to Amal. Lai and Jay look at me with raised eyebrows, and I remember they’ve never heard my real full name before. A pang of guilt hits me—a feeling I do not like. But I can’t help feeling like a hypocrite for getting mad at Lai for keeping her secrets when I have some of my own. Or did. Now that I’m free from the military, I don’t have to pretend to be a boy anymore. “I go by Al. Nice to meet you.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Al,” Amal says. If she picks up on any of the friction in our group, she doesn’t show it. “Welcome to our home. I apologize for having to leave so soon, and I look forward to getting to know you, but I need to borrow your friend for a bit.”
“Yeah, no problem.” The sound of friend rings nicely in my ears after the talk Jay and I just had. It still lands pretty false, but we’ll get there. At least with Jay, I feel like I can trust him. He’s hard to read, but patient and earnest. I can work with that. Besides, now that we’ve talked, I actually want to get to know him better.
Jay glances at me and Lai before reluctantly following Amal down one of the hallways. He probably thinks the two of us will be at each other’s throats as soon as he’s gone. He might not be wrong.
“We’re holding a core group meeting in an hour,” Seung says before Jay and Amal are even out of sight. “We’ll catch you up on everything. We need your input on a number of matters, so it will likely take some time.”
“Got it,” Lai says. Suddenly, she looks a lot more tired. I don’t know what all she has to give her “input” on, but if the number of people who stopped us on our way here is anything to go by, she’ll probably be in that meeting for the rest of her life. “I’m just going to show Al around a bit and then I’ll head over.”
“I’ll let the others know.”
“Thanks.”
Seung nods, then heads off down one of the hallways.
Lai turns to me. “I’ll give you the grand tour, then. Just stop me if you have any questions.”
For the next half hour, she leads me through the confusing maze of underground tunnels as she explains more about the Amaryllis Order and their goal of establishing peace between the gifted and ungifted and how they’re trying to do that, but honestly, I barely listen. I’m too distracted by the place and trying to remember where to go for food and the bathroom. Besides, the main point is they want peace, right? It’s not like the details have anything to do with me.
Lai sighs the sigh that means she’s trying to hold back her anger. “Could you at least try to care?”
“Is there a reason I should?” I ask. “You kept something this huge a secret from me for so long, dumped it on me all at once, and now you expect me to be impressed or something? You should’ve just taken us here from the beginning—so why didn’t you?”
“Because I knew better than to trust you with this,” Lai snarls. It’s not like her to get so angry so fast. “You’re mad at me for not telling you about the Order, but then when I try to tell you about it, you won’t even listen. You don’t get it, do you? How important all this is to me or how different it is now without Paul here—” She clamps her mouth shut and turns her back on me. “Look, just don’t get in anyone’s way while you’re here.”
Guilt rings through my chest. Paul isn’t here because I went back to try to kill my brother at that ambush—which I failed to do, and then Paul was killed when he and the others came to help me instead of retreating.
No, I remind myself, I didn’t ask any of them to come back for me. Their decision, their fault. But even as I think it, I know it’s not true. If it’d been Lai or Jay or Mendel, I would’ve stayed, too. It isn’t fair for me to blame anyone else. It was my fault. And it wasn’t even worth anything in the end.
I follow Lai through the tunnels. Neither of us says anything, and I don’t know if I want either of us to. The silence sucks, but I know