Nobody had bothered to help me get out from the snow. Had a normal person been under there, they might have suffocated, or froze, without someone digging them out.
Hugging myself, I began to walk up my steps, intent on nothing more than a long, steaming bath.
“Today is not your lucky day, is it?” Eleanor’s bored voice made me whip around. She was standing a few feet away—just out of striking distance—and a tiny smile played around her lips.
Horrible realization hit me, stronger and colder than the snow: Eleanor had caused my ankle to fail, resulting in a broken nose, and she’d just tried to crush me with snow.
I began to shake violently. “You’re psychotic.”
Her smile vanished. “I’m protecting my brother.”
“I haven’t done anything to him!”
My scream echoed around the road, making passersby stop and stare. Behind her, the door of the medical building opened, and Benjamin poked his head out.
“You’re the reason he’s so miserable all the time!” Eleanor’s face had turned splotchy again.
“You don’t know anything about our relationship!” Little sparkles floated in my vision. I hoped she could feel how much I wanted to hurt her.
“He told me everything! Every horrible thing you said to him, every time you let him down! You’re a terrible girlfriend!”
“El, stop!” Benjamin had dashed over to us. He pushed Eleanor away from me. “Shut the hell up.”
Eleanor bared her teeth at me. “You are poison. All of you are, but you’re the worst.”
“Go!” Benjamin yelled. He shoved Eleanor backwards. “You’re embarrassing me.”
“I’m helping you,” Eleanor hissed, but she marched away toward her house.
Benjamin spun around. “What was that about?”
“Did you ask her to hurt me?” I backed into the front door, as far away from Benjamin as I could get.
“What? No! Why would you think that?”
“Because you told her everything, and then I started having accidents.” I groped around for the doorknob, but it was locked, just as another knob had been in the John Mosby library many months before.
Unlike last time, though, I wasn’t afraid to break the lock. I gave the knob a quick turn and forced the door open. I stumbled backwards into the house.
Benjamin blurred to the door before I could shut it and stuck his hand on the frame. “Jillian, listen to me. I swear I never asked her to cause you accidents.” A furious gleam appeared in his eyes. “She’s never going to hurt you again. You don’t have to be afraid of… of my family,” he finished, his fury suddenly gone, replaced by immense sorrow. “We’re not going to hurt you.” He held out his hands as an invitation for an embrace. “Please, sweetheart. Please believe me. Please come here. I can make this right.”
I turned around and ran to the bathroom, shutting the door behind me and locking it, then sliding down.
I sat on the floor and hugged my knees for two hours, crying my eyes out.
Would I ever be happy again? Did I have any friends anywhere?
“Hey, look who finally decided to let us use the bathroom,” Marco said as I joined him, Ember, and Reid around the kitchen table for an early dinner.
Reid wordlessly served me fresh corn and green beans from the greenhouse, a roll, and a small piece of herb-baked chicken.
Ember wrinkled her nose at the meat.
“We need protein,” Reid said in a hard voice.
“I didn’t say anything,” Ember snapped.
“Yeah, but you were thinking it, weren’t you?”
“Oh, so you’re the telepath? Can you hear what I’m thinking now?”
I hid my face in my hands. “Please don’t do this here. It’s been a long day for all of us.”
“Is that why you shouted at Eleanor in the middle of the street?” Marco asked.
I uncovered my face and took a calming breath. “I shouted at Eleanor because she was using her powers to hurt me.”
Marco snorted. “And shouting like a kid was the best way to handle that situation?”
I slammed my fork onto the table. “Well, see, you shouted at me for not sticking up for myself when Matthew sexually assaulted me, so I decided to actually stick up for myself when Eleanor started attacking me for no reason. Did I not meet your impossible standards this time, Marco? My apologies.”
Marco’s mouth fell open, and even Ember and Reid watched us, all quarrels forgotten.
Marco gave his head a little shake. “He didn’t sexually assault you. Stop being dramatic.”
