“You should have told me.”
“Yes. But that wouldn’t have changed what happened, or that I need to protect you from the others.”
“All of it is a lie. The scholarship.”
“Yes.” He says it without qualification, without defense, without the performance of regret that men put on when they want forgiveness without having earned it. A clean acknowledgment with no attempt to manage my response.
This is what makes it harder.
If he argued, I could be angrier. If he deflected, I could be cleaner about it. But he just tells me I am right, and he means it, and it is the most honest anyone has been with me since I arrived at this campus. It makes the rage and the grief and the exhausted, complicated love of it all sit in my chest at the same time without any of them winning.
“I need some time,” I say.
He nods.
I put the envelope back in my bag, then straighten my jacket. I look at him one more time, at his face in the dim light, the unguarded version, the one that costs him something, and I walk back toward the main building.
He lets me go.
That is either the most respectful thing he has ever done or the hardest, and I think, as I walk, that it might be both.
What sits with me next is the fact that he is mentally unstable. Azriel’s words about staying away from Saint hit me all at once. Criminally insane means he’s hurt people. It also means I’m no different from the economics girl or any other Prey on campus.
Saint
Ilet her go.
I listen to her footsteps fade, and I know with complete certainty that following her would be the wrong thing. What she needs right now is not my proximity on her own terms, without having to manage my presence while she does.
Knowing this does not make it easier.
I look at the wall. I hate my stepfather for what he has done. Telling her the truth about me was something I didn’t anticipate as being a problem until now.
Until she walked away.
The anger that moves through me is not aimed at her. I’m not even angry with Azriel. I’ll have words with him later about the photograph, who sent it, and what they were hoping to accomplish.
I’m angry with myself about the inexcusable fact that I watched her arrive on this campus knowing what I knew, and I made a series of choices that prioritized my own approach over the straightforward matter of telling her the truth.
I had my reasons, but they were not good enough.
I didn’t know how she would affect me. It’s one thing to create a version of someone in your mind and another to actually meet them. I also got carried away with my freedom.
She earned her place here. Every grade, every early morning, every hour in the library, and every careful note on every page is hers. Untouched by what the Order did.
But the invitation. The family connection index of 0.2, which I saw in Zero’s files three weeks before she set foot on this campus, and which I kept because keeping it felt like the less damaging option at the time.
I was wrong.
I am going to sit with being wrong for as long as she needs me to. And that is something I’m not sure I can do.
Azriel calls at noon.
“Who sent it?” I grit out before he can speak.
“Victor.”
“Victor has the selection committee files?”
