Eva spun to face Darius again. “Vincent? You’re taking Vincent’s word over mine? Are you idiots?”
Those around them winced slightly and shifted uneasily.
“He’s had it out for me since we started,” Eva continued.
“Are you saying he lied?” Drake asked sharply.
Eva’s eyes were wide and disbelieving as she faced Caden’s Anateri. She hadn’t noticed him and Jane at the fringes of the group until now. “Yes. A million times yes.”
Jane’s lips twitched but the expression was gone almost before Eva was sure she’d seen it.
“She does have a point,” Jane said.
The hope that had started to wither, bloomed again. They were willing to listen. It would have to be enough for now. All that mattered was saving Caden; everything else could wait.
Darius sighed, looking up at the sky before shaking his head. "Bring them into the camp. We'll see what they have to say."
Drake and Jane took Eva from Roscoe’s hold, their jaws clenched and expressions impassive.
Eva might have instilled doubt into them about her role in events, but she wasn’t in the clear yet.
They released her, allowing her to walk ahead of them, confident they could easily capture her if she tried to flee. Eva wrapped her arms around herself, feeling more alone than she had since making the Trateri her home.
Being suspected of betrayal hurt—more than she liked to admit. She'd thought she'd kept her distance from people, enough so their actions wouldn’t hold the power to hurt her. She'd been wrong. Seeing the distrust in their faces hurt worse than learning she'd been selected as the sacrifice.
Her spine straightened. What did she care what the Trateri thought of her? She had Sebastian and Caia and countless others. If need be, she'd make her way alone. It wouldn't be the first time.
She'd do her duty to Caden, and then she was gone. Better to be on her own, than to be a loner clinging to the fringes of their community because that’s all people would give her.
The camp stirred as they walked into it, hostility on some faces, confusion on the rest. Some wore bandages, others had skin that was blistered on their arms and faces.
Eva kept her chin up and her shoulders back. She refused to be cowed. She’d focus on what needed doing. It was the only way to survive.
Jason's expression was reassuring when her gaze caught on him. She pressed her lips together to smother the rough laugh that wanted to escape. Figures her lone pillar of support was a man who until now had only shown dislike to her.
The last speck of hope she carried with her flitted away. Fine. So be it. She had her path. She simply needed to walk it.
Darius stopped in the middle of camp and gestured imperiously. "Speak."
Eva took a deep breath. "What do you want me to say?"
He lifted an eyebrow. "An interesting defense."
"It seems you have already judged me in my absence," Eva said. "Any words I use would be a pointless waste of time."
Darius's smile was cruel as he watched her. "You don't deny you were working with the outsiders to steal the Kyren?"
Eva's mouth dropped open in true amazement. Of all the accusations she expected him to level on her—cowardice, dereliction of duty, abandoning them when their need was great—that was the last thing she expected.
She gestured at Sebastian incredulously. "That Kyren? The one standing right there? Yes, because it makes sense to return him after successfully stealing him." She shook her head, her gaze traveling over those assembled. "Is that what you all truly believe? That I conspired to take something I already had?"
Their lack of faith hurt. Fiona, Hanna, Laurell, women who'd gone out of their way to befriend her. People she’d thought could, maybe just maybe, mean something to her.
If Ollie was here, she knew she'd have a vocal defender, but he wasn't. He'd been hurt. Another failure that could be laid at her feet.
"Perhaps you had a falling-out with your co-conspirators and thought you could come back," someone suggested.
Eva rolled her eyes. That was perhaps the stupidest thing she'd ever heard. Return to the very people she'd betrayed? Did they really think her that stupid?