The thin fork bent in my grip. “Matthew Dumont made me stand still while he stuck his hand into my underwear and gloated about how I could do nothing to stop him. Not then, not later, not ever. Yes, that was sexual assault. If anyone ever did that to you, I’d tear their heart out of their chest. If anyone ever tried to do that to you, I’d tear their heart out of their chest.”
Upon hearing the words, Marco stared at the table. “You’re right. I’ve been hard on you. I’m sorry.”
I jumped to my feet. “No, you have not been ‘hard’ on me. You looked me in the eye and told me you wished that I’d lost my hard-earned position on this team and had to stay with Matthew, who bragged how much he was going to enjoy raping me.”
Marco rubbed his forehead. “I… I understand why you’re so upset, but… you would’ve been—”
“Married? Is that what you were going to say?”
I hurled the ruined fork at the wall. Everyone jumped.
“So even though I never would have wanted it, and I probably would have been screaming and begging him to stop, it would’ve been okay because your uncle said we were married? Wake up!”
I threw my spoon at the wall next, tears suddenly streaming down my cheeks. Ember covered her mouth.
“Marco, look me in the eye and tell me that’s not rape! Tell me that I don’t have a right to be upset! Tell me I should’ve just laid down and shut up! Say it to me! Say it!”
Marco slowly stood and faced me. “Jill…”
I clenched my fists. “You said that I wasn’t a victim because I wasn’t sold to the Westerners. But you know what? I feel like a victim. I feel like my father abandoned me and my elders betrayed me. I feel like you and everyone else are expecting me to just swallow this and smile because I’m Battlecry. You said those words to me, Marco. That is not being ‘hard’ on me. You get so angry at us when you think we’re treating you like a child, but if you want to be treated like a man, you have to own the words you say. You. Said. That.”
Marco blinked once, swallowed, and said, “I… I don’t know what to say to you now except that I’m sorry, and I understand if you don’t forgive me.”
I took in the sight of my cousin: sunken eyes, pale face, and horrified realization of the damage he’d caused.
But my anger was not mollified. How many times had Marco twisted a knife in my low moments? How many times had he mocked my pain or derided my decisions?
I took a step back from him, the truth washing over me. “No.”
Ember reached out to me, but I slapped her hand away.
I didn’t take my eyes off Marco’s contrite face. “I’m not forgiving you. Not this time. You really are just like all the other camp men.”
Marco bowed his head.
I did not stay to see what other effect my words had. I left the kitchen, a rushing sound in my ears, and hurried into my bedroom, where I fell onto my bed. There were no tears, no dry sobs, nothing. Just the drifting emptiness of losing another pillar. Marco was not the principles, but he was Marco, my faithful friend and a source of endless levity in my otherwise dismal life.
Had been. He was just another face now.
Someone knocked on my door. “Jilly?”
Marco’s quiet voice cut through my hostility, but I didn’t move. Instead, I pulled my pillow over my head.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice breaking. “I’m so sorry. Please talk to me.”
Dean wanted me to focus on my anger and harness it. I could do that, as I’d done so many times before. And right now, I had a lot of it. I could open my door and bombard him with such fury that he’d be a changed person. I could reduce him to dust, a whimpering remnant of the man he was now.
Or you could practice the seventh principle, kindness.
I gasped into the pillow. I was brainwashed. Here I was, facing a problem, and my mind automatically defaulted to one of the freaking principles.
“Jilly, please. I love you. Open the door so we can talk.”
Be patient. Be sincere. Be virtuous. Be everything Patrick wasn’t, Jill. You swore you would be the best leader you could be. What would Patrick do in this situation, and what is the opposite of that?
He would’ve destroyed Marco.
I took a deep breath. My pillow smelled musty. The shed that had sheltered Marco and me for several weeks had smelled musty, too. I’d enjoyed my quiet life with him then, even though we’d had to work sunup to sundown to scrounge a few dollars and the odd meal. We’d laughed and joked as we’d labored in the sun, content in each other’s presence.
