I didn’t want hear her apologies or her thanks. I just wanted her to stop. “If I thought someone had killed Jase, I would do the same,” I said.
She shook her head. “No. You wouldn’t, and you didn’t. I know the whole story. When Paxton told you Jase was dead, you could have killed the king and run, but you stayed. Because of Lydia and Nash. Because you had made a vow to Jase to protect his family. Saving them was more important to you than the momentary satisfaction of revenge. When I helped throw you into that net, that’s all I wanted, revenge, not the truth you were trying to share with us.”
Mason’s head hung low, staring down at his soup. He nodded. “Me too,” he said. He exhaled a long, slow breath and looked up at me. “I’m sorry, Kazi. I know it’s not enough, but I’m sorry. I just lost one sister because of all this madness, and now I nearly lost another by my own hand. A sister who is a true Ballenger.”
I wanted to melt beneath the table. Was this what families did? Bared their souls in front of an entire room of people? Their confessions left me raw. These were the kind of conversations I didn’t know how to have. I had only just learned to share everything with Jase, and now I had to do it with all of them?
Jase’s hand slid to my thigh beneath the table and gave me a reassuring squeeze.
“When you discovered your mistake, you risked everything to right it,” I replied. “I suppose that’s all any of us can ever do. Try to make it right.”
I stared at Mason, and then Priya, the last few days of terror and pain still too fresh in my mind. They had risked their lives to save me. I was grateful. But I was angry too. I was too many things I still didn’t understand, and it seemed everyone was waiting for me to say something that would solve everything. Tell me, tell me, tell me now. Montegue’s demands still circled in my head, his taunts, his hands searching me, the heavy weight of a chain around my neck. I had only just woken from my nightmares. I searched for some way to turn the conversation. Pivot. My specialty, but it eluded m
e. A breath trembled through my chest.
Paxton suddenly raised his finger, poking it into the air in his annoying classic way. “So, Jase, what is this about you having three wives? Tell us about that.”
All the attention turned away from me and toward Jase, and air swept back into my lungs.
A new conversation caught fire around the table, and Paxton shot me a sly wink.
It was what I needed, a moment to gather myself, to breathe, to remember who I was, and what I still needed to do.
* * *
I walked down the vault tunnel that led to the entrance. When I had asked where Gunner was, Jase said he’d taken his dinner to the niche by the door. Gunner thought I might be more comfortable if he wasn’t there. I couldn’t disagree, but I needed to talk to him.
He sat against the massive door that closed us off from Tor’s Watch and watched me as I walked toward him. A deep scarlet votive flickered in his lap, and his mouth hung half open. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought he was drunk. When I stopped in front of him, he set the votive aside and stood. His eyes narrowed. “You going to kill me?” he asked.
“Funny, that’s exactly what Jase asked me when I told him I needed to talk to you alone.”
“Jase nearly did kill me when he found out what I’d done.” He cleared his throat, then eyed me squarely. “I wouldn’t blame you if you did.”
“Believe me, I’ve thought about killing you many times, Gunner, but not for the reason you think.”
“I suppose any reason would be good enough.”
“But it is a reason you need to hear. Of all the things you ever did to me, the worst happened months ago. There are some things in my life I haven’t gotten over. Things I may never get over. For a Rahtan who has worked hard to become strong and smart and overcome everything through intense training, that weakness eats at me. You knew that weakness.”
I took a step closer to him. “You could have shot me with an arrow. You could have done a hundred things, but instead you dangled Zane in front of me, knowing what he had done. In an instant, you brought back the horror of a night to a small child. That’s what I became. A terrified child looking for her mother. For that, I should kill you. I was six years old, Gunner. Six.”
“I didn’t—”
“Don’t. Don’t tell me you didn’t know. You were as precise as a surgeon cutting out a heart. You knew exactly what you were doing to me.”
He grimaced and nodded.
“And then you let him loose to terrorize me more. You didn’t care—”
“I didn’t let him loose. That part was an accident. In the chaos of that night, he escaped. We were all rushing to follow you, and he wasn’t locked up securely. He broke out of the warehouse and disappeared. I’m not saying that as an excuse—I know there’s nothing I can say or do to earn your forgiveness—”
“You’re wrong. There is one thing. I will try my best to find a way to put this behind us, to forgive you and move forward, for Jase’s sake, if you give me a truthful answer to one question.”
“I’ll tell you the truth about anything, whether you forgive me or not.”
“The papers. The ones that were in Phineas’s quarters. Where are they?”
“Papers? There were no papers.”