CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
THAT WORD. MY EYES SLAMMED INTO HIS STARBURST GAZE. He looked between me and the folder. His smile faltered. He held a painting in his hands.
“Moonlight,” he said again, slowly lowering the frame. This time it sounded like a plea. “Where did you get that?”
I couldn’t get the words to come out. I couldn’t ask. Because I knew that once I did, once he voiced it, this would be real. I pointed to the table.
“Moonlight, I can explain.” Desperation tinged his voice as he rested the frame against the sofa.
“Do. Not. Call. Me. That,” I bit out.
Hal took a step toward me.
I retreated. I needed to get out of here. I dropped the folder. I needed to get away from everything. Everything I had begun to trust, everything I had begun to rearrange my life around. Everything I had given away. To him. I needed to run—as far away as possible.
Hal moved toward me again, grabbing at my hand.
I yanked it away. “Don’t touch me.”
“I can explain, Moon—Emeline,” Hal begged. “I can explain. It isn’t what it looks like.”
I had risked so much, bent rules and lied for what I thought had been real. I had given myself to him. Walked right into his plan. I felt my heart crack open under the realization that both sides seemed to have a role for me—a need, not a want.
I had chosen wrong—again.
“Emeline, I can explain,” Hal pleaded, coming to stand in front of me.
A ghost of a laugh escaped me. My chest hollowed as the remains of my heart seeped out, contaminating the room. The knot in my throat gagged me as my eyes stung.
“Did one of those papers tell you to sleep with me?” I choked out. “Or was that just for fun?”
I stared at those starburst eyes. The eyes I had seen a future with. Eyes I had been willing to risk everything for. I stared, needing to see the truth.
“Moonlight.” I flinched at the word. “Emeline, listen to me. Let me explain.”
“Explain what? That you knew exactly who I was before you showed up in my office, that none of this was by accident. That I was researched so you could find out how best to manipulate me.” My fists clenched at my sides. “Make her care. You succeeded, Hal.”
“It’s not like that. We thought—”
I didn’t hear the rest of his statement. His use of we sent me reeling as I was assaulted by all the things I had missed.
“They were all in on this?” I asked.
“Yes. I mean, no—not everyone was for it, but we got sick of waiting,” Hal said, running his hands through his hair.
“Waiting for what, Hal?”
He remained silent, a look in his eyes I had never seen before. Helplessness.
You met her by chance? Kane had asked Hal when I first came to the Underworld. You do her no justice keeping her in the dark, Barrett had told Hal in my office. Gerald had known my name. You owe me twenty marks, Barrett had said. I hadn’t known I was what they were betting on.
Each revelation felt like a battering ram to my heart. They had all known. I was a fool.
Make her care. But it was more than that.
What I felt for Hal—I had been running from it for a while.
I had known in that closet. That beautiful expansive thing in my chest I had contemplated falling into collapsed on itself.
An endless chasm, hollow and desolate. I slammed into it, sucked into its incessant depths until it swallowed me whole.
My chest broke open, and emptiness slithered in. It had all been a lie.
“Look, I wrote all that before I ever met you. We found out that you might be the Illum’s Mate several moons ago. I thought you could help us work from within. Get us information from Collin. The Illum have been impossible to infiltrate.”
“By making me care about you? By manipulating me?”
“By making you agreeable to the cause,” Hal clarified—like it meant something different.
“Because I was someone you were willing to hurt,” I said, repeating his words from only minutes before.
“Emeline, you were a job.”
Collin’s words crashed into me. Yes—you are a job, Emeline.
“I fully intended to go through with it,” Hal continued, “but then I got to know you. I realized you meant something to me. I couldn’t lose another thing I love.”
His declaration sat between us—too big for the room. “You love me?” I whispered.
“Yes, I do. That wasn’t part of the plan.” Hal stepped toward me. “I fell in love with you.”
I hated that words that would have meant everything to me moments ago only served to break me now.
“That’s why you didn’t want me involved, why you kept telling me it was dangerous, why you told everyone the Illum’s Mate was off-limits?” I asked, watching as Hal closed the distance between us.
“Yes. I didn’t want you involved. I needed you away from this and safe. If Collin found out you were helping us . . . the things they might do to you . . . I didn’t want to lose you. I couldn’t lose you.” Hal cupped my face gently.
“Why did you tell me to be his Mate after?” I asked, willing my voice not to break.
“You seem determined to help. Nothing I say—nothing I do—stops you. You wouldn’t listen to me. Just being his Mate mitigates the risk while letting you help. If you do what he wants, you’re safe.”
