“And in the process, my people are getting hurt,” I say.
“Well—” She falters, just for a moment. “I’m pursuing the greater good. Sometimes, sacrifices have to be—”
“That’s the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard,” I say.
“What?” She bristles. “That I have something I believe in?”
“I have something I believe in, too,” I say. “I believe in myself. I believe that I can change things no one else has ever been able to change, and do things no one else has ever been able to do. I don’t care if people love me, or if they think what I do is good. But rest assured, they’re going to know I was here.”
She draws back. She’s looking at me with revulsion.
“So all you care about is whether or not you come out on top,” she says.
I shrug. “It’s where I deserve to be.”
“I bet he’s terrified of you,” she says.
“Who?” I say.
“Your accomplice,” she says.
I swallow hard. Ale’s not terrified of me. He respects me. It’s not my fault if she can’t tell the difference.
“He obeys me,” I say, with forced carelessness. “That’s all that matters.”
“Don’t tell me he’s your paramour, too,” she says.
“I have better taste than that,” I say.
She raises her eyebrows. “Oh really?”
I feel the sudden urge to clear my throat. “So, let’s talk about your brother. Do you both give your blood to the vide? Or do you make him give up more of his, for the greater good?”
“I don’t make him—” She cuts herself off, pressing her mouth into a thin line. “I know what you’re trying to do. You’re trying to find out more about the vide. You think that if you stop it, you can escape Iris.”
I don’t say anything. I wait to see what she thinks about this particular plan of mine.
“Well, you can’t stop it,” she continues. “But I’ll tell you this much—Theo and I are working together. I would never make him do something he doesn’t agree with. I couldn’t, actually. We’re both very stubborn.”
“So you two are on the same page about everything?” I say.
“Everything that matters,” she says. “We did recently stay up half the night arguing over a card game, but I was right, and he’ll realize it eventually.”
“You’re not both the leader of Iris, though,” I say. “And that works just fine?”
“Here’s some more advice,” she says. “Don’t try and turn me against my brother. We’re… well, I can’t explain it to you.”
“You could at least try,” I say. “I’m such a good listener.”
“You don’t know what it’s like to have someone at your side,” she says. “Not the way I do.”
I roll my eyes. “Yes, it was very special of you two to be born at the same time.”
I’m not going to tell her anything, but if I were, I could tell her that I know exactly how it feels to have someone at my side. I could tell her that Ale has been with me for every day of my life.
Almost every day.
“It’s not just that we were born together,” Verene says, clearly annoyed. “No one else in the whole city was raised the way we were raised, and being alone in that would have been— You know what? You don’t deserve to know anything else about me.”
She turns around impatiently, trying to get a look at the greenhouse door.
“What was it like?” I hear myself say. “Being raised by her?”
She goes very still, and when she speaks, her voice is low. “What do you think it was like?”
I can’t even begin to imagine. It’s so hard for me to picture the watercrea doing anything ordinary people do, let alone raising two children. I just think about her impassive stare and the feeling of her magic invading my body. I think about her throwing Ale through a glass door like he was a rag doll.
I think about the way her broken body looked after I was done with her.
“Did you have… another parent?” I say. “Or was it just—”
Verene whips around, and all at once, the bag is back over my head.
“Get up,” she says. “I’m tired of waiting for the boys to get their acts together. And I’m tired of you.”
THIRTEEN
APPARENTLY, VERENE HAS A KNIFE. SHE DRAGS ME TO MY feet and presses it into my back, then forces me out of the greenhouse. We’re sneaking somewhere. I can tell from the erratic way she keeps pressing me up against walls and then making me run. When we hit a staircase, she doesn’t see fit to warn me first, so I tumble to the bottom, my ankle twisting painfully.
The ground is cold and dusty and familiar. As soon as I hit it, my skin starts crawling.
I wish I knew what was happening to Ale. I wasn’t supposed to have to do anything else alone. Especially not anything involving the catacombs.
“Keep going.” Verene is right behind me, nudging my rear end with her foot.
“If only your people could see all your generosity and compassion on display right now,” I say, fumbling to crawl.
“No more—” She’s still nudging me. “Talking—I’m so tired of your—voice—here. Stop.”
I stop. I wiggle the bonds on my wrists, trying to subtly loosen them.
“Can’t you at least take the bag off my head?” I say.
“No,” she says.
“Why?” I say. “Because when you can’t see my face, you can tell yourself that you’re not really killing a person?”
She pulls the bag off my head. I sit up, enjoying my small victory. We’re in the middle of a narrow hall. The only light is a lantern on the ground at her feet, and the shadows on her face are startlingly sharp.
“I know you’re a person,” she says. “A terrible person. A person who tried to kill me. A person who needs to be stopped.”
“Must you declare everything so dramatically?” I say.
She glares at me. “I must.”
“You think that I deserve to die, then?” I say.
“The vide isn’t going to kill you,” she says. “It will swallow you and carry you to
