Her lips form a line. “I told you, I will tell you what I can. I’ve said that from the beginning.”
“So you lied to me, too?”
She shakes her head. “No, Lennox, I haven’t lied. Just tell me what happened.”
“Where did he get that ring?”
Her mouth falls open slightly, eyes widening. I caught her off guard, because she clearly wasn’t expecting the ring to be what I asked about. She hasn’t had enough time to concoct a lie, so maybe I’ll finally get some actual answers.
“He’s always had that ring, as long as I’ve known him.”
“Don’t lie to me. Where did he get it from? He must have taken it from someone.”
She takes a step toward me, her eyes pleading for me to believe her. “I’m not lying Lennox. I’ve never seen him take it off.”
“I trusted you, Sig! And now I don’t know what to believe!”
“I swear to you,” she says, and raises a fist to her chest. “He’s had it since the day we met, since the day he arrived on Dawnlin.” She pauses and takes a deep breath. “I remember because that ring is what gave Dane his scar.”
My stomach bottoms out and I gape at her.
“S-say that again?” My words stutter as disbelief courses through me. Surely I heard her wrong. Dane told me how he got that scar, the scar I wanted to run my fingers over, to brush my lips against. The scar that caught my eyes immediately back in Blackwood, part of what made him look so different from any of the men I’d ever seen before.
“Weston’s ring cut Dane’s lip open. That’s how he got his scar.”
“No, Dane told me how he got that scar. He said he tripped as a child and fell into a doorframe. His family didn’t have money to take him to a healer.”
She shakes her head. “That may have been what he told you, but I watched it happen, Lennox. I have no reason to lie about that, and you asked me how I knew he had it. Why would I bring it up if it wasn’t true?”
My breaths become shallow as, once again, everything I thought I knew starts crumbling beneath me.
“I know you have training,” Sig continues. “You’re no novice to a fight. Throw the punch in your head. You’ll know I’m telling you the truth.”
I do as she asks, my mind’s eye imagining Weston throwing a punch. The round, thick portion of his ring lining up right where Dane’s scar cuts through his lip.
I sway on my feet, my eyes falling away from Sig as the reality of what she is telling me sinks in.
Dane lied.
On a night he said was all about earning my trust, he lied to my face.
Was anything he ever said true?
I know from living amongst the Castaways, from getting to know Weston, that what he’s said about them hasn’t been accurate, but I told myself there had to be a reason for such a mischaracterization.
“Why did Weston punch Dane? Why would he punch the Guardian?” I ask.
She pauses and I look up, searching her face.
“He wasn’t the Guardian when it happened,” she says. Her shoulders fall as she lets out a deep sigh. “Lennox, Dane killed the last Guardian.”
A loud ringing fills my ears as I stare at Sig. This is it. The last sliver of hope I held that everything I had experienced with Dane was real and true. It is the final piece of the story that kept me from completely trusting Weston.
“No. Weston did,” I say firmly, trying to keep my grasp on something Dane told me, something I knew to be true. But how did I know it was true? There was never any evidence, anything to convince me other than the word of the Guardian, the protector of Dawnlin. It was only ever a truth that was accepted among all the Voyagers, because the person we had to trust to bring us here was the one who said it.
“That’s what Dane tells everyone,” Sig says softly.
“Why would he tell everyone if it was a lie?”
