She looks down, then back up. Her light brown eyes meet mine.
“Well,” she says carefully, “that would be a lie, wouldn’t it. You want me to lie to you?”
“Yes. I fucking do.”
Her mouth quirks into a crooked frown. “Okaaay. I’m not pregnant.”
I turn away and rake my hands through my hair, fingers digging into the back of my skull.
Not one.
Not one teenager she’s done this to—changed, saved, altered—but two lives now. Cursed and preserved in equal measure.
“You can believe the lie if it makes you feel better,” Lila adds softly.
Now I’m the one pacing the length of my cell. It takes a moment before the implications settle enough for me to ask, “When did this happen. How far along are you?”
“Six months.”
Meaning—
“You’re doing the math,” she says. “Figuring it out.”
“Yes.”
“She saved me from the men who had me.” Her voice steadies as she speaks. “I was in a bad place. And I wasn’t the only one.”
She hesitates, then continues.
“The other girl didn’t make it. They…they slit her throat before Eri killed the last of them. Her name was Alissa.”
I stay silent.
“Eri buried her,” Lila replies. “She was two years older than me. A frail thing, really, but defiant and feisty as hell. Now she rests under a patch of wildflowers Eri replanted to mark her grave.”
My grip tightens on the bars.
“How long did those men have you?”
“A few months. The other two had been there longer than I had. Alissa, the longest. I’d been there almost three months before Eri found us.”
“She killed them?” I ask. “All of them?”
“Yeah. Uh…mmm. I may have also helped, and it wasn’t pretty.”
“Good.”
Lila exhales. “So you see—she’s not all bad. She might’ve jailed you, but I’m sure she has her reasons. I mean, you’re the same, right? Not all bad, other than you being here to end the world and all that. I’m sure you have your reasons or commands to follow or whatever.”
She pauses. “Riight?”
“Would you believe me if I said, if you understood the whole of it, you would see it as I do?”
“Maybe. Hard to say.”
“At least she hasn’t killed you. And she would have, if she thought you deserved it. So there’s hope that she’ll let you out eventually.”
I shake my head and wrap my fingers around the bars.
