Theia doesn’t move an inch. She puts her façade back up. “Are you quite finished, Luciana?”
Lucy practically snarls, “It’s Lucy, you dumb bitch.”
“All right,” Delilah cuts in. She stands and touches Lucy’s shoulder to rein her in. The daggers Lucy is sending Theia’s way could impale her to the seat. I’m almost glad Theia insisted we disarm at the door. “I am sure you know why we’re here.”
“It isn’t for this lovely tête-à-tête?”
“Mom.” Hunter’s sober, plaintive voice breaks the tension in the room. Cautiously, Lucy sits back down and I reach over to take her hand. Theia registers the gesture with a snort of what I assume is disapproval, but it doesn’t matter. We survived and we are together, and that insult to Theia is enough to keep me satisfied.
Theia gets to her feet and clasps her hands behind her back. She stares into the dormant fireplace as if seeing mirages inside. It is a grand fireplace, like everything else in the mansion.The library, however, doesn’t have as much gilded furniture and ornate oil paintings as the rest of the place. Lucy’s mother clearly favored minimalism over opulence. The room is massive—the ceiling maybe thirty, forty feet above our heads. Every wall is stacked nearly floor to ceiling with built-in shelving stuffed with books. Huge tomes, thin volumes, several editions of encyclopedias. Between each bookshelf is a stand with a glass dome, which must contain a rarer book, or a controversial one. It’s a fascinating peek into the life of Katherine Piccolo, and by proxy, a young Luciana.
And, of course, it highlights why Lucy is so angry at Theia’s presence here. Her smallness of mind, her selfishness, and her zeal for power run counter to the purpose of this very room. Every book is Katherine reaching out and trying to touch other people and cultures, trying to bring them back to life, where Theia is evidently intent on oppression and eventual homogeny. The ideals she instilled in me were not ones she believed, which I find incredibly confusing. She lauded democracy, freedom, independence. She railed against tyranny and the fascist oppression of free speech. She wanted to lift every voice.
But the minute the opportunity came to do so, she could not rise to the occasion. This is the disappointment I feel most deeply. The loss of identity I may recover, the physical wounds will heal, but seeing the woman who carried the rebellion on her back and made me who I am revealed as a charlatan…is a scar I will carry forever.
“I am sure you imagined a confrontation when you arrived. Maybe even fighting your way to the door, cornering me like a fox in a hole.” Theia turns to the group. “As you can see, I dismissed the soldiers here and told them to permit you entry without resistance.”
“Not before trying to kill us with deadly robots,” Lucy remarks.
Theia ignores her and moves on. “We needn’t waste time in such dramatic fashion. Delilah, I imagine you are here to call for my resignation. You and the other council members, sneaking around behind my back, expounding my faults. As if any single one of you could have turned a rebellion into a government in less than six months.”
The sharpness of Theia’s tone does not slice into Delilah one bit. She probably did expect more resistance, but Theia is playing a strange game. “I do not take this task lightly, Jessa. I know firsthand the burdens you have borne and continue to bear. This hasn’t been an easy victory, made more complicated by the insurgents.”
“Which is, presumably, why Roxana is here.” Theia narrows her eyes at Roxana, who does not shrink back. “I suspected it was you, but could never confirm it. You were like a specter haunting the Order until finally you came to flesh. It seems I could have saved myself a lot of trouble and heartache if I had killed you when I killed Paul.”
Lucy’s fingers twitch in my hand and I hold her steady. Roxana crosses her legs and does not betray any emotion in her face. “You used to value the concept of mercy. I mourn the loss of the woman you were. I think that version of Jessa would’ve made a very fine president.”
This penetrates Theia’s armor. As on the tarmac with Lucy, the subject of their friendship—and, by extension, me—wounds her. “We’ll never know, will we? As it appears I have traitors in all sectors. Treason has done his worst.”
Roxana and I scoff in tandem, and Theia turns to us sharply. I say nothing—I’m well trained—but Roxana doesn’t care. “Unironically quotingMacbethin your position.”
