names I didn’t even know.
Lorders did that.
Next time I have a weapon in my hand and a Lorder in front of me, I won’t fail.
CHAPTER THIRTY ONE
* * *
‘Would you have done that, what that girl did?’ Tori asks. She inspects her knife as we walk the last steps to the house. She obviously didn’t have problems using it.
‘It was pointless. She didn’t save her baby.’
‘But maybe she couldn’t live, knowing that her decision is what killed it. Like, if I’d been there when Ben died, and hadn’t done everything I could to save him. I couldn’t live with that.’
I look at her carefully out of the corner of my eye. Does she know something about Ben? No. She’s just relating what happened to that girl to herself, to the one she’d do anything to save. I sigh.
Tori slips an arm around my shoulders. ‘At least they won’t be terminating anyone else there, not for a long while. Wasn’t that brilliant today?’
‘From what I could see of it.’ Which was more than enough.
Tori glances ahead; Katran, leading the way now, is almost out of sight. She lowers her voice. ‘It’s not fair. Talk to Katran, make him see you have to be in on the action next time. But you were still part of it, and we did something.’ She raises her voice again. ‘We showed them, didn’t we?’ The others around us shout a ragged cheer.
Nico steps out of the house as we walk up to it: the afternoon over, he is back from school. Where I should have been. He glances around, sees who is missing. ‘Did they die a good death?’ he asks Katran.
‘Yes.’
Holly’s brother bounds out of the house behind Nico. Not allowed on this venture today; not trained enough, Nico had said. ‘Where’s Holly?’ he asks.
No one answers. Katran holds his shoulder, while he shakes. We stand together: a minute of silence stretches out in slow seconds.
Nico looks up and nods; everyone starts to walk away. Katran with his arm around Holly’s brother now, speaking in a low voice into his ear. Changed, and gentle: like the Katran of my dream, who comforted me when I was scared. Did that really happen? No matter how crazy it seems, something inside says yes.
‘It is good to see you two getting along,’ Nico says, gesturing to Tori and me, next to each other, arms linked.
‘Why wouldn’t we?’ Tori asks.
‘It isn’t often two girls who shared the same boyfriend can be friends.’
Tori stares at me, eyes wide. Pushes me away. ‘Ben?’ she whispers. I look back at her, shrug helplessly. What can I say? She turns tail and marches away into the trees.
Nico smiles. ‘A word,’ he says, pointing at me, and walks into the house. I stand there a moment, too stunned to react.
‘Come!’ he calls.
I follow him through to the windowless room he has taken as office. Candles cast flickering light on damp walls.
‘Why did you do that?’ I ask, unable to stop myself.
‘What?’
‘Tell Tori about me and Ben.’
‘Rain, you know how we must work in a group: total honesty. Nothing hidden between us. Lorders lie; we tell the truth.’
‘Truth is freedom, freedom is truth,’ I say, words from the past tumbling out from some hidden place, inside.
He smiles. ‘Just so. Now tell me: how do you feel about what we must do after the attack today?’ His face is mild, but his eyes, watchful.
I banish the red of blood from my mind, and clench Emily’s cold ring in my pocket. Focus on what the Lorders did to her, do to others like her all the time. We must stop them. Resolve hardens inside.
‘I’m on the right side. Our side.’
‘Good. Soon there will be other work to do.’ He smiles, touches one hand to my cheek, and I am flooded with the warm glow of being in his favour.
‘I’m in.’
‘I never had any doubt,’ he says, but he SO did. ‘What is it?’ he asks, alert as ever to any changes flitting across my face.
‘It is just… I don’t really understand. Why you even want me involved. What can I do?’
‘You’re one of us,’ he says. ‘No matter what happened to you when you were taken, or who you were after you were Slated, you will always be one of us. But more, you are important to me.’
He says no more, slips an arm around my shoulders. The glow becomes more. I belong here, with Free UK: this is who I am. What I must do.