Page 90 of Storm Caller

“I thought I saw you!” she answers. “You were covered in it. Spark.”

“So what?” I practically roar. “How could you just give me up!”

“Because I had to!” she argues. “I had no choice.”

“You had a choice,” I say, my voice dropping into a menacing growl. “There is always a choice, and you chose them over your best friend.”

Trinity opens her mouth and then closes it, clearly at a loss for words.

I give her a moment, hoping she’ll say something that makes any of this okay.

I quickly lose my patience.

“Say something!” I shout.

“You’ve always been weird!” she shouts back. “I thought . . . I thought . . .”

“What? Was my personality a moral failing that should see me condemned to death? I’m weird. For fuck’s sake, Trin. I thought we were friends! You’ve been like a sister to me! Is that really what you thought all these years?”

She’s sobbing now, big fat tears tracking down her cheeks. I search inside myself for some sliver of sympathy, but I find nothing. I’m empty, wrung dry by her betrayal and the awful things she believes about me.

“Poet,” she says, her tone thin and wheedling. “I’m sorry. I really didn’t mean for this to happen. I just . . . I thought I saw something, and I fucked up.”

She has no excuse. I know that. There is nothing she could say to make this right, but I have a job to do, and I have to find a way to pretend.

My eyes close as I try to calm the raging pulse of my furious heart. When I open them again, I find her shrinking against the wall like the gutless coward she is.

“Please,” she says. “Can you forgive me? Can we fix this? I hate that we grew apart.”

I want to remind her that she pushed me away first. But maybe I had a part to play, too. I pulled back when she joined the E-squad. I had planned to talk her out of joining, but then I got too wrapped up in my own shit, and I never made it a priority. I let my hurt feelings come first.

“I don’t know,” I say, and that is the truth. If I didn’t have ulterior motives, could I find a way to forgive her? Something happened after she failed that first test all those months ago. Something changed when she tried to save herself and find a new path to redemption and a future she could live with.

“Can we try?” she asks, her voice whisper-soft. “I’m sorry. You have no idea how sorry I am. I love you, Poet. I don’t want to lose you.”

I stare at her, allowing tears to fill my eyes, like I’m really regretting what happened between us. It isn’t hard to call them up.

“I never wanted to lose you, either,” I say, my voice wobbling with what I hope sounds like sincerity.

“We could go out and do something?” she says. “Just the two of us.”

I think about how she went to Sogno without me last year, and I add it to my list of reasons I’ll never forgive her, but now isn’t the time to bring it up.

“Okay,” I say. “Sure. Let’s try.”

She pushes off the wall and throws herself at me, wrapping me in a hug with such force that I stumble a few steps. It takes me a moment to return it. I gently embrace her, but my skin crawls at her touch.

She pulls back and clasps my shoulders, offering me a watery smile. I try to return it. I try to be okay. I need to convince her. I can’t let her suspect what I’m up to. I need to do this for Rook and his family, for the Tiera Frais, and for all the people lost to The Shield and its ambitions.

“I’ll text you,” she says before she gives me another hug.

“Sure,” I say. “I’m having dinner with my parents on Saturday, so maybe next week.”

“Oh!” she says. “Are you?”

“Yes, why?”

She shakes her head. “I don’t know. I thought after that whole defecting-to-House-Aria thing, they weren’t speaking to you anymore.”