The Girl Who Dared to Endure

  “I figured you’d need a big meal if you missed dinner last night. Did you remember dinner?”

  Tian’s eyes flashed, and she gave me a sulky look. “Yes,” she said, drawing the syllable out.

  “What was it?” I asked, preparing myself for the worst.

  “It was a pickle sandwich,” Liam announced. “Literally a pickle, wedged between two pieces of bread.”

  “Delicious,” Tian said, kissing the tips of her fingers. “I am an excellent chef.”

  I snorted and pointed to the chair. “Sit down and eat up. I’ll get some fruit later, okay?”

  “Okay,” she said, dropping into an open chair. I took the one across from her, leaving Liam the chair between us. Tian picked up a fork and prepared to spear a little golden potato, but then paused and cast a look over her shoulder. “You hungry? My brother Quess is amazing at almost everything, including cooking. You should really try the potatoes. At a certain point, you’d think there’s too much garlic, but then nope, he proves you wrong. He is also an excellent chef.”

  Liam frowned and looked back over at me. “She’s just… like this?” he asked me, completely bewildered. “Like… all the time? It isn’t a ploy to get me to talk or reveal secrets about myself or anything?”

  I looked at Tian, who was now happily ignoring both of us in order to eat, and then back to him. “She’s just Tian, and this is just breakfast. I won’t lie and tell you I’m not going to ask you some questions, but I also want you to know that I’m not going to hurt you, or starve you, to get answers. If you don’t want to tell me, that’s fine, but it will only be worse for you the longer you stay silent.”

  The boy considered this for a long time, and after a few seconds had gone by, I returned my focus to my own plate and started eating. Tian was right about Quess’s use of garlic: almost overpowering, but then again not. I wasn’t sure how he did it, but the food was delicious. I was a quarter of the way through my plate when the legs of the empty chair scraped along the floor. A second later, Liam dropped into it and reached for the spoon I had left next to the plate.

  I let him enjoy a few big bites, and then cleared my throat. “It’s pretty good, right?” His eyes darted up at me, and he nodded, but didn’t slow down or pause to respond. It was my fault; it wasn’t exactly a question that called for a lengthy response. “How does it compare to the MREs?” I asked casually, taking another bite of my potatoes.

  His eyes widened, and then he looked down at his bowl of food. “You weren’t ‘posed to see me take those,” he said sullenly. “I caught a whoopin’ because of you.”

  “Someone hit you?” Tian squeaked, flashing me wide, fearful eyes.

  “Someone’s always hitting someone where I’m from.” He put his spoon down on the table with a click. “But I’m not telling you nothing about that.”

  I studied him for a second. “About what?” I asked innocently.

  “About my home. About my people.”

  “Oh.” I paused so I could take another bite, then chew, and then swallow. “That’s okay. You don’t have to.”

  I was studying his reaction closely, so I didn’t miss the flicker of surprise and uncertainty there. “I… I don’t? But you…”

  “We were beating up your leader, Mathias,” I said, and his eyes widened in recognition.

  “Does he know I’m here?” he asked, his voice barely a whisper.

  I cocked my head at him. If Mathias had, it wouldn’t matter. Still, I wasn’t sure breaking the news that we had killed his leader was the best way to tell him that, and it certainly wouldn’t do much to reassure him.

  “No,” I replied. “Why? What would happen if he knew?”

  “Nothing,” the boy said quickly, leaning forward to resume shoveling food into his mouth at a rapid pace, as if a full mouth would keep him from having to say anything. I tried not to let my frustration show. He was clearly lying, but if I pointed that out to him now, he’d clam up completely. I wasn’t even sure why he was talking to me. Was it because Tian had spent all night sleeping on his back, or was it because he was inexperienced?

  “That’s good,” I said idly, deciding to test the waters to see how he’d react if he found out otherwise. “I’d suggest you keep your voice down, though. He’s right in the next room.”

  His eyes rounded, and his head whipped back and forth between the walls, as if wondering which side was more dangerous. “Can he hear us?”

