Chapter 8
“Sun’s almost up.” Juno’s voice wakes me from where I’ve dozed off in one of the library chairs. “And your loverboy hasn’t returned.”
I sit up, immediately feeling the crick in my neck and a slight pull in my lower back. The book I’d been reading falls to the floor with a thud as I look around and find Juno standing in the stacks. “What time is it?”
“Thanks. I’ll be sure to write that in my notes.” I stifle an eye roll, only because I don’t want to fight with her. There’s too much pent up anger in me to do much more than sarcastic commentary.
I stand and stretch, then head for the door. Druin must be losing his shit since Coal isn’t back. A niggling voice in the back of my mind says I’m the one who sent Valen after him, maybe sent him into danger. What if they’re both caught? My stomach turns at the thought.
“You know—”
I yelp when I realize Juno is on my heels, her voice as sharp as it is unexpected.
“Jesus, don’t do that!”
“What?” she asks innocently.
“Sneak up on me.” I march through the rooms and head for the staircase.
“I wasn’t sneaking.” She dogs my steps, though she’s still so silent I glance back every few moments to see if she’s still there.
When we reach the landing, I turn on my heel and face her. “What?”
“Why are you so combative?” She cocks her head at a surly angle.
“Are you seriously asking me that right now?”
“Yes.” She crosses her arms.
The movement is so familiar, so classically Juno that an ache rips through my chest.
“What’s your problem? I thought you’d be glad I was alive. I thought—”
“That what, we’d live happily ever after? Two plucky sisters in a death-ravaged world? Oh, but one of the sisters is the villain of the story, oh and also a vampire?” My voice ends so high that I have to take a deep breath.
“Villain?” Her eyes widen with incredulity. “You think I’m the villain?”
“Of course you are!” A hysterical laugh bubbles out of me.
Her mouth drops open. Then her eyes narrow. “That’s rich coming from someone who fucks Gregor’s Specter every chance she gets.”
Now my mouth drops open. “What—”
“You heard me. You were fucking him in DC behind my back, weren’t you? I was trying to save the country from annihilation, and you were too busy sucking vampire dick to notice!”
“Me? It was you!” I spread my arms wide, the tangle of emotions I’d been shoving down and down and down refusing to stay buried. “You ruined this country! You sold us out! Not Valen. Not Gregor. You!”
“That’s a lie!” She steps toward me, her feline eyes flashing. “I don’t know what nonsense Valen has been feeding you, but I—”
“Cut the shit, Juno! Tell the truth for once. For fucking once! You wanted to be president so badly that you would’ve done anything to get there. And you did. Just admit it!”
“I admit I did what I thought was best—”
“No!” I step to her, finally meeting her toe to toe for the first time in our lives. “You did what was best for you. And you can sugarcoat it and lie to yourself all you want, but I see you. Valen didn’t need to lie to me for me to realize what you’ve done. Candice’s blood was enough!”
She winces when I say Candice’s name, but that doesn’t stop her. “Oh, and you think Valen is who you should hitch your wagon to? Do you have any clue what he’s done? How many he’s murdered?”
“At least he admits what he is!” I throw my hands up.
“And he’s the only chance we have of killing Gregor.
” I hiss the final words only loud enough for her to hear.
Valen’s warning was clear. If anyone learns what I did to Theo—what I’m capable of doing to all of them—I’ll be dead before I can scream.
She laughs, the sound hard and sharp. “You think he’ll help you? Help you wipe out his own kind?”
“Keep your voice down!” I snap.
“He’s just keeping you around as a bargaining chip. That’s all. This is politics, Georgia. My realm. My fucking wheelhouse. He’s using you for an easy fuck and a way to keep Gregor in line when he finally makes his move against him. That’s all.”
“That’s not true.”
“Still so gullible.” She rolls her eyes.
“You’re wrong about him.”
“You’re wrong about me,” she fires back.
“I’m not. I’ve seen the bodies to prove it.
” My voice rises, my anger right along with it.
“The last word on Candice’s lips was my name.
Mine. Her blood is on your hands, but I’m the one carrying the weight of it.
And not just hers, Vince’s blood, too. Do you have any idea what they did to him?
How they tortured him for months while you were safe here?
They mutilated him. Destroyed him. Aang, too.
Gretchen, Wyatt, Evie—everyone from the lab.
More, so many more. The bodies kept piling up, but you didn’t stop.
You held onto power for as long as you could, and you sacrificed everyone who ever loved you to do it. ”
“I … I didn’t know what happened to Vince. I …” Her eyes water as she stares at me, her chin beginning to wobble. She almost looks human, like the Juno that cried at our mother’s funeral. It only makes me angrier. She can still cry. Our friends can’t.
“If you’re going to cry, cry for them, not for yourself.
” I turn and climb the stairs, my feet steady as my insides twist and churn.
I don’t look back. I can’t. Whatever remains between the two of us is too wrecked, too mangled to ever become the same bond of sisterhood we shared before.
