Epilogue
Calden
Iwove through the crowd, never taking my eyes off Maryn. Something had changed.
That night, I’d come too late. Maryn’s usually silky hair was a tangled halo framing round, wild eyes. With my night vision cameras, I could see her, but she couldn’t see me.
I clocked the rapid rise and fall of her chest, her shaking hands, and stilled.
She’d fought. Gotten her hands dirty. I wanted nothing more than to wash her clean of every dark deed, every foul act, the rebellion had asked her to commit. But this—whatever she’d done to get free of him tonight—she’d done for me.
Cold steel slid into my beating heart, twisting the bloody organ until I couldn’t breathe.
Then, the sky opened, and she was trapped.
I started forward, consequences be damned, but Covenant Security guards were out in force, and the rain sent them straight for the president’s home. I watched, as I had done these many months, unable to reach her when she needed me most.
Outside, alone with my thoughts and the memory of her pulse racing under my touch, I waited until the sun scorched the final remaining traces of the acid rain.
The burned, bloated body of her first kill was unrecognizable, but I got rid of him anyway. No body meant no need to review footage of the night.
I’d circled the house, looking for any sign of her, but Elias had his fortress locked down, and there was no easy way inside.
Now, Maryn’s fingers were laced through her new husband’s; I didn’t have time to process the gaping wound that was left in my chest. Her eyes were wide. Shocked.
Something had tipped her over that invisible edge she’d been teetering on since Nami had been taken to the farm. I thought taking her there, showing her I'd saved her friend, would be enough, that I could be enough, but she was her mother’s daughter. Capable of even lying to herself.
Elaine thought I didn’t know her secret. Believed she was careful.
She was.
But I was a master of my craft.
I touched my tablet screen, scrolling to one of the hundreds of drones I’d placed in and around this place today. I tapped a tiny square, bringing up Maryn’s private moment with her mom in the antechamber.
Elaine wrapped her arms around her daughter, lips moving beside her ear. I touched the lip read function, and words spilled onto the bottom of the screen.
“The mission has changed.”
Heat surged in my veins as I read Elaine’s new command.
Then one more line, and the breath left my body.
I sat back.
I had thought this was ideology. A cause worth risking lives for.
It wasn’t. It never had been.
This was personal.
I clicked out of the video.
Maryn had played the game so well that she convinced Elias of her feelings for him. Even I wasn’t sure anymore.
I slid the tablet back into my pocket and ran a hand down my thigh. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but her.
She’d survived the Rite; I’d made sure of that. Trial Eleven was the easiest to maneuver, and I took no small satisfaction from watching Sera Cannon choke on her own vitriol. But with the new law, Maryn had five years to produce a son.
They were calling it divorce. But Dathan’s wife was executed in her home before the papers had even been filed with the Covenant Bureau.
No matter how Elias stared at her with stars in his eyes now, no man was immune to the fear that struck when their station in life was at risk.
I sucked my tooth, moving closer to the stage.
Maryn wrapped an arm around Elias’s waist, and he looked at her, gaze adoring. The picture of a perfect couple. But from this angle, I could see her other hand, the one she had tucked behind her back.
Her thumb was tracing the outline of each finger in rapid succession.
She smiled, and Elias leaned down for a kiss.
Her hand came out from behind her back, her fingers fanning across her cheek to hide their kiss, and her mouth closed, lips pressing together.
That’s my good girl. Don’t give him anything.
I was closer, nearly at the stage. As if she could sense me the way I could her, she broke their fake kiss, glancing my way.
Our eyes locked for a moment, a beat, and then she was passing over me, scanning the rest of the crowd.
Sapphires winked from her ears in the stage light. New ones.
My hand found my breast pocket at the same moment hers lifted to her ear. That moment was all I needed to know the truth. She didn’t want this. Him. She was trapped.
And I was nothing if not good at waiting.