“I will. Ames ... I will. I promise. I’d tell you.”
“And eat your fucking protein bars.”
He snorted and let his weight drop back onto his elbows, legs coming to dangle over the edge of the bed. “Your protein bars, too, now. We eat well at Maison Shirazi.”
“Dara, this doesn’t even count as a maisonette.”
“Oh, I’m sorry—we can’t all live in an art deco mansion in Forest Hills.”
She made a face. “To be honest, I’d rather live here. That place is just ... it was my dad’s, not mine.”
“So redecorate.”
“Dara. I amnotgoing furniture shopping with you.”
“Who said anything about shopping ourselves? You can pay people for that.”
“You are, in fact, the worst person I have ever met.”
“Thank you.” Dara grinned, but that second of happiness was chased by an immediate flicker of guilt. The same guilt that always laced his interactions with Ames because ... he’d never told her about him and her father. He should have. Especially by now, he should have told her. If she didn’t already know.
If Noam hadn’t told her.
Only he didn’t, he wouldn’t have, and Dara knew it.
There was no reason to keep it secret anymore. The general was dead. Dara had watched him choke on his own blood, in his own bed.
But how the hell did you say that to someone? How was that merciful?
“I might sell the house,” Ames said, shifting against her bindings. Her wrists weren’t red yet, but they would be after a few hours. “I can’t handle being there. Not ... I mean, he got murderedin that house. And then I spent two hours sitting in this tiny room with Lehrer while he asked me question after question andmademe tell the truth.”
“I’m sorry,” Dara said.
“Don’t be. It’s fucking ... that was so long ago now. It doesn’t matter. It just pisses me off that Lehrer went to all those lengths; then hestillnever bothered finding the actual killer. So like ... what was even the point?”
Dara clenched his teeth so hard his jaw hurt.
While he was suppressed, he’d been susceptible to Lehrer’s persuasion. Without his telepathy’s interference, Lehrer had been able to keep him trapped in that apartment better than any locked door ever could. That had been the first time Dara realized what it was like to have one’s mind cut open and spread wide, fertile ground for the taking. And there’d been no way to tell what was persuasion and what wasn’t. Every word out of Lehrer’s mouth might have been a seed planted in dark soil. Every thought Dara had, potentially traitorous.
But he got his telepathy back in the QZ, at least for a while. Any influence Lehrer had gained over him deteriorated there. Ames, though ...
Ames had spent weeks under persuasion now. Weeks reliving the trauma Lehrer put her through in that MoD cell, teasing her mind apart thread by thread.
“Me,” he said, the word falling from his lips before he even realized he’d made the decision. “It was me. I killed him.”
If some part of him had hoped the confession would make him feel better, well ... it didn’t. He felt like someone had wound a chain through his guts and drawn it taut.
Ames wasn’t saying anything. She just sat there, her hands fallen still against their restraints. Her gaze was fixed on his face—he couldn’t tell if she was angry, or ... orrelieved, or shocked. Or all three. She looked at him like she’d never seen him before.
“It was ... Sacha asked me to do it, but that was ... I’d talked to him. About your dad and what he did to your family. It was my idea. So.”
Ames still didn’t move.Howdid people survive without telepathy? Because Dara wasn’t so sure he could.
All he could do was wait and will her to forgive him, to—to not hate him, at least, although he knew he didn’t have any right to expect something like that. God. Ames had always ... she’d always been there for him, kept all his terrible secrets, and this was how he repaid her.
He twisted his fingers up in the bedsheets beneath him. “Please say something.”
“Like what?” Ames burst out at last. “Like ... okay, Dara. You just told me you murdered my father. Forgive me if that takes a sec to sink in.”
