My throat feels tight, forcing me to swallow before I can speak. “The right kind of pressure can turn anyone into a monster.” The sound of the gun going off. Lilac falling. Tarver’s face as he looks at me. “Anyone.”
Jubilee’s eyes swing toward me, and though I could be imagining it, for a moment I think I almost see sympathy in her face. She nods. “The one I spoke to…it hadn’t given into that rage. It was—it was my friend.” Her voice grows rougher, and she’s forced to clear her throat after she finishes.
“On the Daedalus, the whisper said it wasn’t just the last one left—it was also the oldest one. The first one he started experimenting with.” Flynn’s voice is quiet. “He’s had a long time to twist that creature into something evil.”
“But they’re not human,” I protest, mind spinning. “Sanjana said they were entities of pure energy. Concepts like vengeance and pain and hatred…For all we know, they don’t even feel emotion.”
“They do.” Jubilee’s quick to contradict me. “They may not have started out understanding emotion, but the one I knew…it did. It felt everything. It died to save us from the other whispers on Avon.”
“That doesn’t help us now.” I let my head fall back against a shelf with a thump. “Lilac is the only whisper left on this side of the rift, so we’re on our own. We don’t have others of its kind willing to help us. And if Lilac is still in there somewhere, it doesn’t seem like there’s anything she can do.”
We all fall silent after that, and I only wish I could silence the one thought circling around and around in my head. Gideon’s still up there.
And if he’s still alive, he’s getting closer and closer to the whisper.
It’s only when I lift my head, blinking away sleep, that I realize I somehow managed to doze. Jubilee’s asleep, or at least pretending to be, her head in Flynn’s lap. He’s gazing down at her, and his hand keeps making the same small gesture, fingertips stroking the hair at Jubilee’s temple. I swallow and he lifts his head, blinking once and then looking at me. His lips twitch a little into a faint smile. But there’s something in the back of his gaze that tips me off.
“Is she okay?” I whisper, glancing at Jubilee, who doesn’t move.
Flynn nods, eyes following mine and lingering on the girl asleep in his lap. “She’s tough.”
I find my own lips twitching. “That’s not what I asked.”
Flynn looks back up at me, exhaling a faint laugh. “Forgot who I was talking to.” He leans his head back against the shelves behind him. “This is bringing back bad memories.”
“Verona?”
He nods again. “She grew up there. Her parents were killed during the riots following the bombing attacks. Shot in front of her.”
My heart flinches, squeezing tight and twisting. “I had no idea.”
“Me neither, until—well, might as well call a spade a spade. Until I kidnapped her from the military base.”
“Someday you’re going to have to tell me the whole story of what exactly happened between that and…well, this.” I nod my head in their direction, something in my head still objecting on an instinctive level to the sight of my friend Flynn, leader of the Fianna, with his arms around a trodaire. If Gideon and Tarver fail—if the whisper ends up with the power to cut us off from hyperspace completely—we’ll be trapped together here on Corinth. Being an Avonite won’t mean anything anymore.
Flynn huffs another laugh, dropping his voice again when Jubilee stirs. “Got a few days?” He sobers, watching me. “Thank you, by the way. For what you did on the shuttle back on Avon, when Jubilee and I were on the run—thank you for distracting the soldiers so she and I could get away. I know you had no reason to trust her.”
“I trusted you,” I reply instantly—then halt, thoughts grinding together. Because I did trust him, completely. How could it have happened that in a single year I forgot how to do that? Why should I trust Gideon any less than Flynn?
Because he lied to you.
Well, I lied to him. What else you got?
“Are you okay?”
I open my eyes to find Flynn watching me, concern all over his expressive features. I start to reply, halting with my lips parted, voice sticking in my throat. “I’m tough, too,” I say finally.
One corner of Flynn’s mouth lifts. “That’s not what I asked.”
I shut my eyes, wishing I could shut my ears as well. Despite my conversation with Tarver, every part of me is screaming that this is still somehow my fault. It was one thing to be at peace with the idea of becoming a murderer, of killing an evil man responsible for the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands, of people. It’s another to be at peace with causing the end of the world.
“He’ll be okay.” His voice is quiet.
“Is that even what I’m supposed to hope for?” I whisper. With my eyes closed, I can hear sounds still echoing in from outside, though the crowd has thinned out to almost nothing.
“Of course it is,” Flynn replies. “Look, I haven’t seen Merendsen in action, but I’ve seen Jubilee. She swears he taught her what she knows, and is even better than she is. And while I find that difficult to believe, it does suggest that he knows what he’s doing. Gideon’s as safe with him as he’d be here.”
I shake my head, as much to dismiss the concern as to try to shrug off the burning in my eyes. “Gideon made his choice.”
“As you made yours, up on the Daedalus.” I open my eyes to find Flynn gazing down at Jubilee as she sleeps. “Funny thing, how we let our choices define us.”
As much as I love Flynn, a philosophical discussion is the last thing I want right now. I grind the heels of my hands against my eyes, trying to clear them and marshal my thoughts, and remain silent.
He doesn’t seem to notice. “Back on Avon, it seemed like every choice I made turned me into more and more of a traitor. Sometimes I thought I was doing what was best for the Fianna—sometimes it felt like I was lying to myself, and it was all for her.”
“And now?” I eye him sidelong, watching his profile as his head dips.
“I was trusting my heart.” Flynn meets that sidelong look for a moment, then exhales in a sigh. “Doesn’t mean your heart can’t be conflicted. But at least for me, and for Jubilee, and for Avon—it turned out I was right to trust it.”
I echo that sigh of his, mine sounding more like a huff of laughter. “Follow your heart? Seriously? That’s your advice? I’m pretty sure I read that in a fortune cookie once.”
Flynn grins at me. “Where do you think I got it?” But then his grin softens and he gives his head a little shake. “It’s simple advice. But probably the hardest to follow. It’s always easier to do the expected thing than the right thing.”
“If you’re trying to thank me for attempting an assassination, you’re doing it in a roundabout way.”
“You think shooting at LaRoux was the right thing?” Flynn raises an eyebrow. “The thing your heart was telling you to do?”
I want Gideon to know that the only reason I didn’t tell him about my plan was because I knew he would try to talk me out of it. And I knew he’d succeed.