  “Only if we get too loud,” I told him with a smile. “Why? He can’t get out of there. You’re safe.”

  Liam’s mouth pulled down. “No one’s safe from him. If I mess up, if I let anything slip to you, he’ll throw me off the Tower. And if he won’t, then he will.”

  The way Liam said the second “he” told me he was talking about somebody else. But who? Not Sadie. Then maybe Plain-Face? “Who?” I asked.

  He glanced at me, his expression immediately closeted. “No one.”

  A lie—but I could tell by how tight his face was that he wasn’t going to answer, and I wasn’t going to push. He was clearly afraid, but at least he had taught me something: there was another “he” in the picture after all, maybe the ‘he’ that Baldy had mentioned. I leaned back in my chair and studied him, deciding to take a different approach. “Is that an expression?” I asked, hoping that it was. “The thing you said about them throwing people off the Tower? Are you just exaggerating to prove a point?”

  Liam gave me an annoyed look and folded his arms over his chest. “No,” he said flatly. “Sometimes he makes us all come and watch, if’n one of us screwed up bad enough to warrant the drop.”

  “Us?” I asked casually, keeping my body relaxed so as not to show the sudden tension that came over me. They threw people off the Tower if they didn’t follow the rules? And they made the others watch, in order to keep them in line? What would happen to the Tower once these people enacted whatever they had in mind for Scipio? That sort of fear tactic was beyond sickening. It was horrifying.

  He shifted in his chair. “It doesn’t matter. Now that I’ve been caught, they’ll be sending people after me. And Mathias.”

  “Can they find you?” I asked.

  He scowled at me. “I shouldn’t be talking to you,” he declared. “This was all a trick, to try to make me tell you about the others.”

  “No,” I replied, shaking my head slowly, trying to emphasize the point. “It isn’t a trick, and I’ve been upfront with you about having questions. I’m not forcing you to answer, but I’m hoping that you will, because you know those people are bad. I promise, you’re safe here. They won’t be able to get you. But I can only keep you safe if you can tell us what they want—and where I can find them.”

  He gave me a pitying look. “You don’t find them. They find you.”

  My frustration with his stubbornness suddenly turned a corner with that condescending statement, and I frowned. I wanted him to believe me when I said we could keep him safe from the legacies, but he also needed to understand the truth of the situation he was in.

  “Look, I mean what I say about trying to help you, but I’m going to be real with you. We are going to find them, one way or another. If you help us, I can make sure that you don’t go down with them, but if you don’t… Well, you’re what, fifteen, sixteen? The Tower will hold you accountable for all of their crimes. You have a choice to make: help us and save yourself, or stay quiet, and go down with them. From the few things you’ve said, they don’t seem like very good people. Why protect them?”

  “That’s my business,” he said, and he abruptly stood up, fast enough to scoot his chair back a few feet with a loud grating sound. “I’m done.”

  I watched as he strode back over to the bed and threw himself down on it, training his gaze on the ceiling. There was a nervousness to his actions that told me he was worried about what we were going to do to him after this act of defiance, but I was happy to let him sit there and realize that I meant what I said. We weren’t going to hurt him. I
worried I had pushed too far, but he needed to know how serious this was. If he didn’t help us, there was nothing I could do to stop the council from charging him. The very least I could do was continue to demonstrate that we weren’t going to hurt him. So I focused on eating my breakfast and talking with Tian.

  It wasn’t easy. I really wanted answers from him, but it warred with my desire to make him feel safe. It had been too much to expect everything to happen easily. Still, he had spoken and felt safe enough to eat.

  And that was something, even if it wasn’t much.

  26

  My meeting with Liam had gone about as well as I had anticipated, possibly better, and I hoped I had started to lay the foundation for establishing a little bit of trust. I left the two of them to their own devices and took the dirty dishes with me to the kitchen. There, I got to work washing them, distracting myself with something mundane before I had to head to the war room, where the others were working.

