Chapter 24
For the first ten years of my life, I often dreamt the same dream.
In the dream, I woke up in a bedroom I did not recognize.
A warm and cozy room, the walls painted sunflower yellow and the carpet a plush, white shag.
I’d pad barefoot out into a hallway that seemed to stretch on forever with rows of closed doors on each side.
At the end, a creaky wooden staircase led me down into the first floor.
A clean home with simple lines—dark wood trim around doorways and big beams outlining vaulted ceilings.
Noises from another room beckoned me, and I’d follow them into a sparkling white kitchen.
Nearly everything in the room was white, including the tables, chairs, and appliances.
At the kitchen table, near a bay window letting in golden rays of sunlight, two people would sit and wave me over.
I didn’t recognize them, but they were the same every time.
In the dream, I knew them as my parents.
They’d kiss me on the head and bring me a bowl of oatmeal.
They said nothing but smiled at me, and it felt like home.
In real life, I’d awaken alone in the cabin.
I told no one about my dream because it caused me so much shame.
I’d been given the opportunity of a lifetime, been fed, clothed, and schooled, revered and respected by my peers.
Feared by my enemies. But when the dream would recur, I’d wonder if maybe in that other life, I could’ve been happy.
The people in this photo don’t look anything like my dream parents. They do, however, look like me. I have his hair and her face, her eyes and his chin. I see them all over my reflection in the glass of the frame. It’s jarring. Most of my life, my reflection was as lonely as me.
“My father…is he?”
Roxana shakes her head. “No, that part of Theia’s story is true. She did execute him. He was a good man. We loved each other very much. His name was Paul.”
I can’t help but smile. Paul, like the protagonist of my favorite book. It’s hard not to let my imagination wander to a place where I had a dad who could read me my favorite book, give me too-tight hugs, and smelled like cologne. “Theia called you traitors.”
Her body sags as she glances to Delilah for support. “Jessa’s always been able to spin a good yarn.”
“Jessa?” It feels sacrilege to use a real name for Theia. “I never knew her real name.”
“Jessa, Paul, and myself joined OrPro in our teens. We’d been recruited out of a…
” Roxana’s eyes shift away from me, clearly embarrassed.
“A little gang. After, oh, maybe ten years of working beneath a bunch of do-nothings, we staged a coup d’état.
The Order’s success is almost entirely due to our leadership.
We started the infiltration of subregion leaders, we recruited from gangs and Underclass workers, we disseminated newspapers and trawled pubs and jails for new members.
We worked day and night, but we had a lot of fun. ”
“Theia was fun?”
Roxana laughs, and it’s startling how much her laugh sounds like mine. “Not a whole lot, but more than she is now, I imagine. She has a wicked sense of humor. She…she was my best friend. Though, I can’t say I was entirely surprised by her betrayal.”
“You think you were set up?”
“I don’t think that, I know that. We—the three of us—planned that mission.
Paul and I set the explosives and detonated them from a distance.
We had no idea there were Order members there.
Jessa insisted it was clear.” I am less shocked and more disappointed.
She betrayed them to consolidate power. It is ruthless and efficient and very, very Theia.
“We didn’t even know what happened until we got back to HQ and were arrested on the spot.
Everyone called for our heads. Jessa held a small tribunal and convicted us of treason.
When we were alone, I admitted to her I was pregnant.
She had Alisa confirm it with a blood test.”
The familiar name catches me. “Alisa? As in, Master Sergeant Alisa Perez? She and Sergeant Javier Perez practically raised me.”
Another sob comes up from Roxana’s throat and I furrow my brow.
Consolation has never been my strong suit, and I don’t know the protocol for consoling your own mother.
“Sorry. Alisa did the blood test, but I’d already told her.
She and Javier were so excited to be your aunt and uncle.
I’m very glad they still got to do that, even if they don’t know it. ”
I frown. “They think I died with you.”
“They probably did at first. Theia privately executed Paul and secretly squirreled me away in a cabin deep in the woods of HQ. As far as they knew, you and I died the same day Paul did. But looking at you, I can’t imagine she and Jav didn’t figure it out eventually. You look so much like your father.”
Peering down at the photo again, I see the resemblance more clearly.
