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“So dedicated the man’s face is hardly recognizable,” Connell said. “I guess you can let loose, after all.”
Lila flexed her knuckles as the group moved down the hall toward Camille’s room, each knuckle crying out in soreness and sharp pain. She might not have broken any bones, but it certainly felt like it. Dixon wheeled her slowly so as not to jar her side. The walls loomed around them, painted a dusky off-white. Pastel murals of landscapes hung every few meters.
“Kenna is with Camille right now,” Mòr explained. “I don’t like leaving the pair of them alone together. She’s not pleased that Camille spent time in our home.”
“Kenna’s just pissed that she didn’t see through her,” Lila said.
The group pushed past half a dozen purplecoats pacing outside Camille’s door and entered her room. It was not unlike the one Lila had just left, except a different portrait appeared above Camille’s head. A pair of women fought upon the edge of a cliff face with massive staffs.
Camille tried to sit up when they entered, then winced and settled back into bed.
“Stay down.” Kenna had also abandoned her robe in favor of jeans and a sweater, though green rather than black. Her gray hair had been pulled into a ponytail.
“I heard you were hurt.” Camille frowned at Lila’s wheelchair and IV.
“Your friend shot me. He shot several people.”
“Eight by the end,” Connell added with a locked jaw. “Two dead.”
“He’s not my friend.”
The chief leaned against the door, his hand on his gun. Dixon mirrored his posture on the other side. “These ladies will question you now, and you’ll tell them everything.”
“I told you yesterday that I would tell you everything. I was honest then, and I’ll be honest now.”
“Let’s pick up where they left off, then. You’re a mole for the empire,” Mòr said simply.
Camille turned to the figures around her bed. Her eyes looked so sad. So guilty.
So lost.
“You should have chosen porn, you know,” Lila said in the silence. “I wouldn’t have looked too closely into it. But pictures of kittens? I knew something was off about that.”
“Porn is dirty.”
“Porn is sex. Neither is dirty.”
“I knew you’d figure it out once Rebecca was taken. It was only a matter of time.”
“Then why didn’t you leave?”
“I couldn’t abandon Cecily. She’s my best friend, and she was in danger. Even if I could, how do you run from the gods? How do you run when their prophets live in every city?”
“You speak as if you believe.”
Camille fiddled with her blanket.
“You do believe. You believe, and you converted.”
“I tried to find Rebecca and the others girls when they were taken, but you found them before I did.”
“You helped them get taken in the first place,” Kenna said, shaking her head. “After all we did for you.”
Camille sat up a little higher. She looked her best friend’s mother dead in the eye. “It is because you’ve done so much for me that I have acted as I have. I wasn’t the only mole on the compound, you know.”
“Olivier was the second.”
“No, he was our handler.”
