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“Thanks for coming over. You didn’t need to drive all this way,” I said, as we both stood up from the kitchen chairs.
“Oh, I was right outside anyway.”
I looked at him. “What?”
“Damian asked me to take over while he ran home to shower.”
My heart threw itself against my ribs.
“What?”
“He’s been out there in the jeep since last night. Watching out for you.”
I blinked hard three times. It wasn’t enough to stop another torrent from flowing from my eyes.
“Hey, hey…”
Kai hugged me gingerly. I sobbed all over his shirt. The irony, I thought. He was a beautiful murder accomplice, too.
“What happened?”
I sniffed. “He didn’t tell you?”
“He told me you don’t want to see him and that he hates his mother. Like, I’ve heard that before, but it’s been a long time since I heard him say it like that.”
“I met her yesterday, to negotiate the trade,” I said. “She’s a demon.”
“What did she say to you?” Kai gently steered me back to the chair. We both sat down again. “Whatever it was, you’re sitting here looking like the world ended, and the guy who’d take a bullet for you is sleeping in a jeep, so somebody got the story wrong.”
I wiped my face with the cuff of my shirt. “She told me about Wren.”
He went still. “I thought you already knew. What did she tell you?”
My throat didn’t want to let the words out. They came out rough and dry. “That when it came down to it, he gave her up. That he went to them and told them where she was hiding, to save himself. That he’s been performing his grief ever since.” The words tasted like the dark, woodsy floral scent of the aviary. Like rose and lemon trees and rot. “She told me to watch his face when I said her name. And I did, because I’m an idiot. And his face—”
“Stop right there,” Kai said quietly, “because I need you to listen to me, and I need you to actually hear it.” He leaned in so we were knee to knee. “He didn’t give her up.”
“You weren’t—”
“I know where he was that night. The story that she sold you, she did it because it’s the cruelest thing she could do to him. Take the man who couldn’t save the woman he loved and make everyone believe he’s the one who killed her. Make him so radioactive that no one gets close enough to learn the truth. And she handed it to you like a party favor.”
“Then tell me the truth.”
“No,” he said quietly. “That’s his to tell. He’s been carrying it for a year, and he deserves to put it to rest himself.” He looked at me, steady and glassy-eyed and more serious than I’d ever seen him. “Ask him where he was driving that night. Then let him talk.”
I was shaking my head, not in disagreement, but because I couldn’t hold it all still. “Then why is he…why did they let him—”
“Live?” Kai exhaled. “Yeah, that’s the part that’s supposed to convince you, right? He’s breathing, she isn’t, so he must have traded her.” He placed a hand on the kitchen table. “Except that’s not how they work. A man who folds, who hands someone over to save his own skin…he’s much less useful than the one who fought you and lost, because he’s worth more alive than dead. He’s a walking reminder to himself and the rest of us what trying gets you.”
“How would you—”
“Because I’m the one who always folded. And I was going to keep folding, until Callie told me what you were planning to do,” he said, without self-pity. Just as a simple fact. “That’s how I’m still here. Damian’s not built like me. Never has been. It’s the most annoying thing about him and the thing I admire the most.”
My head felt full of pressure. My face was burning hot. My throat felt like I’d swallowed glass.
“But there must have been…” I shook my head instead of finishing the sentence. I didn’t need to finish it.
“You think it’s a choice?” Kai said. “Saying no? Like there’s a door and he just didn’t walk through it fast enough? That’s what Octavia wants you to think. That a braver man would’ve just… left.”
