Chapter Thirteen

My knees weaken as I stand up under the weight of Rayce’s accusations. Every ounce of my mind screams to run out of the tent and hide until his usually gentle hands loosen their death lock on the vial.

Arlo takes a step between us, his arm brushing mine as he moves closer. I’m afraid to even look at his face after the warning he gave me. He risked his neck so that I could help the rebellion and get my revenge, and I’ve repaid his kindness by ruining everything.

“Because I gave it to her.” The simplicity of Arlo’s declaration slices the air as sharp as the sword still attached to Rayce’s hip.

Rayce grinds his teeth. “When?”

“The day after I showed it to you,” Arlo says. “I gave it to her that night I found the two of you in the kitchen.”

Silence pervades the air as Rayce digests Arlo’s answer. Watching Rayce connect the timeline would almost be interesting except for the flash of betrayal that passes through his eyes as his mind catches up with our actions over the past few days. His gaze darts to the book I was reading next to my bag.

He turns to me, his eyes those of a stranger.

“You’ve been researching poisons.” His hand holding the vial droops like it’s suddenly too heavy to keep upright. “And right after Arlo gave you this, you agreed to the Gardener’s deal. You’ve had access to him, and have been feeding him ever since without complaint.” His voice goes quiet. “Did you plan this? Did both of you deliberately go behind my back?”

I open my mouth to speak, but the only thing that rises from my throat is a bubbling wave of panic. He jerks back a few steps like he was struck, shaking his head.

My gaze never faltering, I take a deep breath. “Yes. I’ve been poisoning him because his life wasn’t yours to pardon. I should’ve killed him that day in the Garden and been done with it.”

“No,” he says. “No, I felt gratitude when you selflessly volunteered to take the deal.” The way he says the word “selflessly” sounds like a disease. “I even told you that you didn’t have to. I confided in you and this is how you repay me?”

“I did what you asked, just not how you asked me to do it.”

He runs his hand down his face, his eyes wide. Mouth slightly parted. “I thought you were sacrificing for the greater good.”

Arlo takes a step forward. “She did. She still made a sacrifice for us.”

“No, she pretended to make a sacrifice.” He moves to meet Arlo, pace for pace. “She went against a direct order, nearly killed a hostage with invaluable information, and you…” He jabs his finger into Arlo’s chest. “You helped. You might not have given her the idea, but you’re the only one who had access to this poison and you definitely provided her the tools.”

The entire time I’ve been here, I’ve never seen them argue like this. Tension sparks in the air between them, a storm ready to wage destruction. Rayce is thunder. A loud, rolling boom shaking the world. But Arlo is lightning. Quiet, swift, a flash between blinks.

Arlo steps up to Rayce’s pointed finger, a few inches shorter, but every bit as imposing.

“Because you took her revenge from her. I understand the rebellion’s desperate need for information. I’m right there with you on that, so I made sure we could obtain whatever secrets that vile piece of trash had before the poison would work.”

“You had no right to make that decision.” Rayce shakes his head, turning to me. “And the worst part of all of this is I was trying to help you. You think killing the Gardener will end all of the fear you have inside, but it won’t. Even if you do kill him, it’s just going to make you feel empty.”

The idea that he has any notion of what the future holds for me sends me off the deep end. I held my tongue before when he spoke about not wanting to kill the emperor in the kitchen, but I won’t keep my mouth shut if he’s unwilling to as well.

“That seems kind of hypocritical considering you’re fighting a war against your own uncle. How do you really think this is going to end, Rayce? There can’t be two rulers, and you said it yourself, he will never willingly hand you his throne.”

The moment the words are out, I wish to erase them. We’d just talked about this, he’d just shared his deepest fears with me, and because I’m trying to justify my own actions, I’ve thrown them in his face. His eyes harden and he takes a step back, looking down at the bottle in his hand.

“I know what I’ll have to do.” His voice shakes, barely able to contain his anger. “But don’t confuse need for want, because that’s where you and I are different. You want to kill the Gardener for revenge and you’ve made it perfectly clear that you’ll do anything to get your way. I don’t want to kill my uncle, but in order to save the people he’s been hurting all of these years, I will probably have to.”

