make most women swoon, all she does is smile and give brief replies in concert. Her expression does not change from its collected state, but the poor sucker doesn’t see it. He just seems happy to have her attention. In fact, everyone at the party seems to be very concerned with this couple—or, rather, the female half of it.
Damn, who is this woman? She has practically the whole party drooling at her feet.
When the song is finished, the man separates from the woman, heading towards the refreshments table. None of the other men swoop in for her, no matter how eager they look, and Vi thinks that must be some kind of code of politeness these men follow, something akin to taking turns on the playground swing. Nobody interrupts when a man is with a lady, unless they want to seem rude.
Vi, however, isn’t a man at all.
She swipes a flute of champagne from the tray of a nearby servant and makes her way around the circumference of the dance floor. She receives some furtive glances, but people pay less attention to her now that they have dancers to watch. The closer she gets to the woman, alone in the crowd, the more her palms sweat around the stem of her glass, but she musters all of her charm and every ounce of manners Vander taught her before coming to Piltover and sidles up beside her.
The woman glances at her. It’s a quick thing, but it’s long enough for Vi to see how blue her eyes are, like crystalline pools. Those eyes widen a fraction when she registers Vi.
“Nice party, huh?” Vi says. She can’t think of what else to start with, and she feels a little foolish for it.
The woman blinks at her. “What?”
“The party,” Vi says, slower. “It’s nice.”
“You…” The woman starts, but eventually her lips snap shut and she thinks more carefully about her words. “I don’t believe we have been yet acquainted. You are?”
Vi struggles to remember her title, but eventually does. “Violet Vander, daughter of Lord William Vander. And you?”
“I find it very hard to believe you don’t already know my name.”
Vi pauses. At first she thinks the woman is kidding, but the hard line of her face, not even turned in Vi’s direction quite yet, says otherwise. “I don’t, actually. That’s kind of the point of an introduction, isn’t it?”
The woman turns to Vi fully now, lips parted suddenly. She looks as if she were suddenly slapped back to reality.
“Forgive me,” she says quickly. She sticks out her hand, as if to shake Vi’s. “Caitlyn Kiramman, daughter of the Duke and Duchess Kiramman. I am pleased to meet your acquaintance, Violet.”
Vi’s eyebrows almost disappear into her hairline. A duchy, huh? That explains a lot.
Caitlyn keeps her hand out, and each passing second between them where Vi does nothing makes her feel even stranger. Even Caitlyn is looking at her like she just sprouted another head. So, in a moment of sheer panic, Vi does exactly what she saw that man do before. She takes Caitlyn’s hand, feeling her lithe fingers through the smooth material of her gloves, dips into a perfect bow with one hand behind her back, and kisses the back of it.
That must not have been the right move at all, because the group of men that had been following Caitlyn like a herd of sheep immediately begin whispering, looking affronted. One of the girls beside them gasps, and Caitlyn’s face flushes a deep and embarrassed red.
“That—” Caitlyn stammers, wrenching her hand away. “That is highly improper, miss. You forget yourself.”
“I was just introducing myself. I thought you’d want me to do it properly.”
“Not proper for a woman, for God’s sake!” Caitlyn spits. The woman across the room who looks to be her mother—probably the Duchess Kiramman, fuck—looks the most affronted of all. Caitlyn is looking around now too, and hides her reddened face behind her fluttering fan. She hisses low to Vi, “Now look what you’ve done, everyone is staring.”
“It was just a mistake,” Vi says. “No need to get all flustered about it. I’ll know for next time.”
“There will not be a next time,” Caitlyn insists. “I don’t know what you think you’re doing here, behaving like a man in a man’s state of dress, but… but it is simply not how we do things here.”
Vi fumes. “Oh, now what’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that though you did not know who I was, I certainly know who you are,” Caitlyn shoots back. “I was told of the Vander family, where you came from. I don’t know what things are like in the city of Zaun, but we have practices here. Rules. You can’t just go around flouting them, it will mean nothing but strife for your family.”
“Is that what you really think?”
“It is what I know,” Caitlyn says. “Now go, before people start to talk. I cannot afford a scandal at the dawn of my season, and your family can’t afford any more ill whispers in your direction.”
“But—”
“Just go.”
