The Fates Divide (Carve the Mark #2) - Veronica Roth Page 0,11

took goods from one end of the galaxy to the other, whatever they could haul.

It was a good thing Ori had been around to force us to talk to each other, in the beginning. I might never have talked to her otherwise. She was intimidating even without the title, tall and slim and beautiful, scars or no scars, and radiating capability like a machine.

I don’t know how long it takes for her eyes to open. She drifts for a while, staring all bleary at what’s in front of us, which is flat nothing in between the far-off wink of stars. Then she blinks at me.

“Cee?” she says. “Where are we?”

“We’re in an escape pod, waiting for the Assembly to come get us,” I say.

“An escape pod?” She frowns. “What did we need to escape from?”

“I think it’s more that they wanted to escape from us,” I say.

“Did you drug me?” She rubs her eyes with a fist, first the left one and then the right. “You gave me that tea.”

“I didn’t know there was anything in it.” I’m a good liar, and I don’t think twice. She wouldn’t accept the truth—that I wanted to get her away from the rest of my family just as much as Akos did. Mom said Isae was going to try to kill Eijeh the same way she did Ryzek, and I wasn’t willing to risk it. I don’t want to lose Eijeh again, no matter how warped he is now. “Mom warned them you might try to hurt Eijeh, too.”

Isae curses. “Oracles! It’s a wonder we even let them have citizenship, with all the loyalty your mother shows her own chancellor.”

I have nothing to say to that. She’s frustrating, but she’s my mother.

I continue, “They put you in the pod, and I told them I was going with you.”

The scars that cross her face stay stiff while her brow furrows. She rubs them, sometimes, when she thinks no one is looking. She says it helps the scar tissue to stretch out, so one day she’ll be able to move those parts of her face again. That’s what the doctor said, anyway. I once asked her why she just let the scars form instead of getting reconstructive surgery on Othyr. It’s not like she didn’t have the resources. She told me she didn’t want to get rid of them, that she liked them.

“Why?” she finally says after a long pause. “They’re your family. Eijeh’s your brother. Why would you come with me?”

Giving an honest answer isn’t as easy as people say. There are so many answers to her question, all of them true. She’s my chancellor, and I’m not going to oppose Thuvhe, like my brother is. I care about her, as a friend, as . . . whatever else we are to each other. I’m worried about the wild grief I saw in her right before she killed Ryzek Noavek, and she needs help to do what’s right from now on rather than what satisfies her thirst for revenge. The list goes on, and the answer I choose is as much about what I want her to hear as it is about the truth.

“You asked me if you could trust me,” I finally say. “Well, you can. I’m with you, no matter what. Okay?”

“I thought, after what you saw me do . . .” I think of the knife she used to kill Ryzek dropping to the floor, and push the memory away. “I thought you wouldn’t want to be anywhere near me.”

What she did to Ryzek didn’t disgust me, it worried me. I don’t care that he’s dead, but I do care that she was able to kill him. I don’t try to explain that to her, though.

“He killed Ori,” I say.

“So did your brother,” she whispers. “It was both of them, Cisi. There’s something wrong with Eijeh. I saw it in Ryzek’s head, right before—”

She chokes before she can finish her sentence.

“I know.” I grab her hand and hold on tight. “I know.”

She starts to cry. At first it’s dignified, but then the beast of grief takes over, and she claws at my arms to get away from it, sobbing. But I know, I know as well as anybody that there’s no escape. Grief is absolute.

“I got you,” I say, rubbing circles on her back. “I got you.”

She stops scratching after a while, stops sobbing. Just leans her face into my shoulder.

“What did you do?” she asks, voice muffled by my shirt.