Though he’d been nothing more than a chatty nuisance when we were children, he’d quietly slipped into the spot in my heart that Gregory’s departure had left behind. He’d come to Saint Catherine with me. He’d been the first to leave the team and find me.
He’d been the first to call me his leader. When it seemed as though the sky was falling, and nothing would ever be the same, he’d called me his leader and said he’d follow me.
No. Don’t forgive him. He doesn’t deserve it.
Invisible hands in my heart tried to grasp at the antipathy there, but it slipped through the fingers like water. Just as I was unable to feel joy anymore, so was I unable to reject my cousin. My heart could not handle that kind of loss.
I sat up. “Marco, you can come in.” The door creaked open. Marco shuffled inside, his eyes never meeting mine. “Why don’t you sit down.”
He sat, still not looking at me. “I suck.”
“Yeah, sometimes. I do, too.”
“You don’t.”
“Yeah, I do. And you know who also sucks? Gregory.”
Marco’s head jerked up, his mouth a perfect O. “He—”
I held up a finger. “Don’t get mad at me for saying it, ‘cause it’s true.”
Marco stared at me for another second, then laughed quietly to himself. “Yeah, he does.” He started to laugh harder. “Oh good gosh, he really does.”
I gathered my hair and draped it over my shoulder, stroking it while I thought. “I don’t think I’m going to try to be friends with him anymore. He’s too far gone.”
“Why not?” Marco said sadly. “If we just keep trying…”
I held out my hand to Marco, who took it in his own warm one. “No. I’ve had an image of him in my head for four years, but he’s not that boy anymore. I saw that today. We’ve been replaced, and the quicker we accept that, the easier it’ll be. Besides, I have another younger brother. I need to work out my problems with him because… because I care about my relationship with him more than I care about my relationship with Gregory.”
I expected Marco to look away, or stare at me in shock, or say something typically Marco-ish. I did not expect him to suddenly grab me and hug me so tightly that my spine hurt.
He held me for a long time, never saying a word. Being in his unnaturally hot embrace wasn’t comfortable, nor was the scratchy feeling of his hair against my cheek desirable. Yet I could not make myself pull away.
Marco finally released me and spoke in a rush. “You’ve always been my bossy, cool, intimidating older cousin. You were the big one. I was the little one. But when you said all that back there,” he said, jerking his head toward the kitchen, “I saw myself differently. I’m a grown-ass man. I should’ve stepped in to protect you after the tribunal.”
His face hardened. “You wouldn’t have let anyone do to me what Matthew did to you. I’ve always been able to count on that. And I realized in the space of, like, five seconds that not only can you not say the same of me, but that I’d stood there and said I’d wished Matthew had attacked you, just because I was angry and confused. That wasn’t true. I’ve said a lot of terrible things and meant them, but that wasn’t true.”
“I know, and I forgive you.” I pecked his cheek. “Let’s start again.”
An internal iceberg fractured and split, relieving a psychological weight of which I’d been unaware.
He patted my hand. “I’m going to be better. But this is hard, and I’m going to need help working through all the crap the elders taught us. Hearing you lay out what a marriage with Matthew would’ve meant, though… that was like being hit with a hammer. I couldn’t help but picture it. I wanted to jump into my mind and kick his head in. It was so obviously wrong.”
“Don’t tell Benjamin, okay?” I twisted my hands in the blankets. “I don’t want him to know.”
He bit his lip, suddenly pensive. “I won’t. But I’m not giving up on Greg.”
“That’s your prerogative. I’m going to finish dinner.” I swung my legs onto the floor.
We walked back to the kitchen, where Ember and Reid were still seated at the table.
“Is everything okay?” Ember asked hesitantly.
I picked up Marco’s fork, since mine was still on the other side of the room where I’d hurled it. He rolled his eyes but did not comment.
