Between Burning Worlds (System Divine #2) - Jessica Brody Page 0,193

few seconds to come to terms with what the truth was now. “No.”

“Well then, there you go.”

Chatine glanced at him again. He was no longer looking at her or her hands, he was staring out the cockpit window. “You should know,” he went on, “that we don’t judge people by what they did in the past. We judge them by who they are now.”

“Like your maman?” Chatine asked.

He peered at her. “What about her?”

“This classified project she was involved in, back when she was a cyborg. You said it was … bad?”

“Right. Yes, like that. She changed herself. More drastically than any of us, you could say. We have a lot of respect for people who can wake themselves up.”

Chatine bit her lip, unsure if she should broach the subject she’d been desperately wanting to broach ever since Brigitte had shown her that graveyard. She took in a breath and tried to keep her voice light and casual, afraid that anything more might scare him away again. Thankfully, right now, he had nowhere to run to. “Was your papa a cyborg too?”

The reaction was instantaneous. Chatine didn’t even need to take her eyes off the horizon to know it was there. She could sense it. Like a noxious gas filling up the cockpit, threatening to suffocate them both. And right away, Chatine knew she wasn’t going to get an answer. The conversation would be over before it even began. He would make some critique about her altitude or speed and change the subject. He would—

“No.”

The one-word response came swiftly and erratically, like he was afraid that if he didn’t say it fast, he wouldn’t say it at all.

“Was he born in a community? Like you?” Chatine could feel her hands shaking on the contrôleur, but thankfully the ship didn’t shudder in response. Maybe, for once, Marilyn was on her side, helping her along.

“No,” Etienne repeated, and just when Chatine thought it would end there again, he added, “He was Third Estate. From Vallonay. Like you. He used to love to tell me stories about living on the grid. The Frets, the Marsh, the Ascension, the droids—or ‘bashers’ as he used to call them. I never knew why.”

“Because they bash their way through everything,” Chatine explained bitterly. “And they can bash in your face without losing a drop of power.” She swore she felt Etienne shudder at her description. “Have you ever seen one?”

He went silent again. Pensive. And then, “On the night of the roundup. There were hundreds. They were like monsters in the darkness. The things of nightmares.”

“Is that what killed him?” she asked quietly. “Your father?”

“No.” Etienne’s voice was so cold and emotionless, it could have belonged to a basher itself. “The fires killed him.”

“The fires?” Chatine repeated, but upon noticing Etienne flinch, she realized she had been too blunt, too fast. She softened her voice. “But I thought the Ministère didn’t use fire.”

“They don’t,” Etienne said. “We set them. To try to scare them off. It didn’t work. Turns out droids aren’t really scared of much.”

Chatine kept her eyes trained on the sky, trying to give him privacy, and yet she yearned to turn and look at him. To see the pain on his face. Not because she could possibly fix it or erase it or even alleviate it. But because she understood it.

“How did he—” she began to ask, but Etienne cut her off. His response sharp and stinging, like a slap.

“Because of me.”

Now she did turn to him. Just for an instant but an instant was all it took. His anguish was raw and fresh, as though it had happened not years ago but only yesterday. A wound that never closes but rather keeps opening wider and wider. Like a crack in the ground. The kind of crack that can suck in cities and mountains and oceans. The kind of crack Chatine knew all too well.

Etienne continued to stare out the window. “I went back. I shouldn’t have gone back. We were safe. We were nearly away. But I went back. For a stupide toy. I thought I had left it in our chalet. The one that was burning to the ground. I let go of my father’s hand and I ran. He, of course, ran after me and …”

He didn’t finish. They both knew he didn’t have to. Some endings didn’t need words.

The silence returned in full force, consuming them in an instant. Chatine hadn’t known what to say back in the graveyard when