I clearly inherited her coloring, her eyes, and apparently also her laugh—but I see bits of my expressions on him, and, of course, his blond hair.
It stirs me and fills me with a strange, faraway grief to imagine a father who could’ve looked at his baby girl and seen himself, or his parents, or a grandparent. I have a legacy.
“The week before Christmas I escaped and got to Lilah in time for her to deliver you on Christmas Day.” She shares an affectionate look with Delilah, who has begun to softly cry.
Roxana touches Delilah’s leg conciliatorily.
“Theia was closing in on me, knowing I would have had to go somewhere safe to deliver my baby. Delilah gave me a disguise and smuggled me out of Detroit.”
“And you couldn’t take me with you,” I interject, a bit pathetically.
“Oh, I wanted to. No injury, no betrayal, not even watching my best friend execute the love of my life hurt as much as when I handed you to Delilah and walked out the door. But she…she promised to look after you and keep you as safe as possible. It was the best I could do.”
It shouldn’t surprise me that Delilah knew everything—she is a master of keeping secrets. But it hurts to find out she supported Theia’s lie.
Lucy is not afraid to voice this hurt. “Delilah, how could you do that to her? Her mother has been alive this whole time and you let Theia raise her? That woman shouldn’t care for a houseplant, never mind a child.
” Her anger increases and her knee begins to bob with restless and caged rage.
“That story about finding her in the woods—you know that means she intentionally nearly froze Taylor to death as a cover? Not to mention the lifetime of grueling training, the emotional and physical abuse…she tortured her, for fuck’s sake. ”
“Wait, I’m sorry. Theia tortured you?” Roxana glances between us. “Why?”
“Because she saved my life and tried to save my father,” Lucy returns hotly. “Because Theia is a monster. A monster that you two let raise an innocent baby.” Her eyes set on Delilah and I’m glad to not be on the receiving end of her ire. “You claim to love her and you let this happen.”
“I didn’t have a choice.” Delilah’s calm somewhat returns to her, her velvet voice assuaging Lucy’s rising discontent.
“I begged her to let me raise Taylor, but she refused and threatened to burn the entire brothel down to get the baby out. We made a compromise that if I let her take Taylor she would not kill her, and she agreed to send her to me once a year.”
“How could you trust that she wouldn’t kill her?” Lucy asks. “I wouldn’t have let her near that baby with a ten-foot pole.”
“Because she loved Roxana.” Delilah watches Roxana take the photo back from me and smile at it wistfully. “In whatever twisted way Jessa is capable of affection, she loved Roxana. Not such a big fan of Paul.”
“He was a lot,” Roxana elaborates. “Vivacious. Ambitious. Reckless, on occasion, but wholly devoted to the cause. The total opposite of Jessa in every way.”
“Yes, but the fact that she even let you bring the pregnancy to term made me believe she was sincere in her promise to raise Taylor properly,” Delilah replies.
Roxana turns to me fully and takes my hand between hers. Her hands are weathered and hard, like mine. A hint of softness in the meat of her palms. “I’m so sorry I left you behind. I wish I could’ve taken you with me, but a life on the run is no place for a kid.”
“Neither is the Order.”
“You’re right, but look at you. An assassin, a general, clearly a hero.” Her smile, though laced with pride, is strained. She knows, more than most, that my accomplishments are smeared with the blood of others. “Is it stupid to ask how you’re feeling?”
“I’m overwhelmed, to be honest. It would help me to get back to the task at hand.
” That’s what I’m good at: tasks. Give me a plan and a gun, or even just a plan, and I can make it work.
This emotional obstacle course is too difficult.
I’m angry at this woman, but the child inside me cries for her.
My only coherent thought is I want to talk to Lucy.
“Can I ask…how did you end up with these rebels?”
“They were pretty much the only people outside of the Order that needed a disgraced former soldier, and the fact that it would be a thorn in Theia’s side helped.
” Lucy snorts lightly and Roxana gives her a grin.
“Their actual commander died a couple years ago, and I somehow became his replacement. It was mostly robberies and smuggling before the war broke out. Then we suddenly got caught between several armies and the Order, and things got intense.”
“Hence running me off the road and trying to kill me.”
Roxana winces. “I’d received word that one of the top Order generals left for Lansing and I thought I would send Theia a message. I never could’ve imagined…”