Blake MacLeish is fourteen years old when for maybe the hundredth time her life falls apart, except this time it's real.
She's fourteen when her secret service guard grabs her by the arm and steers her into a car and takes her and her sister to the White House, fourteen when she holds a confused and crying Lexi in her lap as the adults refuse to say anything, anything to her, and fourteen when she finds out her mother killed her father and that both of them were traitors to the United States of America.
Blake is fourteen and she's tall for her age with caramel-colored hair and warm brown eyes just a little too serious for her round face and she's fourteen and oh God what is going to happen to Lexi?
What's going to happen to her?
She can't breathe as the official tells her something else and then something about how she should wait to tell Lexi the truth and she can't handle this right now but she has to.
She's always had to.
It's part and parcel to being a politician's daughter and a combat soldier's daughter before that. Blake is used to not mattering, used to being an overthought, as long as Lexi is okay. As long as Lexi is loved. She's grown hard to her parents promises and empty words and that's okay. She's okay.
Except her parents are dead and traitors and she's not so okay after all. Three hours ago she was the daughter of the Vice President of the United States and now she'll be the most hated fourteen year old in the nation, all because of who her father is. Was.
Lexi is asleep in her lap, a thumb in her mouth even though she's seven going on eight and for a moment, Blake is so incredibly jealous of her.
Lexi only knows the best of their parents.
Blake doesn't know how to shield her from this.