“Who got to you?” he says. “Did someone—?”
“No.” I pull my hand out of my jacket and hold it up between us. “You don’t get to work this. You don’t get to find the leak and manage the leak. For once, you’re going to stand there and answer the question.”
He nods. “Okay.”
“Someone put a phone in my pack while it was locked in my room. There were messages on it. About Serenity. They said I couldn’t trust you. Is it true?”
A long breath goes out of him. His shoulders drop with it.
“Yes.”
One word. No dressing on it. The floor doesn’t move, but something in my legs thinks it does.
“How long have you known?”
“Since Viktor’s office. Before we came down the mountain.”
Before the mountain. I do the calculation, and it’s short, and it’s brutal. We’ve wasted so much time.
“Say the rest,” I tell him. “All of it. Out loud.”
“There’s a blood trade.” He says it flat, like a report he’s given himself a hundred times. “Rare blood drives it. And the Sangrey line is rare. That’s where Serenity is. It’s why they haven’t been trying to kill you. They’re trying to take you. You’re not a loose end to them anymore. You’re stock.”
“And what they’re doing to her right now. Say that part too.”
His jaw works. For a second I think he won’t.
“They harvest her blood and sell it on. She’s probably been a source for months.” His voice doesn’t lift, but something under it goes thin. “A body doesn’t survive that forever. There’s an end to how long she lasts. But they’re not worried because they have another source.”
There it is, in his mouth, in plain words, the thing I’ve spent all evening trying and failing to unhear. My sister, running dry, while we’ve been here wasting time.
“You knew that.” I can hear my own voice going strange, too even. “You’ve known it this whole time.” My throat tries to close, and I shove through it. “There’s no time to get her out, Decker. Is there? That’s the piece you left out. There was never all the time in the world. There was a clock, and it’s running down, and you let me act like we could take it slow.”
“Thereistime.” He steps toward me. I step back, and his hands stop and fall. “Not a lot. But there’s no guarantee she’s in imminent danger right now. The best way to save her is to work carefully, keep it quiet, and let Vanya and her contacts track her down. Nobody’s sitting on their hands. I swear to you nobody’s giving up on your sister.”
“Then why couldn’t I know?” It rips out of me. “If everyone’s working, if there’s a plan, if you’re all so careful, why is the one person you had to keep in the dark the one whose sister is dying? Viktor’s not my lover. Vanya doesn’t sleep next to me.Youdo. You had your mouth on me and this in your head, and you decided I couldn’t know it. Why?”
He doesn’t answer. His hands open and close.
“Why, Decker?”
“Because I know what you’ll do with it.” Low. Rough. The level voice finally gone. “The day I found out, I went up that mountain, and I already knew how this went. You find out your blood buys hers, you find out she’s running down…and you go straight at them. You trade yourself. You put your own neck in the harvest to pull hers out. Don’t stand there and tell me you wouldn’t.”
“You’re right.” Flat. Cold. It stops him like a hand on the chest. “I would. I’d do it tonight. If I walked out this door and knew where to go, I’d hand myself over before morning, because if they have me, they don’t need to drain her dry—two of us is twice the supply, and they can afford to keep us both breathing. Me showing up buys her time. Maybe it buys her out. That’s not nothing, Decker. That’s the only door I’ve got, and you knew it was there, and you locked it and put your body in front of it so I’d never find it.”
“Because itkillsyou!” He’s louder now too, and there’s something desperate under it. “It doesn’t save her. It kills you both. You think two sources means they keep you? It meansthe second they’ve got the trait mapped off you, the one who’s already half gone stops being worth feeding. You’d be handing them the last thing they need to let her die. You’d walk in there to save her, and you’d be the reason there’s no reason to keep her alive. I ran it every way there is. Every way ends with both of you gone.”
“Then we’d have run it together.” My voice cracks, and I hate it, but I keep going. “That’s the part you can’t seem to hear. Maybe you’re right. Maybe I walk in there, and it’s the worst thing I could do. But she’s my sister. It’s my blood. It’s my life to spend or not spend, and the only person on this earth with the right to make that call is me. And you took it. You looked at me and decided I wasn’t allowed to choose, and then you fucked me so I wouldn’t ask.”
That lands. Something crosses his face like I hit him. He locks it down.
“I’d do it again,” he says.
Quiet. Not cruel. Worse than cruel. Certain.
“What?”
“Any of it. All of it.” He looks at me, and he doesn’t flinch. “I’ll tear that place apart to get her out. I’ll go in myself. I’ll spend everything I’ve got and everything I can borrow to bring your sister home to you. I mean that, Grace. I am not walking away from Serenity. But Iwill nottrade you to do it. Not for her, not for anyone. If it comes down to a night where the only way to get her back is to sacrifice you, then no. It’ll be no every time you ask, for the rest of my life. That’s the one thing I’ll never give you.”