Vi opens her mouth to say something else, to throw the woman’s ire right back in her face, but Caitlyn is right—people are looking, and despite Vi’s temper and the distinguished fact that she doesn’t actually give a fuck what others think of her, she has her family to think about. Her father. They have a title now, and for some fucked-up reason Vander seems intent on keeping, so she can’t be the one to ruin this for them.
Still, even as she turns from Caitlyn, she looks over her shoulder at the woman, shining in her dress, wearing her stringent composure like a gag, and says, “Have fun in your cage then, Miss Kiramman.”
* * *
Powder has always had a fondness for the wall, and the gossip that comes to your ears when you hug it. It was always her preferred place in Zaun, skirting rooftops and shadows, listening in on what others have to say. How they live their lives. In another life she thinks she might have spent most of her time in those shadows, hunkered out of the public eye, twiddling with her inventions and her journal in some cavern somewhere, a happy little bat.
Sadly, her life is this, and that means walking among the very same people who, without the safety of her shiny new title, would eat her alive if given half the chance.
When no one is looking, she removes scraps of paper from her bodice and a tiny pencil from the tangle of braids piled atop her head, and she jots down notes on whatever she hears. Servants, debutantes, noblemen, cooks—everyone seems to have something to say about just about everyone else. This is even better fodder than she had in Zaun, and that was some pretty juicy stuff!
With this kind of information, who knows what secrets she could unfold? What power she could accrue? It almost makes her salivate, thinking of what people might say when they read it.
Powder never had any real power in the Undercity. She was part of a powerful family, yes—being adopted by Vander affords her the same privileges of a born child, legally speaking, which is why she can Vi are technically titled while Mylo and Claggor as fosters are not—but it was always Vander who was the strong one. Vi, too, once she got older. Powder struggled to find her way in a family that, for a long time, treated her like a kid prone exclusively to fuck-ups. She doesn’t hold that over them, considering how difficult their lives have been thus far, especially when they were all young, but it does affect a girl. That insecurity continues to be a sore spot, even now that she’s eighteen and a legal adult. Writing became one of the only things that was truly just hers.
And she was really fucking good at it.
“I heard the Viscountess Shoola orchestrated her inheritance,” one of the maids says to another as they hide behind a pillar. “How else do you think an only child, and a daughter at that, was able to secure such a large fortune exclusively in her name?”
The other gasps. “You’re joking.”
“I am not. There are male cousins, and yet, she has her future and title secured. Imagine that.”
“So do you think her father’s death was truly accidental, then?”
“Can’t say one way or another, but it wouldn’t surprise me if there were more sinister cards in play, considering that family’s reputation.”
Powder snorts and immediately puts the conversation to memory to jot down later.
(Well, maybe not the accusation of murder. She should probably start smaller than that.)
She finally comes off the wall when she finally sees Vi, looking sullen after that encounter with the daughter of Duchess Kiramman. Powder saw the whole thing, but Vi rushed off so quickly afterward that even Powder couldn’t track her down to console her. She felt terrible, but the gossip in her preened. Figures Vi would make an instant faux pas regarding some woman in the ton. Seriously, look at her—she’s not exactly the picture of glittering heteronormativity.
Vi wouldn’t hate her if she published just a little something about it in her very first issue, right? After all, Powder is trying to keep people off her trail, and here in Piltover it seems that secrecy is a kind of currency that is worth its weight in gold.
Still, she should go run it by her first, and perhaps give her a few words of encouragement. And if a few deprecating jokes make their way in there, well, all in sisterly fun. She makes her way through the crowd, which has grown so large it’s almost disorienting. The Kiramman heir is on the dance floor again and all eyes are on her, which means that no eyes are on Powder, and by extension, her stung sister. She picks up her skirts and hurries, but trips over the hem as she reaches the edge of the crowd.
Her whole world tilts and she grabs for anything she can to break her fall and keep the seal of her corset from shattering any of her thin ribs. She feels something cool and stony under her hands and for just a moment thinks she’s safe.
That is, until she realizes that she’s taken hold of a large stone vase filled with expensive-looking flowers, and the vase and marble pedestal are going right down with her.