My hand came up to the hand upon my face as I looked at the man before me, truly. I interlaced my fingers with his—squeezing. I clung to him for a moment longer.
“So my safety matters to you?”
“It is everything to me.”
I squeezed his hand one last time before I pulled it from my face, stepping away. “Except when you have something to gain from me breaking their rules, when my risk benefits you physically.”
“That’s not true. I have been protecting you.”
“Protecting me,” I hissed, my hand finding my empty chest. “Protecting me how? By keeping me in the dark? Is that your idea of protection? Was it protection when you left me to walk out in front of all the Elite with my hair and dress destroyed? So it was obvious what I had done. You knew the Illum were there. If I hadn’t run into Gregory, I could have been hurt or eliminated. ”
I suddenly hated the way my very skin felt. The wrongness of it—of me. I stared at Hal. “I have been lying, protecting you. I was willing to cut out my chip for you. I risked everything for you.”
“Like Collin hasn’t been lying to you too,” Hal spat.
“He’s an Illum, Hal. The consequences aren’t the same. Maybe I wanted to trust him at first—”
“Is this where you defend him? Tell me he’s different again?”
Anger speared through me. “No, that’s not what I’m saying.”
“Then what are you saying, Emeline?”
I didn’t know. When it came to Collin I didn’t know how to hold both truths: that the man who could show kindness and apologize for my birth family’s treatment of me was the same man who ordered Christopher’s death.
“I saw the way you looked at him on the dance floor. He’s a fucking Illum and you stood out there in front of everyone like you wanted it—wanted him,” Hal snarled, and I winced. “The Illum are killing people.”
“So are you,” I whispered, admitting the truth I had attempted to ignore. “Did you ever think to just ask me to help? To tell me the truth. To give me a choice. Or did you think we were all too brainwashed above the surface to be capable of helping?”
Hal stared at me, the truth there.
“You did, didn’t you?” I said, stumbling back—the weight of that truth pulling me under. “So, who does the Reaper actually plan on saving? Only those in blue?”
“Mostly, they’re the innocent ones,” Hal told me.
“No one on the ground or in the sky is innocent?” I asked.
“Not the ones I’ve met.”
“I’m one of those people, Hal. Am I not worthy of being saved?”
“You just defended an Illum,” Hal said coldly.
I laughed, but it came out defeated and cruel—my brokenness permeating everything. “I thought the Reaper was a brave man. I thought he was better than the Illum. He isn’t. There are good people up there.”
“You’re wrong,” Hal said. “He—”
“When everyone above the surface believes everyone below is uncivilized and defective and you all believe everyone above is immoral and self-serving, who wins? How can anyone win when you all hate one another?” I asked. Hal said nothing. “How are you any different from them?”
The door blew open as Gerald hurtled into the room.
“What is it?” Hal asked, whirling toward him.
Gerald vaulted the sofas, sprinting through the room, coming out with several Comm Devices. “Shit,” he said, his fingers flying.
“Gerald, what is going on?” Hal demanded.
“It’s not holding,” Gerald told him. “We need more time. They’re still in there.”
Our fight fell away as Gerald’s panic filled the room. “What do we need to do?” I asked.
“We aren’t doing anything,” Hal growled. I ignored him.
“There’s a shaft on your floor that leads to an old tunnel. I need to get this cube there, now. I’m too big. I won’t fit. I need to get there right now. We have less than ten minutes.” Sweat beaded across his brow.
I looked from the papers to Gerald. For once, no one’s voice filled my head other than my own. I didn’t look at Hal as I said, “Tell me what to do.”
“Emeline, you can’t do this. If you’re caught—”
Gerald nodded at me and held out his hand. “We’re going to run.”
My heart quaked at words I had waited my entire life to hear.
“Gerald, you won’t involve her. You have orders,” Hal interrupted, grabbing my arm.
“You’re not the only one afraid of losing people,” Gerald said, his hand finding mine.
I yanked away from Hal, bumping into the frame he had brought in. It fell to the floor.
The mismatched woman with the book sat there, in all her beauty. Her broken form. The painting I had seen beauty in despite her fractured image. I hadn’t been able to see it in myself until Hal helped me find it. Only to destroy it.
Another onslaught of torment rampaged through me. It only served to solidify my decision.
“You can’t go, Emeline,” Hal stated. “He’ll kill you if you’re caught.”
“That’s my decision to make.” I turned to Gerald and said, “Run. I can keep up.”