Camellia accepted the invitation and slid down, sitting beside her, with her knees up and back to the wall. The simple gesture of solidarity brought back memories from her childhood when the children were allowed a few precious minutes together. Whitney didn’t like them to gather together too long because he thought they conspired against him. They hadn’t so much at first, not until they realized that he was the one causing all their pain.
When they were allowed to be together, they would sit with their backs to the wall, facing the windows and vents, paying attention to the cameras to see if the red eye was on, telling them they were being recorded. They’d keep their knees drawn up and speak softly, covering their mouths. Often, they’d sit close, thighs touching just to have some kind of human contact. Most of them wanted to be close to Lily, Flame or Camellia. All three were powerful anchors and drew away psychic energy, allowing the othersrespite from the constant pain they experienced without the filters to their brains.
“Ryland’s a good man,” Lily said. “The best. You have no idea how good of a man he is and how hard he’s worked to save his men.” She lifted her head and dashed at her tears. “We don’t fight. We just don’t. He’s so good to me. To everyone. He thinks about everyone before himself.” She put her head down again. “I never once thought what this would look like from his point of view. Not once. How selfish of me is that?”
Camellia wanted to comfort Lily. She was a ferocious warrior, yet there was also a deeply compassionate side of her that had always been there. She was driven to fix things, make them right, so the people around her didn’t suffer. At the same time, her strongest sympathies, in this particular instance, lay with Ryland. Lily had gone behind his back, not the other way around.
Tamping down her instincts to soothe and comfort, Camellia remained silent. Lily needed to talk and Camellia needed to understand. There was no question that Lily loved Ryland fiercely, so how could she have betrayed him the way she had?
Camellia knew there was always more than one side to a story. Perhaps Lily could shed light on her reasoning and make Camellia understand her actions. Because maybe that understanding would enable Camellia to forgive Marigold. She desperately wanted to be able to forgive Marigold’s betrayal, and yet the hurt ran so deep, the break in trust so devastating, she just couldn’t even face the idea of speaking with her. Now she’d learned Marigold had a life-threatening illness, and there was no way Camellia could stay away if she could possibly help her. That didn’t mean she could forgive her.
“I sat here the whole time you were healing Kaden, trying to defend my actions, trying to be angry with Rye for not considering everything we’ve been through, all the times we’ve shared, andgiving me a break. But then I realized, none of those good times stacked up against a violation of trust. He considers what I did as a betrayal of our marriage. Of everything we are together. I have been sitting here, imagining how I’d feel if I were in his place—if he were the one who went behind my back to someone else and did exactly what we both agreed not to do.”
She pressed a shaky hand to her mouth to muffle a sob. Her eyes briefly met Camellia’s before she lowered her spiky, wet lashes to cover her pain. “I didn’t mean it that way, but that’s what I did. Now there’s a war coming, and everyone I love could be killed. I’ve jeopardized not just our team and their families but all of Team Two as well. I don’t see how Ryland can possibly forgive me. I didn’t just endanger our teams. I destroyed the most important thing in the world to me: my marriage to Ryland. My family.”
Camellia listened to the heartbreaking sobs, the compulsion to comfort her nearly overwhelming. It was just that she didn’t know how to go about it. She hesitated to touch Lily, not just because they were essentially strangers but because, except for Jonas, Camellia hadn’t really touched another human being in years.
“Why did you do it, Lily?” she finally asked. “It seems so out of character for you to go against anything you and your husband decide together.”
Lily cried for a couple more minutes but struggled to get her weeping under control. “I know Ryland thinks I did it because I’m a scientist and wanted to have a record of anything Daniel might do because he’s different. Everyone will probably think that.”
Camellia had to admit she thought it. It was a logical conclusion. Lily was a scientist. Information was extremely important to her.
Lily rubbed her cheek back and forth on her drawn-up knees. “Daniel’s my first child. He might be my only child for all I know. I wanted all those things every mother has with that first child. Allthe cherished photographs and videos of his firsts. The first steps. His first words. What he eats and doesn’t eat. That was what was important to me. I tried to tell Ryland, but he didn’t understand the difference between first steps and our son being Daniel.”
Lily’s eyes went liquid again. “Just because he’s different, doesn’t mean I don’t want to have those special moments recorded or remembered, written down or photographed. It isn’t fair that as a mother, I shouldn’t have them like any other mother. I won’t remember every little detail when I’m older. I want albums to look through when I’m seventy and eighty. I want to go through them with his future wife. Ididn’trecord anything scientific. I won’t say it wasn’t tempting, but I’d promised Ryland. I just wanted what every other mother had.”
