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“Mind if I join you?” I asked.
Kalmiya ran her hands through her hair and looked up at me. Her face wasn’t pale or bruised, and I realized sadly that I had never seen her uninjured. She gestured at the chair opposite her. “Go ahead,” she said, reluctantly.
I walked up to the chair and sat across from her. I had thought about what I was going to say to her, but now that I was here, the words weren’t coming. My mind was blank. “It’s nice to see you healthy.” I said, and instantly regretted it.
Kalmiya frowned. “What?”
I shook my head. “Sorry, that sounded much better in my head. I meant to ask how you were doing.”
“Why do you care?” she snarled.
I was taken aback by the sudden aggression. I had expected some animosity, but I wasn’t sure what I had done to deserve outright anger. “Why wouldn’t I? You’ve been through one bad thing after another, and trust me, I know what being Medrion’sguestmeans.”
Kalmiya visibly tightened at the mention of Medrion. “You saved my life that night, and I’m grateful, but you also stormed off… and he followed you,” she paused for a moment, “If he had been there, Medrion might not have attacked the bastion, we might not have been so vulnerable.”
“I’m sorry. I really am sorry. I don’t think any of us expected him to attack so soon, Abaddon wouldn’t have left if he thought there was a chance?—”
“The Tyrant,” she corrected.
This conversation wasn’t going any of the ways I thought it would. Every attempt to find common ground was being swatted away like a bothersome fly. I should have walked away but I hadto make sure there was no ill feeling between us, especially if we were going to have to trust each other in the coming battle.
I shook my head. “Look… I didn’t fall with the rest of you. I don’t know why it took me years to get here, but it did, and I’m still pretty vulnerable to sin. Medrion, he… put ideas into my head, and I wasn’t prepared for it.”
“He does that.”
“He does. You’d think I’d spent enough time with him in Heaven to know that.”
“Heaven?” she asked.
I smiled gently at her. “I was Medrion’s prisoner up in Heaven. I was sentenced to the Pit.”
“You,” she paused, “Youbroke rules in Heaven and were sentenced to the Pit?”
I frowned at her. “Is there something funny about that?”
She very pointedly looked me up and down, and that’s when I saw it—the glimmer of Envy. A part of me was glad I wasn’t the only one who’d let Envy’s talons sink in to her, but my heart dropped with the realization.
Medrion had accidentally hit a kernel of truth.
“Let me be frank, Sarakiel,” she said, leaning closer to me. “Everything has gone downhill since you arrived. Before you got here, we had a bastion, we had a Legion, we had protection. Medrion wasn’t exactly an ally, but he wasn’t gunning for us, either. You started that. Now we have nothing, the Ebon Legion is gone, and Medrion is coming here to finish off the dregs. There’s nowhere left for us to run.”
“Medrion attacked your convoy, he killed your Oracle, and captured you and the others. I wasn’t even there when your convoy first set out, but I went to help rescue you. I don’t know what he told you, or tried to convince you of, but I can guarantee it’s not true.”
“But it is,” she said, her voice starting to rise. “All of this is your fault.Yours. And I wish he had thrown you in the Pit when he had the chance, we’d be better off.”
I stopped and stared at her, swallowing the well of emotion inside of me threatening to bubble up and burst.Wrath. “What did he tell you?” I asked, far calmer than I felt.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing? No, let me guess, he sold you a perfect life. The perfect life you could have had had I not fallen into the Tyrant’s arms?”
Kalmiya didn’t immediately answer, which said more than her words could’ve. “I’m not weak like you. No one puts ideas into my head.”
“Right.” I paused, suddenly feeling unsafe. “What else did he tell you?”
“Nothing,” she repeated.
“Kalmiya… I need to know what he said to you, we’re on the same side here?—.”