The air swirls with his words and the space between us has never felt more pronounced. Several feet might as well be the entire length of the Varshan desert. My hands long to push his hair back, hear him whisper against my skin that everything is going to be okay, but any hope of that breaks when he takes another step back.

“I would send you back to base right now, but I can’t trust you there without supervision. Who knows what other schemes you would come up with.”

I grit my teeth. “I’m not going to do that. I’m on your side, remember?”

Rayce clenches his jaw. “I thought you were. But it seems your revenge is even more important than our trust. I just hope this was worth it.”

I want to apologize, but he shakes his head and stomps out of his own tent, taking all of the air with him. The second I’m no longer under his heavy gaze, my limbs thaw, and I rush for the door.

“Just leave him be,” Arlo says behind me.

My cot groans, signaling that he’s sitting on it. Hand on the opening of the tent, I look over my shoulder. He sinks his face into his hands, his light brown hair sitting flatter on his head than usual. Everything about Arlo’s demeanor suggests he’s lost steam.

“You can stay, but I have to make things right. We can’t leave it like this.”

Ripping through the tent, I pick through the small campsite and find Rayce’s wide back retreating toward the trees. He stomps his way through the night, shoulders squared. All aggression. Something that would have sent me crawling back to my cot a few short weeks ago.

But I’m not afraid of him.

I catch up as he hits the edge of the trees and grab onto the crook of his elbow. He freezes at my touch, his back going rigid and the muscles in his arms flexing underneath my grasp, but he doesn’t turn around to face me. Maybe if he did, I wouldn’t feel so alone.

“After everything that happened today, everything we saw…” I stop, the words hanging in the air as the charred remains of a man clutching a woman flash through my mind. “I wanted to make things right. That’s why I was in your tent in the first place.”

A warm breeze blows through the treetops, filling up the silence that threatens to consume me. He still doesn’t move, doesn’t face me, leaves me completely in the dark. How can I fix anything if he won’t let me in?

“I don’t think we can.” His voice catches in his throat. Raw. Painful. My grip on his arm loosens. “My second-in-command and the woman I love went behind my back, disobeyed direct orders, put the entire rebellion in jeopardy.”

I shake my head even though he can’t see me. “No, we didn’t. We made sure we got the information you needed first. We were thinking of the rebellion. You and I want the same things.”

“I thought we did, too.” He sighs, his head falling as he looks to the ground.

The glittering stars above mock me with their brightness. How can they keep burning when my world crashes down? The land grows more dangerous by the day, and the way he risks himself during every mission, if I let him slip through my fingers now, I might never get the chance to bring him back.

“How do we fix this?”

A tear slips down my cheek, hot and embarrassing. I swipe the back of my hand to erase the evidence but another takes its place.

“I don’t know. I wish I did, but I don’t. All I do know is I need space. Just…let me go right now.”

I grasp my fingers tighter around the long sleeve of his robe, the pale green fabric nearly glowing in the moonlight. When he rescued me from my cage after the Gardener captured Oren and me, Rayce had looked at me with relief under a similar moon, touched me like I was something worth savoring.

But he has always given me what I needed, and I have to do the same for him, even if every fiber of my being screams at me not to.

I let him go, my hand hanging heavy against my side.

“Fine,” I whisper into the growing darkness. “If that’s what you really want.”

I wait for him to take it back, to turn around and embrace me as he always does. Instead, he nods. Hot tears stream down my face like a riptide and I don’t even bother with wiping them away.

His boots disappear from my view, leaving me on my own. The rustle of the wind overhead has never felt more hollow.

Gritting my teeth, I look up at the space between two large trees that Rayce disappeared into. No, we don’t end here. Fractured, but not broken. I just have to prove to him that trusting the Gardener will hurt the rebellion far more than help it. Nothing that the Gardener ever grows blooms right. Like a flower with broken roots.

Living with him for seven years, I know his tricks better than anymore. All I have to do is find the loose thread in his plan and pull, watch it unravel. Without that, there will be no way to sew up this gaping hole growing between Rayce and me.