And this was the woman we were trusting to keep the Eagles off our backs—where one wrong move on her part would leave us with Prometheus’s entire army closing in around us.
“What I regret,” she went on, softly, “was not getting to see her before the mission. She’s undercover most of the time, and comes through so rarely. I wish I’d been able to speak to her one more time.”
I looked down to see Olivia gripping the edge of the roof, white-knuckled and tense. I could feel the fury and helplessness in her as if it were magic, visible to my other senses. She didn’t look at me, all the intensity of her gaze dissipating into the mist-filled air over the city.
I began to retreat, knowing there was nothing I could say. But as I got to my feet she spoke again, her voice emerging in a mumble.
“Oren told me once that he hurt you.”
I swallowed, thinking of my torn earlobe, and of Oren’s refusal to believe that he hadn’t done it in his shadow state. “No,” I said. “No, he never has.”
“Then he’s certainly afraid he might. That’s why I’ve been trying to help him. There’s a darkness in him that I don’t understand, but he’s terrified of it. He’s afraid it’ll make him hurt you, the way you hurt Nina.”
Sick with regret, I wished I could reach out to Olivia—but my touch was the last thing she’d want. I had no idea Oren was so afraid of the shadow inside himself down here, when there was more than enough magic to keep him human. But then, wasn’t I terrified of the darkness in me?
“Thank you,” I whispered.
“I was never doing it for you,” Olivia said, her voice as dry as ice. “But he is.”
“What?”
“That’s why he works so hard. So he won’t hurt you.”
I walked back to my room with my thoughts buzzing. About Olivia and her unreadable face. About Nina, the girl she loved, out of touch and in such danger for so long. About Wesley, and how readily he’d agreed to our plan despite the huge personal danger to himself. About Basil, and the tiniest possibility that he could be alive somewhere in Prometheus’s cells, suffering the way I had in the Institute. My thoughts circled around and around, meshing together like delicate, intricate cogs in a machine, always spinning back to one thing.Oren.
I told him what I told you, Olivia had said, as we parted. That he should talk to the people he cares about before tomorrow.
I was so lost in my head that I forgot to check for the guard in the hallway and put up an illusion to let myself back in. It was dark, but not so dark that I couldn’t see the figure leaning against the wall opposite my door. I skidded to a halt, heart pounding.
It was as if I’d summoned him with my thoughts, as though reality had somehow replaced my guard with the one person I actually wanted to see. Oren lifted his head, raising an eyebrow at me. “So much for not wandering around by yourself like I told you.”
“I don’t take orders so well anymore.” I pressed a hand to my ribcage, where it felt like my lungs were seizing with the sudden jolt of adrenaline. “What’re you doing out here?”
“You weren’t very good at taking orders to begin with,” he pointed out. “I told the guard I’d take over for him for a while. You think I can’t sense you in there? And more importantly, when you’re not in there?”
I gaped at him. I knew I could feel him with my magic, could sense the dark pit of the shadow inside him. But I had no idea that the connection went both ways.
“Did you find whatever you were looking for?” he asked, straightening.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Maybe. I have no idea.”
He didn’t ask what I meant, and I didn’t offer an explanation. After a long pause, he broke the silence. “It’s a good plan.” He was repeating himself, his voice low to avoid echoing down the long corridor. “Despite everything that’s happened, they believe in you.”
I took a breath, a knot of tension uncoiling under the pressure and making me blurt, “That’s what scares me.”
He shifted, straightening and stepping away from the wall half a pace. “What do you mean?”
My eyes met his, and then it was like the rift between us had never been there. I could almost imagine us back in the forest together, under the stars, where my biggest fear was the vastness of the sky.
“Making these decisions for people,” I whispered. “Asking them to give their lives. I’m not supposed to be this person— I was never supposed to be this person. I barely ever made decisions for myself.” I could feel the fear and doubt rising up, prickling behind my eyes, choking my voice. “The first real decision I ever made was to run away.”
I half-expected Oren to reach for me and attempt to comfort me in some way, but he stayed where he was, listening, watching me through the gloom.
“Nina almost died because of me.” I wrapped my own arms around myself, a barrier between me and the world. “Tomorrow more people might die, because of me.”
“Yes.” The word was quiet, calm. It brought me up short, made my gaze swing back to Oren’s. I could see his pale blue eyes in the dark, startling, fixed on mine. “But they’ve chosen it, this fight. You haven’t forced them to do anything. If we die tomorrow, we die having chosen for ourselves.”
We stood on opposite sides of the corridor, staring at each other across the empty space between us. There was so much I wished I could say—that I was glad he’d chosen what he did, that I was glad he was fighting for me, that if we survived tomorrow I wanted us to stay, or to go, or to do anything, as long as it was both of us together.
But the words stuck in my throat. All I could think of was what Olivia had said to me, her words buzzing in my thoughts. No regrets.
“Oren, I wanted to tell you—”
“I should get back to bed.” Oren spoke almost at the same time I did, drowning out my words. He stopped, blinking. “What?”
My throat felt scratchy, dry as chalk. “Nothing. I’ll see you in the morning.”
Oren took a few steps back, so that when I reached my door there was still more space between us than either of us could reach across. He stopped then to nod at me, the pale eyes serious. “In the morning,” he echoed. And then he was gone.
CHAPTER 21
A hand shook me awake, scattering my incoherent dreams. I didn’t remember falling asleep, but as my eyes focused sluggishly on Marco’s face, I knew I must have done so at some point.
“Time to get ready,” he said, his voice flat. There was no sign of the emotion I’d glimpsed in him the night before. Now he was all hard angles, giving me nothing. “Get to the War Room when you’re done here.”
He left me to get dressed. There was no silent gift of new clothes this time, no thoughtful touches. So I pulled on the same clothes I’d worn during the mission with Nina, ignoring the smell of sweat and battle that still clung to them. The hole in the shoulder of the jacket lined up perfectly with the bandage over my healing wound. The rest of it was littered with scratches that hadn’t made it through the thick leather, and I realized how close I’d come many times over to being torn to ribbons.
I slid both paper birds into my pocket next to the blackout device, then slipped Oren’s knife into a sheath secured to the inside of my boot. The boots were slightly too large for me, but they were better than the ratty shoes that had brought me here from the Institute. I laced them up and headed out.
The others were waiting in the War Room when I got there, with bowls of porridge for breakfast. Parker, Marco, Wesley, Olivia, Dorian and a couple of Iron Wood Renewables were scattered around the table, and all looked up when I walked in. Oren was seated at the far end of the table and glanced at me before looking back down at his bowl as if surprised to find it there.