  Maybe it was wrong of me, but I needed a moment to center myself, and washing dishes had always been slightly meditative for me. Luckily, it was also the most hated chore in the house, which meant I had more than enough to eat up some of my time, because no one had cleaned up the pots and pans from Quess’s breakfast. While I wiped and scrubbed the kitchenware, I took a moment to dissect my earlier emotions—my concern for Eric, my anger at Leo, the horrific glimpse into Liam’s life, and my worry that the group was going to abandon me.

  The last one had been rectified, at least temporarily, but the rest of it was still weighing on me. I knew I had to pull Leo aside to address his behavior, and I wasn’t particularly looking forward to that, but it needed to be done. I couldn’t afford for him to go all renegade if we were going to actually make progress. And while I couldn’t do anything about how Liam was raised, I could let everyone else know about it, so that we all treated him as gently as possible. It wasn’t much, but maybe it would go farther than we thought. As for Eric… Well, I could distract myself for a few more precious moments and check on him on the way to the war room. Zoe was probably in there already, but it couldn’t hurt to look in.

  I did the dishes at a moderate rate, taking care to rinse them thoroughly before setting them on the drying rack and turning on the sterilizing light overhead. Then I dried my hands on a nearby microfiber cloth and made my way back toward the war room.

  I stopped just outside of Eric and Zoe’s room and hit the door button. It slid open, and my mouth dropped as I saw Eric slowly working himself up off the bed and into an upright position, one arm braced on the mattress, the other covering the hole in his chest. I hadn’t expected him to be awake yet—none of us had—and I was pretty sure he wasn’t supposed to be trying to get up and walk around so soon.

  I moved to him quickly, scanning the room for Zoe. To my surprise, she wasn’t there, which explained why Eric was probably trying to get up. “Sit down,” I told him, resting a hand on his shoulder. “You shouldn’t be up.”

  His eyes jerked toward me, and then squinted. “Liana? Where are my glasses? Where’s Zoe? Baldy!” He heaved himself off the bed toward me, staggering forward until his hand grabbed my shoulder and started squeezing almost painfully. “He had a weapon I’d never seen before! Did he hurt her? Where is he?”

  He shook me a little bit at the last question, and it was all I could do to keep from staggering. I loved my friend, but he was a big man who didn’t understand how much strength he actually had in those large arms. “Whoa, calm down,” I said, reaching up to wrap my hands around his forearms. “Zoe is fine and Baldy is dead. Will you please sit down before you take us both to the floor? You can barely stand on your own two feet.”

  “I don’t care,” he replied belligerently. “I want my glasses—I have to see her. I have to make sure she’s okay!”

  “Eric!” I practically shouted. “Why would I lie to you about Zoe’s condition? She’s fine. If you sit down, I will go get her for you. Stop being a thick-headed idiot and sit before you fall!”

  He blinked owlishly at me, and then relaxed his grip some. “She’s okay?”

  “I swear to you,” I said, meeting his confused eyes with calm confidence, letting him know that I was speaking the truth.

  “Huh.” He shook his head and then took a few shaky steps back toward the bed, his knees wobbling. I quickly followed, gripping him under the elbow so I could help him if he lost his balance. He shot me a grateful look, and then ran a hand over his face. “What happened? I don’t remember much, just this guy coming in. Maddox said it was Leo, but the next thing I knew, he had scooped up that thing and was pointing it at us. Then…” He shook his head, his hand rubbing the skin just under his pec.

  I slipped my hand into his own, sensing that he needed some comfort. “You were shot,” I said, not wanting to hide the truth from him. “With a gun. It’s a pre-End weapon that Leo and I uncovered in Lionel’s office, and used when we broke into Sadie’s quarters. Leo left his on the table when we…” I trailed off and realized the story was getting too complicated. “I’m so sorry, Eric. Leo was supposed to be able to control Baldy, but apparently he couldn’t.”

  “Shot?” His face screwed up into a confused look. “A gun?” He rubbed his chest, a pained grimace twisting his lips. “Whatever it was, it sucked. How bad was it?”

  I hesitated, uncertain of how to tell my friend that he had died. That Quess and the others had almost given up on him. That Zoe had almost lost him. I swallowed hard and then looked around the room, searching for some way to change the conversation, and spotted Eric’s spectacles sitting on a little vanity.

