Chapter 20

Chapter Twenty

I shot up in bed as the door opened.

“Relax, it’s just me,” Kicks said.

It was too late. It felt like a fist was pounding on the inside of my chest and it wasn’t ready to stop fighting yet.

I’d been lying there, concentrating so hard on overcoming the block Death had put on my powers that I’d lost all situational awareness. What if that hadn’t been Kicks walking in the door? I could never forget I was in enemy territory.

“What were you doing?” he asked as he kicked off his boots.

I sank back against the pillows, watching Kicks, who’d been out all day with the enemy. To say things were tense between us was like saying a black hole was just a touch dark.

“Trying to unlock whatever Death did to suppress my powers. I’m not sure how much time we’re going to have before things go to hell.” I waited a minute, wondering if it would do more good or bad to tell him everything that had happened today. Maybe he was right, though—I had to stop protecting him from the truth. He was my only ally in this place, at least at the moment. Whether or not that would continue was iffy in my mind, but I couldn’t alienate him further. I didn’t want to alienate him.

“I had a talk with Varic today.”

He stilled. “I know.”

He did? Had he planned on asking me about it or waiting and seeing if I was going to share? It felt like I’d pulled a solid B on a pop quiz.

“How did you know?” I asked.

“Someone told Aunt Elara. She told me the second I got back. What did he want?”

I spilled all the details and then waited to see if I was going to have to race him to the door, blocking him from trying to kill Varic. It wasn’t from an overwhelming confidence he’d do it for me , but he hated his brother that much. He’d feel like this was an overstep after their agreement, and it was hard to disagree.

He looked tightly coiled but wasn’t moving. At least I wasn’t going to have to try to tackle him. Without any help, it wasn’t certain to work at this point. Although, as stiff as he appeared, I could probably knock him over with my pinky.

“Are you leaving anything out?” The edge was in his tone, the one that usually came out when he was barely keeping himself from shifting.

“No. That’s all of it.”

He nodded and looked as if he were going to win the fight against his baser instinct to go kill Varic. Which was good, because Kicks and Varic needed to be as far away from each other as possible. I hadn’t killed Kicks’ father and blown up our relationship to have him die now.

“I have this under control. We’re going to stall him until we get out,” I said.

“Do you think that’s going to work?” He gripped the wood on the foot of the bedframe, his knuckles white. The wood creaked, as if about to split.

If I said no, I wasn’t altogether sure he wouldn’t go apeshit and try to fight our way out of here tonight. But considering I’d been sitting here for hours with no perceivable improvement in my powers, it was hard to say yes.

“I’m somewhat optimistic.” Hopefully that would buy me some time.

His chest rose. Breathing was a good sign.

“He approaches you again, you tell him to talk to me.” His words came out through a barely unlocked jaw.

“I don’t know if that’s the way to handle this.”

No, I’d deal with Varic on my own somehow. Kicks would try to kill him. If I thought it would be a fair fight, that would be different, but nothing about Varic screamed aboveboard . Not to mention I was done sending in surrogates to hide behind.

“He’s my brother. I know him. He’s not a good man.” The wood was back to creaking as we stared off.

I got to my feet, trying to gain some physical ground. It didn’t work as well as I planned—I’d forgotten for a second how much height Kicks had on me. “I’m not telling him he has to go speak to you if he comes looking for me. Stalling is the best choice. You know I’m right.”

He turned to me. “If you had your powers, it would be different. We wouldn’t be having this conversation if you did. You’d be long gone.”

I stopped speaking, the turn of the argument stealing my wind. Any truce, even for a second as we fought over the best way out of this mess, felt as if it had crashed.

If I left it up to him, this conversation might’ve ended right then, but I couldn’t stand it anymore. If he was going to hate me, then so be it. But I was done running from a fight—from Death, from Varic, and, most of all, from Kicks. Not from him.

“I didn’t want to leave you. I felt I had to. Why can’t you understand that? What if you thought I would never want to look at you again? That I’d be disgusted by you? That it would be a kindness to leave so that you didn’t have to deal with the aftermath of what happened?” I found myself pacing the room, and then over by the window, putting as much space between us as I could.

“Pips, look at me.”

I hesitated.

“ Pips .”

I turned toward him.

He shook his head. “I could never be disgusted by you. It’s not in my DNA. Part of me wishes you had gotten away, because then you wouldn’t be here and I wouldn’t be worried every time I walk out the door.”

“Then why are you so mad at me?”

“Because if you’d just warned me, told me what you were going to do, like it or not, I would’ve gotten you out of here. I wouldn’t have had to hear about Varic threatening you or seen you in that filthy cell.”

I was still staring at him, having a hard time wrapping my head around what he was saying.

“Have you noticed I didn’t question my father’s guilt about Death Day?” he asked. “I don’t know how he was involved, what he managed to do, but I knew who he was. It didn’t surprise me for a second. He did something horrific and reaped the consequences. I can live with that.”

“You say that, but even now you can’t even stand to touch me.” I hadn’t meant to say that, but I was so raw, so laid open, it was as if I couldn’t stop myself.

“It was easier before, when I thought…” He shook his head again and began pacing the room, putting even more space between us.

“That I couldn’t get pregnant,” I finished. “Why are we even arguing? There’s no future for us anyway, is there?”

Every second that ticked off before he answered felt like a knife stabbing me in the chest.

“We’ll figure something out,” he finally said.

It had taken too long for him to say it. He didn’t believe it either. “Really? You’re afraid to touch me because you think I’ll get pregnant and die. I’m afraid of whatever darkness Death put in me will come roaring back and leave someone unrecognizable behind. How are either of those things going to get figured out?”

“They will.”

“Saying it doesn’t make it a reality.”

He sat and put his boots back on. “I’ve got to go check on some things.”

He left, and I didn’t try to stop him.