I smiled at Ember. “Yeah, we’re fine.” While I searched for a new subject for us to talk about, I took a bite of my corn and beans, which were unusually delicious. Apparently, Dean’s powers affected both the appearance and taste of plants. “Did you guys know that Dean can play the harmonica?”
“Yep, I knew that. He has a clarinet, too,” Marco said brightly. “According to some of the Sentinels, he’d love it if you asked to play it.”
Ember kicked him under the table, but I frowned—I didn’t know how to play the clarinet, and I had no idea why Dean would think I did.
Reid just sipped his water. “If you’re going to repeat that to Benjamin, tell me beforehand so I can be there to watch.”
The conversation turned to banter. I ate my cold dinner, not minding the temperature of the food. Right then I craved the intimacy from my little battle family, the three people who’d suffered with me under Patrick and followed me into the unknown. They’d seen me at my worst, when I’d cowered as Patrick advanced on me, and they’d watched me rise to new heights. These three, and Benjamin, were the most important people in my life.
Nobody talked about the raid, nor did Ember comment on the offensive meat on our plates. I shared my new knowledge about herbal remedies, which they all thought was fascinating. Reid vowed to buy only fresh herbs from then on, which were usually more potent than their dried forms.
“Do you think Benjamin knows more herbal remedies?” Ember asked, looking at the lone empty chair. “I’m sure he’d love to hear about traditional medicines.”
I sipped my water. “You’ll have to ask him yourself. I don’t really want to talk to him right now.”
Reid gathered up the empty plates. “It’s odd that he cares so much about us killing people.” His eyes darted toward Ember. “All of us have killed in the line of duty.”
Ember closed her eyes and took a breath. “We’re not soldiers, Reid. We kill as a last resort, with the value of human life at the—”
“Forefront of our decisions, yes, I know. You’ve only reminded me a dozen times.”
Though I’d heard them shout at each other only a few hours before, it was still odd to hear Reid use that tone with Ember. He’d long struck me as the epitome of a gentleman—soft-spoken, polite, and considerate to women and men alike. Even before we’d overthrown Patrick, he’d never been anything but kind to me.
“If I’ve reminded you a dozen times,” Ember growled, “it’s because you keep forgetting.”
Marco and I left Ember and
Reid to their shouting.
Even though it was barely evening, we got ready for bed, because the Sentinels had to leave before midnight for the raid.
I’d just slipped under my blankets when Marco came into my room and sat at the foot of the bed. I sat up. “Hey.”
His shoulder slumped. “Hey.” He rubbed the back of his head. “Are you ready for the raid?”
“Honestly? No.” Ember’s shouted words echoed around the back of my mind, swirling with images of Gregory, Dean, and other Sentinels who’d been brutalized by the Westerners. “I guess I’m just not comfortable with killing people this way.”
“Really? Reid did just point out that you’ve killed lots of people.”
I heaved a sigh. “Yeah, I know. But it was always in self-defense or as a last resort. Even when the Destructor was blowing people up, we aimed to take him alive.”
Marco’s mouth twisted while he thought. “Maybe… maybe we’re looking at this from the viewpoint of superheroes? And we shouldn’t anymore? I don’t know what we are.”
I massaged my eyelids. “Maybe. I don’t know what we are anymore, either. We’re not superheroes, but I don’t think any of the other Sentinels think we’re one of them.”
Ember’s enraged voice interrupted us. “Don’t you dare come back into this house tomorrow if that’s how you feel about human life!”
Reid was quick to respond. “Why the hell would I ever want to come back to this house if I can’t even protect my family without you tearing my head off?”
I winced. “Let’s try to get some sleep.”
Marco stood, then stooped down and kissed my forehead before hurrying out of the room. I set my watch’s alarm for twenty-three hundred and closed my eyes.
The last thing I heard before falling asleep was ugly shouts coming from the kitchen mixed with the pleasant twittering of a small bird outside my window.
Then my watch beeped, and I sat up.
It was time for my first raid.
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