I know that now. It’s like I’m mourning her all over again, but this time a wide ribbon of anger is woven through it.
I return to my room in silence. Juno is thankfully no longer following me. I slam my door and fight back tears. Just seeing her, talking to her—it’s too much. I can’t seem to hold myself together.
“Dav—I mean, Druin,” I call out, my voice shaking.
He knocks only moments later.
“Hey.” I swing the door wide and usher him in. “So they’re not back?” I swipe a few lone tears from my cheeks and take a deep breath.
“No.” His left wing twitches slightly. “I should’ve gone. Coal is my blood, and I let a Dragonis call the shots.”
“The sun will be up soon. Valen—”
“Can handle it. Coal can’t.” He stares at me.
“And Valen knows that. They’ll hunker down somewhere. I’m sure of it.”
“Reach out to him.”
“What?”
“Listen to your blood.”
“I don’t—”
“Like earlier. Do it.” His voice has taken on a desperate edge to it. “Just listen.”
“All right.” I sit on the edge of my bed and close my eyes. It takes time, though not as long as before, for me to settle down and focus on Valen. I imagine a ribbon of red between us, some sort of a conduit like an old game of telephone with plastic cups and string.
Are you there? I think the words as if I’m speaking to him.
Silence.
I try again.
Then again.
The line, if there ever was one, is quiet. But there is something there. Like a low current of static, one with a rhythmic pulse to it. Like a … like a heartbeat.
I open my eyes.
“Anything?” Druin asks.
“He’s alive.” I know that’s true somehow. “But I couldn’t get anything else. I’m not sure if—”
“Fuck!” He turns and slams his fist into the wall, cracking the stone.
“Druin!” I stand quickly.
“Sorry.” He rests his forearm on the wall and hangs his head. “Sorry, Georgia.”
“It’s all right.” I pad over to him and put my hand on his back between his wings. Muscles—ones that don’t exist in human anatomy—ripple beneath my palm. “I get it. But if Valen’s still alive, then there’s a solid chance he’s found Coal. We just have to wait out the day, okay?”
He takes a deep breath and sighs it out.
“You should rest.”
“Can’t.” He shakes his head. “He’s the only family I have left. Without him, Gregor will crush Corvidion as traitors. Coal’s the only thing that’s stopped that from happening.”
“Just try to get some sleep. You’ll need it for when Coal gets back.”
He turns around, his shoulders drooping as he meets my gaze. “I’ll be around, and …”
“What?”
“Your sister—” He groans, the seems to wrestle with what he wants to say. “Look, I don’t like her.” He holds up a hand in a ‘don’t get the wrong idea’ way. “Not even a little. I actually think she’s awful.”
I blink at him. “Okay?”
“But when I would go feed her when she was still in her cell, she asked about you. Every time. Every night I went down there, you were the first thing she’d check on.
Wanting to know if you were all right. She’d ask more, trying to think of ways to help you.
She helped Melody figure out what food you’d eat, what clothes to get you.
She’s insane, don’t get me wrong, but I just wanted you to know you were on her mind. Such as it is.”
I cross my arms over my stomach. He’s not attacking me, not judging me at all, but I still feel defensive. Unsure, too.
“I don’t know if that means anything to you, but I figured … well, she’s the only family you have, so … Anyway.” He glances at the cracked stone. “I’ll fix it later.” Then he leaves, his words about Juno still hanging heavily in the air.
Eyes watering, I grapple with a million unwanted feelings.
Nothing is simple. Not even family. Especially not family.
Running myself a shower, I step into the cold spray as a tiny self-punishment, then wait in the freezing flow until it warms. I can’t fall apart like this, can’t let my emotions get the better of me when I need to keep a level head.
But Juno, this new iteration of her, brings out the worst in me.
And what I said merely scratched the surface of everything I feel toward her, toward what she’s done.
It doesn’t matter if she asked about me every day, I tell myself.
It doesn’t change anything, doesn’t fix anything.
What did Melody make of her, I wonder. I wish I could ask her, could get some guidance, could sit with her while she pours me tea and I get irrationally jealous of her gorgeous style.
I rest my forehead against the cold tile and close my eyes.
For a brief fraction of a second, I miss the times when I didn’t know Juno had survived.
Mourning her was easier when I thought she was gone, when whatever recriminations I had for her would go unspoken, unrequited.
A selfish thought, but one that’s there all the same.
Once I’ve sulked for long enough, the steam of the shower hiding me from everything except my thoughts, I get out and wrap my hair in a towel.
I swipe the fog from the mirror over the sink, then study my face.
Blue circles under my eyes, freckles faded, skin pale—I’m a ghost of my old self.
A husk like the creatures trapped several floors below. I let the glass fog again.
“Ugh.” I dig out my clothes and get dressed, then plop down on my bed.
Something flutters to the floor between my bed and the wall. I lean over and snatch it up. A notecard, pale yellow paper with a watercolor lotus in the background. I’d recognize it anywhere—Fatima always used these cards around the office.
It only has one word on it in her looping, beautiful script: Outside.