“What else to quote, when surrounded by traitors? My trusted adviser scheming against me. My former best friend undermining my efforts with her pitiful army of Order rejects.The heiress who seduced my soldier away from her cause. My daughter, torn from me by her loyalty to a girl who is not her blood.” Theia pivots to me. “And my greatest disappointment. The child I saved from death, who betrayed me at every turn. The traitor whose treason keeps me up at night and sits heavy on my heart. This is all your fault, you understand that, yes?”
I swallow. In an instant, I’m two inches tall and five years old. It takes much courage not to tremble. “My fault?”
“Yes. This begins with your arrest. Delilah turns against me, my daughter turns against me, Mason, my longest serving soldiers, everyone. They came rushing to your defense, with no regard toward how your actions could have compromised everything we fought for. If Luciana’s horrid father lives, there is no guarantee he doesn’t come back for his power. And the Reed children too. You don’t think we’ll be seeing them in ten, twenty years? Mercy is a weakness. And they showed me their weakness for you. I could not trust a single one of my closest confidants because of the actions of a horny teenager I should have struck against a rock as an infant.”
Theia looms over me, and Roxana gets out of her seat and stands in between us. “Don’t even think about laying a hand on my daughter again.”
“Your daughter?” Theia balks, laughing and stepping backward. “You spawned her, yes, but you did not make her. Did you lose sleep, feeding and soothing a crying infant around the clock for months on end? No. Did you teach her to walk and talk, to eat and to read? No. Did you bandage her scraped knees, or hold her when she nearly died from fever? No. I did. I raised this child. She is more my daughter than yours, no matter how much of your blood runs through her.”
“No, she is not. You may have raised this child, but I loved her.”
“Oh, that is a very pretty thought, Roxana. Is that what keeps you from hating yourself for abandoning your only child? That you ‘loved’ her?” Theia peers around Roxana to me. “This is why I told you love is a weakness. Love does not win wars. Love does not overthrow tyranny.”
Roxana does not back down, even as Theia aims her fiery gaze right at her. “Your various shortcomings are not her fault. Your inability to see past your own zeal for power is not her fault. The fact that she grew to be twice the soldier you never were, and three times the leader you could’ve hoped to be…that is not her fault, either. My daughter is not your scapegoat. What was that phrase you used to love to tell us? ‘The pen that writes our destinies is in our hands.’ You can’t blame Taylor for writing hers.”
“No, but I can blame her for being an amorous whore who traded her future to shack up with the region’s highest paid prostitute.”
“Jessa, that is enough.” Delilah’s stern voice catches us off guard. “You can tender your resignation, or we can go public with our intelligence. We know you’ve been bombing civilians and blaming it on the rebels, and we can prove it. We know you’re tossing UR soldiers into combat against each other and claiming they’re insurgent battles. We know about the blackmail, the executions. Roxana has agreed that if you resign, she will surrender her troops. The fighting will be over. We can truly start again.”
Theia turns from us, her leather pants squeaking with every move. Her boots make no sound against the thin carpeting that runs over the entire floor of the library. Roxana steps back and stands somewhat behind my chair, her hand on the top of my shoulders. I think back upon Lucy’s remark about this being a trap and scan the room for potential places of ambush. It doesn’t seem likely, but it can’t be ruled out.
“And what becomes of me?” Theia asks, quieter than before. “I rot in a cell? A cautionary tale for those with too much ambition for the small minds of others?”
“Of course not. You may live free as a citizen in wherever you choose. The other leaders have opened their borders to you, and to Hunter, if she’d like to go with you.” Delilah slowly walks toward Theia, imploring her with gentle coaxing. “No one will know what we know. You can live out your life in peace, and enjoy the country you helped build. This is not a failure. It is simply time to move on.”
Little noises of disbelief fill my ear from the side as Lucy contends with this information. Without a doubt, she’s thinking this is far too lenient for what Theia has done, and she’s right. Where was this empathy when her father agreed to exchange his life for hers? And for McGovern’s family, or the Reeds. Not Thorne, of course—he was a bastard with no redeeming qualities whatsoever.
