finally blurt. “Mallory…so very sorry.”
She presses her hand to my face. Lifts a watery smile and jerks in a sniff. “I know, cutie. Thank you.”
I pull my bottom lip beneath my teeth as more understanding snaps together. “So…was that why he punched the door?” I venture. “Perhaps he started thinking about his baby again, and was struggling with processing it?” Especially after everything he’d just revealed to me in the turret. “He has also just been more restless this last week…” I tilt my head, notching more deduction into place. “I had actually just thought it was an itchy gas pedal foot. He hates not taking life at less than mach five.”
Mallory snickers. “You think?”
“So maybe he tried to drive what he could.” Contemplative breath. “Flush the gunk from his engine, while there was mentally time to do so.”
I leave out my silent addendum—that if that is the case, I must share the blame for every stitch the doctors put into her son’s hand. I think about the moments when I have been inches apart from Cassian but still felt as if he were oceans away, his psyche swimming at depths so dark, I feared he will never return. I do not tell her how I have halted my very breath, funneling even that force into begging his ghosts to release him back to me…
Never dreaming that spiritual rescue force included his own baby.
Mallory draws her posture straighter. “Logically, that makes sense,” she offers. “But no, I don’t think that was the case.” She soothes my frown by patting my hand. “Believe me, Ella. Mothers just know these things. They know their children.”
I fight the urge to pull my hand free. They know those things when they care. When those children are more important than status, power, or the next political “agreement” to gain more of both.
But I do not pull away. Despite that, my nerves snarl and my belly twists, as if Maimanne or Paipanne has actually just strolled out here. The self-doubts are worse than ever, compounded by a new element: second thoughts. Have I been unfair to both of them? Maybe remembered things wrong? Looked at their love through the lens of the teenager I once was, even the strong-willed woman I was genetically bound to become? Being by Mallory’s side, witnessing all the forms her love for Cassian takes—even pulling her dictator over his dictator when it is necessary—has made me wonder about all the judgments I have cast.
Over the people who were entertaining bids for the chance to take your virginity?
But people who did not know any better. Who were part of a different world, a different time.
Which excuses their behavior?
I push the mute button on the deliberation. Refocus on Mallory. “Then what was it?” Not muted enough. The tension in my mind jabs into my tone. I compensate by gently taking her hand again. “What could have caused him to burst out as violently as that?”
The woman turns her head. Gazes toward the gray-blue ribbon of the Hudson. “If my gut is right…it has to do with more than Lily and the baby.”
My spirit gives itself a quick fist bump. My premonition from the hospital waiting room was accurate. There is someone else, stalking Cassian’s soul alongside Lily…
But the new tension across Mallory’s face cuts my celebration short. As difficult as it is, I hold back at prodding. She is prepared to tell me more, but needs to do it her own way. I see it clearly as another breeze flirts with the edges of the terrace, pushing her bangs away from her eyes. They glittering with a new depth of emotion…a deeper surge of grief.
“How much has Cassian shared with you…about Damon?”
“Damon?” For a moment, the name does not connect. It is doubly hard because of the sorrow I feel so fully from her. Finally, it clicks. “His brother?”
A hard gulp vibrates in her throat. “Yes.”
I force more clarity to mind—though it requires dredging unpleasant memories. Unpleasant? That is the diplomatic description for that night, the one that will not stop taunting as one of the hardest of my life. First, being thrown out of turret two by Prim—followed by a confrontation with Cassian I can only define by borrowing an expression from Vylet’s dictionary.
Balls to the walls; here comes the brawl.
Though his balls had ended up nowhere near the walls, I had desperately longed to put them there—especially after he cracked open the door about Damon but slammed it again. I took