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“Then who was the second?”
“Achille.”
Kenna bent over the bed for support. Achille’s name had never been on her list.
“We saw you have visions,” Camille told the oracle. “We saw them come true. We believed. We would have stayed here, close to our new gods if we could have.”
“Did he even care about Cecily at all?” Kenna asked.
“Yes. It wasn’t his fault that he was put into this situation. It wasn’t my fault, either.”
“You make it sound like you’re victims. Two people are dead,” Kenna snapped.
“I didn’t shoot anyone. I tried to warn you, but you didn’t listen.”
“You could have warned us long before!” Kenna glared at the figure in bed. Her fingers gripped the metal footboard like claws.
This was the mother bear, ready to strike.
“No, I couldn’t have. Olivier would have known. He always knows, and he had orders to ensure knowledge of our presence didn’t leave the compound. There would have been far more deaths had I told you.”
“What do you mean?” Lila asked.
“Olivier likes to hide. Olivier likes to keep things where he hides.”
Mòr sucked in a breath. “Oh my gods. That was what I saw in all those visions, wasn’t it? He was going to blow up the compound.”
“I’ve gone into the hole under your cabin a hundred times, but I’ve been too scared to disconnect the wires.” Her eyelids fluttered and tears welled in her eyes. “If I did it wrong, the entire compound could… They’re all connected somehow. I just don’t know how. It looks too simple, and Olivier has never been simple.”
“So you kept your mouth shut?”
Camille nodded. “I had to wait for the right time. It hadn’t come yet.”
“The right time to what? To lie to my daughter?” Kenna demanded. “To kill her? To kill me? To kill the oracle? What am I supposed to tell Cecily? That her best friend and her boyfriend lied to her for the last two years? She’ll never trust anyone after this, not ever again. You’ve ruined her, do you understand that?”
“We didn’t lie to her. Achille and I both cared for Cecily very much.”
“If that’s true, why did Achille abandon her?”
Camille worried her blanket once more. “We didn’t know the mercenaries had taken the child prophets until we received orders to meet at the warehouse. We were supposed to return to Italy like some triumphant family, but Achille and I refused to let that happen. We planned to free the prophets and bring them back here. We planned to tell you everything and ask for asylum. But when we showed up, the mercs had already been slaughtered and the prophets rescued. Olivier wanted to detonate your compound and return to Italy, but General Ferro ordered him to stand down. Instead, we were to infiltrate the basement and finish the job you started.” Her eyes flicked to Lila.
Connell stood up straighter. “That was you?”
“We’ve been in and out of that building for ages. It wouldn’t have been hard to slip in and back out again. Olivier threatened to kill Cecily if anything went wrong, but I couldn’t let it go right, either. I needed you to know what was going on. I needed you to start putting things together. I gave one of my friends some tickets to a show and told them to take Cecily out of town. Then I tripped the alarm that night during the break-in. Olivier had to abort the mission.”
“And Cecily?” Kenna asked.
“I promised Achille that I wouldn’t leave Cecily’s side. He left to take on Olivier, all to make her safe, to make the compound safe. He lost that fight, or he would have come back. He cared for her very much. He was like me.”
“A mole,” Connell grunted.
“Achille died to protect Cecily, to protect all of you. Show some respect,” Camille replied. “And yes, we were moles. What were we supposed to do? How should we have handled it?”
“What have you told your superiors about us?” Mòr asked.
“Achille thought we should tell them the truth about your power. If we told General Ferro that the prophets could see the future, we figured the empire wouldn’t dare attack the barbaros. I thought he was right. We agreed not to give them any useful information about the compound, nothing they couldn’t glimpse for themselves with a few days’ surveillance.”
“You thought that plan would work?”