  “Hold on,” I said, and went over to retrieve them for him. On the way, I decided to add a mental Cornelius, please tell Zoe to come to Eric’s room.

  Yes, Champion, he replied in my ear, the vibrations making my neck twitch slightly. I reached out and grabbed the glasses, then swung around and headed back over. Eric watched me, his face wearing a contemplative look that told me he’d realized I was trying to avoid the topic.

  “Are you in pain?” I asked as I held the glasses out to him. “You really should be lying down. You lost a lot of blood.”

  He accepted the glasses, breaking eye contact with me for long enough to put them on. But the gaze returned when he was done, heavy and filled with perception. “It was bad, wasn’t it?” he said.

  I pursed my lips together and sighed. “Yes, it was, but you’re okay now. You just need to rest and eat some food. A lot has happened since last night, but Zoe will be here any—”

  I cut off when I heard the sound of heavy boots thundering down the hallway. My eyes widened, and I wisely took a few steps to the side just as the boots came to a sudden, staggering stop outside the door. A second later the door slid open, revealing my best friend, her eyes wide and filled with hope.

  I went still, not wanting to ruin the reunion. If I could’ve, I would’ve slipped out the door, but Zoe was frozen in front of it, both hands gripping the doorframe.

  “Eric?” she asked, as if she hadn’t believed he would actually come back to her.

  “Hey, gorgeous. Check it out, new scar.” He smiled tremulously and then waggled his eyebrows. “Think it’ll help me with the ladies?”

  Zoe choked back a laugh as she entered the room. “You’ve been spending way too much time with Quess.”

  “Probably,” he agreed cheerfully. “But are you going to stand there talking about another man, or are you going to come over here and give me a hug?”

  Zoe’s response was to cross the room to him and practically throw herself into his lap, her arms twining around his neck, her face buried in the crook. “I was so scared,” she admitted tearfully. “Don’t you ever come that close to dying again!”

  I slowly started easing toward the door. The conversation, the moment, was theirs, and I felt like an intruder. I was happy for my friends—not just because Eric was up and Zoe was relieved, but also because they were so deeply in love—but seeing it only reminded me of my
own complicated love life. It stung, much more than I cared to admit, and I didn’t want my pain spoiling the moment for them. It was better to just leave.

  “I promise,” Eric said with a chuckle, nuzzling the top of her head and folding his arms around her. “Now, I love you, but can you get off me? My stomach feels like I got run over by every cow in the Menagerie.”

  Only a few steps to the door. I tried not to move too quickly.

  “Oh. Oh!” Zoe quickly got off him, her face flushing. “Baby, I’m so sorry. Can I help you with anything? Do you need anything? And lie down, before you fall down!”

  The last bit came out with a bite sharp enough that it wouldn’t be disobeyed, but that only amused Eric further—though he slowly lay down, drawing the blanket over him.

  His eyes darted over to me just as I was silently ordering Cornelius to open the door. “Bye, Liana,” he called, smirking knowingly.

  My cheeks burned with embarrassment as Zoe turned around and looked at me as if she was seeing me for the first time. If she noticed my embarrassment at being witness to their reunion, she paid it no mind.

  “Liana! Good, you’re here. Can you get Quess for me, please? I want him to check Eric out again.”

  “I’m fine,” Eric said. “But I could do with something to eat.”

  “What if you’re not allowed to eat yet?” Zoe huffed, crossing her arms. “Quess is our doctor, and there’s been a change in your condition. You and I have taken enough inter-departmental classes with the Medics to know that a doctor gets called before the patient gets to do anything!”

  I smiled in spite of my embarrassment. “I’ll go get him,” I offered.

  “Thank you,” she replied, before giving me her back and bending over to adjust Eric’s blankets. I was just walking out when she squealed in surprise, and I turned around in time to see Eric wrap his arms around her and pull her into bed with him. The fire in my cheeks started anew, and I quickly and wisely turned away and left, intent on getting Quess.