“Open up. Open up and own up to what you did!” Jo banged harder. Her voice was beginning to waver and crack yet again. The anger was threatening to give way to the bottomless sadness that had hollowed out the cavity of her chest. “How could you? Howcouldyou? You knew it was coming, didn’t you?”
The white door at Jo’s right opened suddenly; Snow stood in its frame. He looked no better than the rest of them. A long shirt hung rumpled from his shoulders, falling over tight-fitting trousers.
“What’s going on?” His voice echoed through the hall with an air of authority. Jo ignored that too.
“We were just going back,” Eslar began to say. But Jo cut him off before any other weak explanation could be given. She wasn’t going to sweep this under the rug.
“We want answers!”
Snow’s gaze turned to her.
“We want answers fromher.” Jo punctuated the statement with a pound on Pan’s door. She turned towards Snow, seething, snarling. “But she’s too much of a damned coward to give us any.”
“That’s enough, Jo,” Snow scolded, and Jo couldn’t help but bristle.
“Don’t say that!” she screamed back. “Don’t act like you’re not hurting at the fact that one of us was murdered under your roof, under your care. I see it Snow, I see it!”
She called him out with a certainty she hadn’t possessed until that moment. Because, until then, she hadn’t quite grasped it. But as their “leader” stood there, helpless and hurting, he was no better than the rest of them. Jo turned back to the door.
“Open up and face us, you coward! Face your actions!” Jo screamed at nothing, her voice echoing sharply down the hall.
“Jo, please. That’s enough,” Wayne tried to console, taking a step forward.
“I don’t want to hear it from you,” she lashed out. If no one would help her, then everyone was her enemy.
“Jo, let’s—” Takako didn’t get to finish her statement.
Jo’s stomach shot into her pelvis at the brief experience of weightlessness, returning when a shoulder pressed unexpectedly into her gut. Snow’s arms wrapped around her as he carried her, over his shoulder, to his room; the familiar smell of cloves threatened to soothe her anger just enough that the sorrow would win.
She couldn’t have that—wouldn’t be able to handle that. She’d break.
“Don’t you dare, Snow!” Jo cried out instead. “I deserve vindication, an explanation,something. She didn’t even let us say goodbye, Snow. She didn’t—she didn’t even let us say goodbye!”
Jo could feel the rage slowly unraveling beneath the rough demands of her voice, the dam of her own resolve slowly crumbling to dust. She could see the rest of her team watching her be carried away, their eyes wet, their teeth gritted, their fists clenched in anger. But no words were spoken in retaliation. Their lack of fight eroded hers.
She could feel her cries shredding themselves beneath the sharp claws of unrelenting devastation, the pounding of her fists against Snow’s back quickly losing strength and purpose as her tears regained their own.
The slamming of Snow’s door punctuated her sobs, cutting their echo short to the remaining four members of the Society.
Pan’s door never budged.
Chapter 37
Goodbye
JO DIDN’T KNOW how long she cried, curled up in Snow’s bed like a child. It could have been hours, could have been days, but it didn’t matter. Once the dam had been broken, there was no stopping the tears from flowing even if she tried.
And what use was there in trying?
She had vague recollections of Snow trying to talk to her, of his hand on her back and his lips against her temple, of soft attempts at comfort, reassurances that at least the wish had been granted and they were safe, even softer admittances of understanding. But she could find none of her own sympathies, every verbal grasp of Snow’s falling on deaf and unaccepting ears.
She wasn’t ready to hear any of it, not when it all ended with the same brutal and unforgivable truth.
Nico was gone. Pan had taken him from them, and he wasn’t coming back.
She thought, during one of the times she’d cried herself into a daze, in and out of sleep with her chest aching and eyes sore (sleep was something Jo never wanted to do again), that Snow tried to apologize. But even with anger boiling her blood, and distress gripping tight at her heart, she couldn’t find it in her heart to blame him. Not when he’d looked at her with such shame, seemingly sharing every ounce of their heartache.
No. This wasn’t about forgiving Snow; a pawn needed no forgiving for the whims of his queen. This was about mourning Nico, about maybe one day soon, avenging him.
