My mouth threatened to betray me by smiling.
I looked away from her before it could.
The sea stretched dark and endless beneath the moon, and for a while I let the silence stand between us.
Silence required less blood.
“I have read people well, until you.” I stared out over the water. I couldn’t look at her.
“It’s how I’ve stayed alive. I predict the people who hate me before they form their plans. I see through the people who claim to love me.” Bitter amusement touched me briefly. “It’s useful. I don’t get hurt the way others do. Surprise is where the cut lands, and I am rarely surprised.”
Cara waited silently.
“I was surprised by you,” I admitted, and I finally looked at her.
Moonlight caught her face in pale edges and shadows. I watched her face shift as the words slid under her armor, sharp as a blade. Not because I wanted to hurt her. But because for the first time in a long time, it felt important to be understood. Not to bebelieved, as I created a story, but to be understood.
“I had every piece of information to predict what you would do. I knew what the queen was offering. I knew what Tay was worth. I should have known what choice you would make if she forced your hand.” My voice remained cool. I had trained it to remain cool through almost anything, and I’d had much practice.
“I was stupid,” I admitted softly. “For the first time in a very long time. I knew what I took from you. I knew you had reason. And yet…I hoped you would trust me, as I had come to trust you.”
That was the wound in the end.
Not her betrayal.
My hope.
“And so I was hurt.” The words scraped coming out. I’d thought I’d carved that weakness out of myself years ago.
Cara was quiet, absorbing this, her gaze moving over my face.
Most people rushed to fill silences like this, to soothe themselves. Cara simply stayed with me, bearing the weight of what she’d done alongside me.
The moon painted a long silver path across the sea below us, like a road for ghosts.
“It was a privilege I have given no one else.”
Her throat moved as she swallowed. “I wish I had not done it. You hurt me first, and yet…I wish I had not hurt you.”
It was not an apology. But then, I had opened the wound because I was tired of carrying it alone. It would have felt slight if she apologized now, as if we could simply move beyond what had happened. I wasn’t ready to forgive her. She might not be ready to forgive me.
For a long moment neither of us moved.
Then Cara reached for my hand.
The motion was hesitant enough that I could’ve shifted or crossed my arms and prevented her from touching me.
Her fingers curled carefully through mine as if she expected me to pull away. But I didn’t.
We stood there without speaking, the sea thundering against the rocks, hand in hand.
The moon’s light stretched its path farther across the sea, as if somewhere beyond the horizon there truly was a way through.
Forty-Six
Cara
Asrael found us coming back from the sea wall. “Fear! Cara!”
