“Romeo and Juliet both die in the end.”
“Do they?” she asked, unfazed. “Pity.”
A headache blossomed. “I don’t understand.”
“You tell your story and show everyone the mutilation on your back, then explain how an enemy officer saved you from his own brutal regime because he fell in love with you. People will eat it up.” Williams crossed her legs and set her clasped hands on her knee. “If we package your love story inside the truth of what the NAO is doing to its people, they will rally right when we’re moving in on the Commander.”
I snorted. “You’re saying the world doesn’t know what’s happening here?”
Her lips pursed. “The NAO has a way of spinning their propaganda. It’s artful, really, how they’ve painted us as criminals while their human rights violations go unheard.”
I imagined trying to tell my story to a camera, and a wave of nausea washed over me. “And if I don’t agree?”
Her joyless smile spread goosebumps down my spine. “It’s my assumption that you don’t enjoy seeing your colonel in pain?”
My blood turned to ice. “I won’t let you hurt him.”
Williams smiled calmly. “Then you agree to do this interview.”
I said nothing. Lucas’s glare grew savage, and his breathing deepened. The muscles of his arms bunched with the effort to break out of the plastic around his wrists.
Eyeing us both, Williams leaned forward, her expression darkening. “This is war, Miss Reeves, and we edge closer to extinction every day. If your love story hits the way I think it will, your matching scars will go viral. Imagine the outrage. They’ll save us right as Scott delivers Haynes the killing blow, proving himself a hero. The country will need a new leader, and we will be right there—the champions of justice and love. It’s perfect.”
A hysterical laugh ripped through my throat imagining it all: the impossibility of Lucas succeeding in assassinating the mostprotected person on the planet, the unlikelihood of my broken, pitiful story making any difference at all, the sheer pipe dream of winning this thing…
We’d never succeed.
Still, she’d found the only weapon sharp enough to cut us both—each other. If we refused to help her, Lucas and I would be tortured, then marched to the gallows together. I’d stare into that aquamarine until our last moments.
This was a losing game.
Theo shifted again, his eyes pleading. “Sophia, please.”
Swallowing down the roiling acid in my stomach, I nodded. “I’ll do it.”
There was no other choice.
Lucas’s gaze cut to me. “Like hell you will.”
“For you, I will.”
“You’re going to let them sit you in front of a camera to tell the entire world how you fucked a fascist murderer, and he let you be carved up by his own people? Could you even do it without having a panic attack?”
“A panic attack could garner sympathy,” Williams said.
“Fuck off,” Lucas snapped. “She’s a human, not a story you can sell. You treat her like she’s expendable.”
“Because sheis.”
He paled. “You’re supposed to be the good guys. This is how you treat your own?”
For the first time, Williams appeared a tad uncomfortable. “She volunteered for everything. She was never commanded or coerced.”
“Then what isthis? Is this not coercion?”
“The choice is still available to her.” Her voice stayed calm, but tension radiated from it.
Lucas clenched his bound hands into fists behind his back. “You know this isn’t a choice for her. If you continue to threaten her life?—”
