She swallowed. “So, what now? You want me to apologize? Or maybe just leave, make your life easier?”
“Don’t be an idiot,” he snapped, but the force had gone out of him. He slumped back against the desk, hands clamped at the edge as if he could hold himself in place by force alone. “We can’t afford to lose anyone. Not even you.”
The insult was so backhanded, so casually cruel, it took her breath away.
The silence between them pressed in on her, cloying against Alina’s skin. Finally, she broke, her battered heart cracking and falling to tiny, shattered shards. She heard it, loud and clear. “Not even me,” she repeated, voice barely more than a whisper.
He looked at her then and for a split second she thought she saw regret flicker in his eyes. “Tell me, Kael, do you really think I did this for myself?”
Kael kept looking at her, the gold in his eyes muted, and in that instant she saw it all: the exhaustion, the fear, the bone-deep certainty that he was fighting a war he couldn’t win. “No,” he said. “I think you did it because you can’t help but try to save people, even when it’s the last thing anyone needs.”
They stared at each other, the distance between them suddenly a chasm—no, a world, and there was no way she could reach him anymore. His warmth, his touch, his smile… it was all lost to her.
He exhaled, a long, ragged breath. “You’re a liability, Alina. And you’re the best hope we have. Do you understand how impossible that is?”
She opened her mouth to answer, but all that came out was, “I’m so tired, Kael. I’m so damn tired of fighting everyone, every day.”
He scrubbed a hand across his face, smearing dirt and blood into a new pattern. “Join the club,” he said, so quietly she almost missed it.
For a moment, the tension eased, and they just stood there in the silence, two people lost in the fallout of their own best intentions.
Then Kael straightened, every inch the captain again. “Stay away from Maven. If he comes at you again, tell me. Don’t engage.”
Don’t engage. Don’t engage! Did he know anything? “Don’t engage? What do you think—that I start petty quarrels with him because I can’t help myself? Are you saying it’s my fault he is coming at me? Well, let me tell you, you just missed quite an exquisite performance in the mess hall. And he did it all by himself, no engaging necessary.” She glared at him. “You would know that if you showed up once in a while.” If you hadn’t abandoned me, was left unsaid.
Kael’s mouth twisted in a flat line. “You’re twisting my words. You know exactly what I mean.”
Alina shook her head, unable to contain her emotions for much longer. “I really don’t.” She looked at him, and the ball of hot jealousy, betrayal and hurt she had been carrying around for daysexploded into a sneering accusation. “But I bet Elara does. You both seem to understand each other perfectly well.”
Kael frowned. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“I saw you, Kael! I saw you in your room, you and her—you don’t need to deny it!” Her voice grew louder by the second.
“Are you crazy? Deny what?”
“Oh, come on!” she shouted, losing all control. Grief filled her to the brim, so raw and potent she could hardly breathe. “I saw you! Do you hear me? I saw you! Her whispering in your ear and touching your arm and you laughing! Actually laughing! When was the last time you let me touch you? Or laughed with me?”
Kael stared at her, shock on his face. A heavy silence ensued, Alina breathing heavily, half sobbing.
“Alina.” Kael shook his head, sadness etched into his face.
It was all she needed to know. It was over. He had made his choice. And so would she.
The corridor was empty, but Alina’s steps were loud as hammers. The echoes followed her down the winding passage, through the torch-lit turns and past single rebels. As one of them made a snide comment, she knocked him out her way with a heartfelt “Fuck off,” and marched on until she reached the battered door of her room—a joke, really, as the lock had been broken for weeks and the hinges were so loose even the wind could shoulder its way in.
She shut it behind her anyway. It was a motion she’d practiced every night for months, and she found comfort in the repetition, even if it was a comfort built on habit rather than hope.
The room was cold. It always was, but tonight the chill seemed to seep up deeper into her than ever before. Alina leaned her forehead against the door, letting it press the pounding in her head into something smaller, something she could contain. For a minute, she stood like that, eyes squeezed shut, refusing to look at the cot, or the tiny table, or the remnants of her life in exile. She waited until her insides stopped churning.
But memory had teeth, and it bit hard.
You undermined me in front of everyone.
You’re a liability.
Not even you.
She wanted to scream, to break something, but all she could do was breathe in and out, in and out, waiting for the shaking in her hands to stop. Bit by bit her life had completely unraveled, spiraling faster and faster in the last few days. After getting over the shock of her abduction and learning the truth about her parents’ reign, there was this moment when she actually believed she could find a home here, cold and dark and damp as it was. But the Caves were not what she had been looking at. She had looked past the stone to the people who wrangled a life from it. And she had longed, had wished, had dreamed of becoming a part of them. Had dared to hope to finally find a family. Connections. Somewhere to belong.
