So, what have I learned? She’s an orphan. Theia saved her life, shedding an incredible amount of light on the dynamic between them. Theia isn’t her mother, she’s more. She’s her savior. Their family is settling debts too.
“You’re an orphan. Well, a foundling, if you’re not sure whether your parents are alive or dead,” I correct absentmindedly. “That’s why you consider yourself lucky. That’s why you robbed that house for those kids.”
“Among other reasons, but yes. I would be one of those kids if not for the Order. Or, more likely, I would be dead.” She peers over the edge of the building. “Theia has given me everyadvantage. Whoever my parents were, they never could have given me a life like this. I am fortunate they cared about their offspring so little to abandon me.”
“People get desperate. That doesn’t mean they didn’t love you.”
She vehemently shakes her head. “You never abandon someone you love.”
I glance up at her but she’s fixed her stare elsewhere. Everything I want to say sounds like vague platitudes and hollow sympathy, so I keep quiet. I can’t imagine what it’s like to be summarily rejected by the people whose biological imperative is to love you. My mother’s death felt like abandonment, but it’s not the same. She wanted me and loved me until the day she died, a fact I can acknowledge when I feel less selfish.
“Is Mason an orphan too?”
“Yes, his parents died when he was a boy.”
“Disease?” It’s horribly common for the Underclass to die of curable illnesses. Those that didn’t die in the Great Sickness probably had a natural immunity, but strains of the virus still circulate among the poor, since they can’t afford vaccinations.
“No.” Taylor lies flat on the barrier, clasping her hands over her stomach. “Not my story to tell. You will have to ask him.”
“And Theia? What’s her story? Did she eat everyone else in power?”
Taylor snorts and lifts herself halfway up. “I know she may seem draconian to you, but Theia is the best commander the Order has ever had.” I level a look of disbelief. “She is. As a leader’s child, you have seen firsthand the tough decisions that must be made when you are in charge. As a woman, she must be twice as ruthless, yet also somehow twice as kind. Fair, and decisive. Accessible, but untouchable.”
“I’ve also seen firsthand how power changes people. It leaks inside their souls and rots them from the inside out. Peoplelike Silas McGovern, like my father? They are not born, they’re made.”
Like an inquisitive dog, Taylor perks up. “Would you let power poison who you are?”
My deepest fear, the kind you tuck away in a shoebox under a floorboard in a closet, is that I wouldn’t have a choice. Like spring with rain, the poison comes with the power.
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s genetics. Maybe the choice has already been made. What does it matter?” I ask in short tones. “I’ll never be a region leader anyway.”
“You sound disappointed.”
It only now occurs to me that I am mourning my loss of status. Could be because the power and the burden were so deeply entwined with who I am and who I thought I’d be that without them, I am no one at all. Far too intimate to divulge with my kidnapper.
“It doesn’t upset me as much as the murder, but yeah.” I study Taylor’s dismissive expression, trying to find the fissures of humanity beneath. “It doesn’t bother you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Murder and assassination. Killing people. War.”
Taylor is a flawless slab of marble. Blank and furiously cold. “No, it does not. Nothing in the world means more to me than the cause.”
“Huh. I guess I never believed in war.”
She looks about to laugh, like I’m a precocious child speaking out of turn. “War is not something you choose to believe in, like a god or the tooth fairy.”
I roll my eyes, irritated. “You know what I mean. War creates more problems than it solves. And killing people…” I can’t suppress the shudder tingling my spine. “Lives aren’t there for you to take.”
“That is naïve.”
Heat rises up my neck. “Being a pacifist isn’t naïve.”
“Only the privileged consider themselves above the violence that is a part of everyday life for the rest of us.”
“Right, because I have no idea what goes on, up in my white tower.”
Taylor sighs, shoulders sagging. “It is not about knowledge or empathy. I am aware you have both. But what you do not have is the bone-deep desperation of the Underclass. The crushing weight of poverty and what it does to a person, to a family.” She runs her fingers through her hair. “The Order relies on their desperation. That they want to fight for something better than this.”
