the blanket pulled high around their necks, they looked like one creature with two heads.
I was always getting things wrong. I was more blind than Leonard. I’d been wrong about the Confessor, thinking that it was me she was hunting, instead of Kip. I’d been wrong about Zoe’s dreams, and about Lucia. Getting the visions was one thing, but interpreting them was another. My visions had led me to the island, but our presence had led the Confessor there, too. My visions had showed me the silo, and allowed us to destroy the database—but that had cost Kip his life. My visions had shown me so much, and I’d understood so little.
I didn’t need to wake Zoe for her shift—she woke herself, as she usually did, and crawled from the shelter to stand behind where I sat at the lookout spot. It was still dark. Downstream, one of the horses gave a small whinny.
“Go to sleep,” she said. “There’s hours yet until dawn.”
“It was you, wasn’t it,” I said. It wasn’t a question. “You loved Lucia.”
It was too dark to see her face clearly, but I could see the white clouds of her breath.
“We loved each other,” she said.
It was strange to hear her talk of love. Zoe of the rolled eyes and the shrugs. Of the poised knives.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ve been an idiot.”
“It’s not the first time. I doubt it’ll be the last.” There was no spite in her voice, just tiredness.
“I don’t know why I didn’t realize,” I said.
“I do,” she said. “Because I’m a woman. Because I’m an Alpha, and she was an Omega. Because although you like to think you’re so far above the assumptions and prejudices of the rest of the world, it turns out you’re not so different from them after all.”
I had nothing to rebut her accusation. It settled on me like ash.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked eventually.
“It was mine.” She paused. A glimpse of her eyes, white in the dark, as she looked at me, and away again. “I feel like there’s so little that’s left of her. I don’t want to share it around.”
I thought of how I had been reluctant to speak about Kip. There’d been times that I’d felt as though his name were a relic—it was all that I had left of him, now, and it might be worn out if I used it too much.
“When you heard the bards’ music, back at the spring that day, and told me about the bard you and Piper used to listen to when you were kids. I thought it was Piper you were thinking of.”
She snorted. “I’d always remembered that bard. When I first met Lucia, that’s who she reminded me of. They both had beautiful hands.” She gave a small laugh. “And Lucia used to sing, too. She was always humming away to herself in the mornings, when she brushed her hair.”
She was quiet for a while.
“I wish you’d told me,” I said. “I would have understood.”
“I don’t need your understanding.”
“Maybe I could’ve used yours,” I said.
She shrugged. “My relationship with Lucia didn’t exist just to teach you a lesson about grief. She didn’t die just so you and I could bond over our sob stories.”
She sat beside me on the log and leaned her elbows on her knees. I could see her hands, the lighter skin of her fingertips, five pale points in the night as she reached to push her hair back from her face.
“I was used to not speaking about her, anyway. We had to be careful all the time. Working for the resistance, the last thing we needed was any more attention. An Alpha and Omega relationship is a whipping offense, even without it being between two women. All that crap about Alphas having an obligation to breed.” She snorted. “Like that would have made a difference with me. As if I’d otherwise have found some nice Alpha guy and started pumping out babies.” The chilled air seemed to absorb her laugh.
“It was hard for her, on the island. You know what people are like about seers at the best of times—always a bit suspicious, standoffish. Then they found out about the two of us being together. After that, they just cut Lucia out.” Her hands tightened into fists. “It didn’t matter to them that I’d been working for them for years. That I’d done more for the resistance than most of them ever had. Or that Lucia was risking her