“Let them go. You’d just get hurt trying to stop them. They’ll sort it out.”
I can practically hear the unspoken one way or another in his statement.
“They can’t kill each other without hurting you,” he adds, answering my unvoiced worry about how far the fight can go. The flash of hurt in his eyes as he relays this information bitch-slaps me back into the cold reality of betrayal and lies, and I hate that in this case, I’m the perpetrator of Treno’s pain.
My eyes flick back and forth between his mismatched stare. I’m suddenly so fucking sorry and so fucking happy to see him that it’s like the two overwhelming emotions crash together inside of me and explode out in a sob that opens the dam, and I have no choice but to come flooding out. I wrap my arms around his neck, and shakily he sits up and pulls me into his lap. My guilt and sorrow pour out of me, and I hate that after what I’ve done to him, he’s still willing to hold me while I leak weakness all over him.
I know that he’s hurting. I can feel it in our connection, and yet here he is, holding me, reassuring me silently with just his mere presence that I’ll be okay. I hate my frailty more in this moment than I have in any other. I’ve floated through this world, delusional and purposefully naive. I’ve refused to open my eyes, to trust my instincts, to see what was right in front of me, and now everyone all around me is hurting and fighting.
I allow myself this last moment to break, and vow that I will put myself back together in a way that will never let this happen again. No more blinders. No more poor helpless me. No more ignoring my instincts and second-guessing everything. It’s time to become the woman I need to be to survive in this world. It’s time to own my shit and find my way. It’s time to accept that this is my life now, and I better get fucking used to it.
3
The cave is silent. The smell of campfire and rage stings my nostrils, and I try to subtly chase the smells away by inhaling deeply while my cheek is pressed against Treno’s chest. I suspect he hasn’t showered for a bit, because he’s a tad ripe, and I squirm a little with the fact that I probably smell like ass too.
He looks tired, his long white hair tangled and dirty, and I feel a slight tremor in his hold. I don’t see any injuries, but he was out as long as I was, so something must have happened to him. I want to ask, but I bite the questions back. I need to talk to him first. Explain what happened before I do anything else.
I need to start putting the pieces together and fixing things after all the shit that’s happened to lead to all of us hiding out in some random cave, but I have no idea how to go about trying to repair anything. Treno releases steady breaths, and I take that as a sign that he’s ready to talk, either that or he’s ready for me to get the fuck out of his lap.
I steel myself and scoot back away from him. He lets me go, and I try and fail to read the look in his eyes as we separate. We both just stare at each other for a moment, taking each other in, breathing through the uncertainty and hurt.
“I’m sorry,” I finally say at the same time he says, “You lied.”
I can hear my heart hammer in my ears for three beats before he speaks again. “Are you?” he asks.
I shoo away the defensiveness that automatically springs up inside of me and truly think about his question for a moment. “Yes, and also no. I’m not sorry that I lied. I didn’t want to die or to be tortured in a dungeon. Stating half-truths was the only way to keep either of those things from happening. But I am sorry for hurting you.”
As the last words exit my mouth, I see a flash of devastation in Treno’s mismatched gaze, and it feels like a punch to the gut. I hate that I put that there, and I hate that if I had all of this to do over again, I would do exactly what I had done before.
“So were you spying?” Treno demands, more bite to his tone and hardness in his eyes than was there before.
“No,” I defend. I want to snap that he should know better than that, but what do either of us really know about the other at all... Nothing. “I was telling the truth about how I ended up here and not knowing what I was. I just left out that the Hidden found me first.”
“Oh, you simply left it out,” he repeats, his eyes now mocking.
Again irritation bubbles up in my chest, and I have to remind myself that he has every right to be mad. The problem is, so do I. I shake that thought away and try to commit to being empathetic and understanding. We’re not going to get anywhere by fighting, and judging by the shitty cave we’re shacking up in, we need to get somewhere.
“I spent a little time with the Hidden, and then I was kicked out. I was trying to get home when you and your soldiers shot me out of the sky. I didn’t ask to be taken against my will to Kestrel City. I was forced to try and make the best of a bad situation. Everything else was the truth: I was stuck there and just trying to get back to the gate so I could go home. I found some information about my family in the archives, but I wasn’t spying or hiding anything from you for any reason other than I
