I gave her the answer I had. “Some guards brought you, said you fainted during a blood draw. Seems you have a problem with needles?”
“Right,” she said, the word drawn out.
“You’ve had blood drawn before—never fainted, that I know of.”
“It comes and goes.” She shrugged as though that sold it, made it seem unimportant and normal. “Sometimes I just get lightheaded. Guess this time I went out totally.” She let out a tense laugh. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to stress you out.”
“You didn’t. Kenyon checked in on you, said you weren’t hurt, so we just let you sleep. Seemed you needed the rest.”
She ran her fingers through her hair, grimacing when knots blocked the path.
“Nightmare?” I asked.
She nodded. “Seems the link wasn’t entirely broken.”
Thatwasn’t something I liked. Worse, Shear hadn’t been able to do much the last time, which meant I had no game plan.
“It’s fine,” she said. “I think throwing him out of my mind wasn’t that pleasant for him, either, so he stayed on good behavior.”
I doubted she told the entire truth there, either. The Corsa I knew didn’t know what good behavior was, and I doubted after turning into a corrupted his self-control had grown much.
“What was he like?” Her question was soft, like she didn’t want to ask it but couldn’t help. The timing of the question nearly made me wonder if she could read my mind.
“He was an asshole,” I answered honestly. “He was the rich, spoiled brat of a congressman. He’d gotten everything handed to him all his life, so when he turned out to be an esper—especially a high-ranking mentalist—he figured he was owed everything. I heard he only got through training because Daddy pulled strings for him, but who the fuck knows?”
“So you didn’t pick him for your team?”
I snorted. “Not a chance. We were happy with the four of us, never wanted to add anyone else, but the Guild assigned him. It was supposed to be temporary, since he hadn’t fit into any other team during training. I think they figured with us, he’d get some name recognition, get his name out there, then he’d turn into a poster boy for the Guild.”
“How long was he with you?”
“A couple months, but this was the first big dungeon he went into.”
She didn’t ask anything else but the question was there, in her eyes, in the lines between her eyebrows.
“Just ask.”
“What?”
“You want to know, right? I know you’ve heard the rumors, so you want to know what happened.”
I expected her to say yes, because whowouldn’twant to know? The story felt like thick sludge in my throat, something I didn’t want to cough up but I would.
Fuck, I was pretty sure I’d do damn near anything she asked for. Was it pathetic? Sure, but I didn’t give a damn. If she needed me to spill my guts, to see the wriggling, rotten pieces of my past, I’d do it.
Instead, she shook her head. “I know what the rumors say isn’t true.”
“What do the rumors say?”
“That you left Corsa there to die, that you let the civilians there die, too, that you saved your own life.”
Hearing that from her own lips fuckinghurt.Sure, it never felt great, even if I knew it wasn’t the whole truth, but from her it hit so much harder.
“You know how many news reports came out about it in the months after? We had our faces splashed all over the TV before, of course, but it had been praise before. After that, though?” I twisted so my feet were on the ground and leaned forward, hanging my head down, the memories ricocheting off the walls of my skull. “I couldn’t turn on the TV without seeing us up there, like the world’s biggest criminals. Instead of heroes, we were villains—no, worse than that,cowards.Surprised you never saw anything about it.”
“I was in The Pitt for half a year, and after I got back, I was straight into guide training.”
It felt like a small favor, that. Even if she knew what happened, I hated the idea of her seeing it somehow, of watching the stories that had our pictures up there like mugshots.