Camellia found that heartbreaking.
Lily waved her hand in the air. “Listen to me. I’m still defending myself and my position.”
“I asked why you did it and you gave me your answer,” Camellia said. She was a little shocked that she could actually understand why Lily had decided to do what she had. “But, and I’m just asking, if Ryland is a dreamwalker, why didn’t you insist he listen to you and let you record everything with him? There wouldn’t have been a chance that anyone would know if it was just the two of you.”
“We argued over Daniel’s safety, and in the end, I agreed with him completely. I did. What Ryland said made sense to me at first. But then there were so many darling moments that I knew I could never get back. I brought the subject up and Rye got angry with me. He said he was not putting our son in jeopardy, that he wasn’t a science experiment. I kept trying to explain and he just wouldn’t hear me. He compared me to Whitney. That really hurt. I was being a mother, not a scientist. So I went to Jeff.”
Camellia realized Lily had reached out to Jeff when she washurt by Ryland’s thoughtless accusation—the one thing he said that had cut her deep. Instead of confronting her husband as she should have, she’d kept that hurt to herself and chosen a course of action she couldn’t take back.
Camellia pressed her lips together. She wasn’t the best at communication. She barely knew how to act around people. If Lily and Ryland, who clearly loved one another, could get to this point—so far apart—that a betrayal of this magnitude could take place, what chance could she possibly have with Jonas? They both had so many issues.
On the other hand, she and Jonas shared connections no one else had. They had the obvious pairing Whitney set up, just like the one he had clearly set up between Lily and Ryland. That had worked for a long time for the other couple. In addition to that, however, Camellia and Jonas had the underground mycelium network. They could communicate easily, feel what the other felt and know one another’s thoughts. They also would know what the other needed as far as mental and physical health. Most important, they were connected through Middlemist Red.
Middlemist Red was inherently sensitive. She lived in both of them. Granted, the dose Whitney had put in Camellia was far stronger than what he’d put in Jonas, but Red ran through both their veins. The connection between them was extremely strong because Red was so powerful. The plant had the ability to hide, which gave them that ability. Jonas had tapped into it often. He just hadn’t realized why he could disappear into shadows, mist and fog, not any more than he had comprehended that his early warning system came from the mycelium running beneath the ground.
“Ryland will never forgive me, and I can’t blame him,” Lily said. “And if anyone dies, I won’t be able to forgive myself. I’ve considered leaving Daniel here and hiking up the mountain to find thisarmy coming at us and turn myself over to them. Maybe they’d turn back and be satisfied with just me.”
“You know better than that,” Camellia said, alarm spreading through her. Lily not only sounded desperate; she felt it as well. She was liable to do anything when she felt so hopeless and guilty. “The man Ryland and Jonas are questioning was sent to kidnap you and Daniel. The ones coming up the mountain aren’t here for you or your son. They plan on killing everyone they find here and at the other compound. That includes the women and children.”
Lily’s breath hitched audibly. “Marigold can’t be moved. We could try it, but if she starts hemorrhaging again, it could kill her. We’ve tried all kinds of medication, and nothing has worked so far. The road isn’t smooth, and airlifting her is out of the question.”
She ran shaking hands through her hair and stared with despair at Camellia. “Why would these men want to kill us all to begin with? Surely Whitney didn’t order it.”
“No, it doesn’t appear as if he did. Some bank conglomerate that wants to force Whitney to do their bidding. He’s too much of a patriot for them. According to Jonas, these people think Whitney will cooperate with them if they have you and Daniel.”
“They’re wrong. He would never sell out his country. He’s completely insane in so many ways, Camellia. He believes he should be able to go to any country, including the United States, and take female children that he claims no one wants. He buys them, so in his mind, he owns them. To him, those children are worthless until he gives them greatness and purpose by experimenting on them.”
“Why is it that so much of the world thinks females are mostly useless?” Camellia asked, suddenly feeling so tired she just wanted to slide down the wall and go to sleep.
“I haven’t been able to figure that out,” Lily said. “Not when so many women have made such amazing contributions to the world.Of course, as far as Peter Whitney is concerned, the only valuable contribution any female can make is what he deems necessary.” There was bitterness in her voice. She looked at Camellia. “I believed him for years, you know. Looking back, I remember you and Flame both warning me that he was lying to all of us. I don’t know how he managed to keep me so blind to the differences in how he treated all of you compared to me.”
