A reason he’d asked for a woman, but wanted me safe.
A reason he wanted to die.
And I needed to know it.
“Why are you doing this?” My voice was laced with desperation, begging for an answer.
But I didn’t get it. At least, not the one I wanted.
“They hurt my sister.” He said it so softly, and I?—
I believed him.
I could find no other motivation. He didn’t want me. He didn’t want clemency. He didn’t want to live. He only wanted vengeance.
Breathing too fast, I studied the silvery scar above his eyebrow. No fury, no ice. Instead, pain engulfed him, suffused by a cloying, hopeless exhaustion, the bone-deep kind that couldn’tbe relieved by rest. It radiated from him like the heat that burned in his touch.
“It’s what I deserve,” he whispered when I hesitated.
I yanked my hand back and dropped the knuckles to the floor.Didhe deserve to die? What was I missing?
It didn’t matter. His death wouldn’t be at my hand, not when he offered it to me freely. I wouldn’t play judge, jury and executioner for him. If he wanted to die, he could do it himself.
I backed away. “Tell me your information. I want to leave.”
A brief silence passed in which he stood motionless, staring at my face with flagrant disappointment. His mouth opened, and words fell out—the precious information Theo wanted so much that he’d been willing to let me die for it. I memorized it and left.
Only after I returned home and gave the information to Theo did I realize I still had Lucas Scott’s blood on my hands
Part Two
16
Grief
Grief is like snow.
—LUCAS SCOTT
Icouldn’t get the idea of Lucas stabbing a scalpel into a kid’s neck out of my head. For days, the image attacked at random, and I’d flinch so hard that people stared. I retreated to my safe space to get away from it.Tall trees…warm rain…scent of cypress…
Still, the horrid image would skewer my meditative state at the worst times.
Several days passed before I understood the weight on my chest wasbetrayal. Why had I thought better of him? I’dseenhim kill innocent people. I’d somehow convinced myself he wasn’t evil. He’d proven me wrong, and it was almost as if he’d broken a promise.
Then the look in his eyes before he did it would flash in my mind, his willingness to let me kill him afterward—no, not just willingness, butdesire—and I’d spiral out of control. I turned the riddle of him over so many times that my head ached.
What was I missing?
The secrecy, the mystery—they were driving me mad. My hands shook, and panic attacked when I least expected it. I could barely eat, which made my workouts agonizing, and my sleep was punctured by rude awakenings from violent dreams.
What was the point of living when this was what life would be?
Three nights after I nearly killed Lucas, a sweet scent eked through the air, like burning wood and petrichor, drawing me outside. The summer sunset passed in shades of candy pink and ember orange. The incongruous beauty clashed with the ugly emotions inside.
I stood in the overgrown gardens of headquarters and sobbed until I laughed, a maniacal soundtrack to the night. The laugh finally gave way to a black fury. It struck like a fork of lightning, and I fantasized about laying waste to the NAO, burying them so deep that they suffocated.
It wasn’t fair, I thought, that they’d done this to us. These deaths, these tragedies, were on them, and they didn’t even care. They reveled in the devastation.