She swings her arms and clutches the vase, trying to keep it from the floor, but it’s like watching a carriage lose its wheel in slow motion. She can see the wheel rolling away, causing the whole carriage to bob and skitter on the dirt ground until it rolls to a stop into a large tree big enough to halt its force. She falls ass over teakettle with the pillar and feels its marble crack underneath her, leaving the vase to shatter into a million pieces all over the floor.
The sound turns every eye in the vicinity to her. She freezes, clutching the now-broken marble pillar beneath her. She checks her hands—no bleeding, thank God—but becomes acutely aware of the two figures standing in front of her, eying her shocked like she’s a nasty roach on the floor of this fine ball.
Lady Hoskel stares at the broken vase and purses her lips. Beside her, none other than the Duchess Cassandra Kiramman recoils, face full of disgust.
“Oh dear,” Lady Hoskel says. “What a shame, I loved that one.”
“What on Earth is the meaning of this?” Cassandra exclaims as Powder scrambles to her feet. She feels strong hands at her back, helping her up. It’s Vi, there at her side like she has been Powder’s entire life. “Such clumsiness—and to destroy a vase that I gifted to my dear friend a decade ago!”
“I—I’m sorry,” Powder stammers, feeling heat rush to her cheeks. “I don’t know what—”
“Apologies are insufficient,” Cassandra says. “Do you know how much that vase cost? It’s borderline priceless. A true lady would watch her step so that something like this would not happen in the first place.”
Lady Hoskel calls over a servant to help clean it up. She doesn’t look frazzled in the slightest, but Lady Kiramman certainly does. Powder feels her stomach climb right into her throat.
“We will gladly pay for the damages,” Vander says, stepping into the conversation. “She is my daughter, so I will take responsibility for this.”
“How kind, Lord Vander,” Lady Hosekl says. “But it is unnecessary.”
“What is necessary is for the Vander family to learn some manners,” Cassandra mutters, turning away.
Powder almost doesn’t catch the next thing she says, because they are almost out of earshot as Vi ushers her quickly away, but she hears Cassandra’s voice again, low and sour, as she says to Lady Hoskel:
“My, that girl does seem like quite a jinx, doesn’t she?”
This is what puts Powder right over the edge. Her throat thickens and her eyes begin to water. She tries her best to hide her tears behind her hands, water staining the beautiful lace of her gloves, as Vi rubs her back and keeps her protected from the wicked eyes of society. Vi flags down Vander and their brothers and takes her right to the door, and it is only in the cool night air that Powder realizes how out of place they truly were in there, how no amount of beautifully embroidered dresses and smart dancing and kind words will make those Piltovans see her as anything but trash.
And it’s only on the carriage ride home, Vi dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief like the older sister she is, that Powder feels the burn of something new curdled with the embarrassment that lies deep in her gut:
Determination.
Determination, and scorn.
* * *
Dearest Gentle Reader,
How wonderful it is to meet your humble acquaintance. This columnist, while new, is intent on delivering Piltover the only thing that seems to truly sate its progressive thirst: information.
Perhaps it would please this ton to know that the distinguished Viscountess Shoola has done very well for herself with her vast recent inheritance, of which much of the funds have been secured through less-than-savory means. If you do not believe this nameless woman, then turn your attention towards a Zaunite merchant by the name of Millay, who has handled the laundering of said money through secondary avenues.
If that is enough to convince the distinguished ton of my keen ear, then I will move on to more immediate murmurings, these surrounding the newly-minted Vander family, who made their own sort of debut at the Hoskel ball just two eves ago. The eldest daughter of this gaggle, Violet Vander, made quite a splash in an unsavory outfit—mannish, by definition. Not only did she make an unscrupulous move upon Caitlyn Kiramman, heir to the Kiramman fortune and the Queen’s once-in-a-season diamond, her sister Powder Vander took a right tumble into one of Lady Alana Hoskel’s most prized items—and in turn, stumbled into the sight of this ton’s most discerning eyes.
Though this writer has to wonder, based on the reaction of the Duchess, whether there was more on her mind that eve than the blunder of one young girl. She was certainly strung quite tight all evening, and her daughter seemed almost too composed with each of her many suitors. If love is to be in the air this season—or, at the very least, a match for the diamond worth celebrating—the Kirammans have to work a lot harder to convince the ton that their preparations for their daughter have been worthwhile.
And what could be worse? An heir unmarried, or no heir at all?
Yours Truly,
Lady Whistledown