“My sister tried to join the rebellion. She was twenty-five, and Dad had no grounds to stop her, but he tried anyway. He trapped her in DC, where trying to escape would have been suicide, especially for a single woman.”
Once again, he studied me, and I diligently chewed.
“I didn’t even think to refuse,” he said. “In the military, they groom you to fall in line, to love your country before everything else. Duty, honor, country. All that. It was easy to join up when Haynes wasn’t president. Plus, it’s what my father wanted for me. This country… It used to be great. But when the NAO took over, I hated every second of wearing that uniform, of looking like I supported their hate. I knew what was happening was wrong, but I didn’t know how to get out. My father raised me on patriotism, and I was using this country to pay for school. I’d promised them four years of service.
“Sophie, though. Sophie was the smart one. She hated this regime from the very beginning, shaming me and my dad for serving a dictator back before he truly was a dictator. I remember arguing with her that I was just serving my four years and getting out, and she’d laugh and say I sold my soul for med school tuition.”
He lapsed into a long silence, and I sat frozen, staring at the hunch of his shoulders.
“I wish she hadn’t been right,” he murmured after a bit.
“So how did it all go down?” I asked.
He glanced my way as I ladled broth into my mouth, allowing a small smirk to surface that faded as he spoke again. “They shipped me to Canada to fight, and I was there for more than a year. We were given very little information about what was happening back home. I’d heard of the Defiance, but I didn’t really understand. I didn’t know.
“Then the Defiance got stronger, and Haynes needed more protection domestically. He pulled thousands of troops back into the States to serve the NSF, including me. I was promoted to lieutenant colonel and given a battalion of Hunters to command. My father was promoted even higher. The only good part of it was that I’d returned home to DC.”
“Back to Sophie?”
He nodded. “That’swhen I learned about the prisoner camps and brothels. It’s when I learned about Executive Order 16389. I had no idea how bad it had gotten. Sophie was miserable. Angry. Dad… It’s like he was blind to it. She told me what the NAO was really doing, and I… Christ, I didn’t know what to do. The violence in the country was escalating. Civilian riots were killing innocents and soldiers alike. Theodore Harrison was both aggressive and smart, and his losses were nothing compared to the NAO’s.”
“It didn’t seem that way on our side,” I muttered.
He shot me a knowing look. “The propaganda is misleading. Again and again, your Prime Delegate approached Haynes for peace talks, but he wouldn’t even consider speaking to a woman. The news painted it like he was protecting us from the dangerous rebels. Sophie wanted us all to defect, and I wanted to. I really did. But I couldn’t find a safe way to escape.”
I sensed a darkness looming in his story, and I almost stopped him. Did it really matter how it ended? Wasn’t this bad enough?
“She was serving as a spy,” he said, so soft I could barely hear him. “The whole time, she was stealing information from our dad and giving it to the Defiance. At first, I tried to talk her out of it, but then…”
“You helped her, didn’t you?”
He nodded. “We did it for months before they discovered her. It was the middle of the night when they knocked down our door. Commander Haynes confronted my father directly. He thought Dad was aiding Sophie. They had no idea I was involved.”
Another silence stretched, and I wished I was close enough to touch him, to offer any sort of comfort. “So Haynes shot your father?”
“That’s the gist of it. Once Dad convinced Haynes he wasn’t a spy, Haynes then considered him an idiot for letting a woman steal from him. They arrested Sophie. I was told she’d be questioned and processed like any other citizen arrested for a crime, so I thought I could bail her out. I’d find a lawyer. I’d free her.”
My heart sank.
His gaze slid my way. “I didn’t know at the time what the NSF considers due process.”
I set my empty plate aside and scooted closer to him. “Which Blood Colonel processed her?”
His eyes flashed. “Jack Miller.”
My mind blinked over the pages I’d memorized months ago—intimate details of Jack Miller’s weaknesses, his schedule, his entire life—and it all began to make a morbid kind of sense.
“You’ve been hunting him, haven’t you?”
“He transferred her to the House,” Lucas said. “Forcorrection. One day, I will tear out his heart.”
This was far more dreadful than I’d imagined, and nausea churned in my gut. “Lucas, I’m so sorry.”
His mouth stretched into a humorless smile. “It gets worse. They put a scarlet patch on my shoulder like it was an honor, then shipped me to the most active combat zone as punishment for my father’s crimes. I’d been in combat before, but that first execution was the first time I had ever killed anyone in cold blood. I tried to make it quick, as painless as possible, but instead of leniency, people only saw my inhumanity.
“The truth of it was what hurt. Those strangers dropped at my feet, and I felt nothing. That was the point I began to realize the NAO had stolen my humanity. Nothing mattered anymore. Nothing but getting Sophie out, but I couldn’t find her.”
I knew the story would get worse. Sophie hadn’t survived, after all, and I’d known it from the start. But I wanted a differentoutcome. I wanted an ending that allowed her freedom. I wanted a life for her.
