Visibly pulling herself together, Lilac straightens and swallows hard. “This is Gideon. Tarver, he’s Simon Marchant’s little brother.”
Tarver’s eyes widen a little, and though he doesn’t relax, his voice is calmer when he speaks. “Simon, the boy you were…the one your father had killed for falling in love with you?”
“The very same,” I reply before Lilac can. “But actually, you both know me.”
The man’s eyes narrow. “I don’t think—”
“You call me the Knave.”
In the silence that follows my voice, I can hear Sofia’s intake of breath—when I glance out of the corner of my eye, I can see her take a slow step toward the stairs. I can almost see her thoughts as she considers making a run for it. And I don’t blame her, really. She’s still reeling from learning I’m the Knave who’s terrorized her for the last year of her life—now I’m adding that I’m an old family friend of the people responsible for her father’s death.
Though “friend” is stretching the definition a bit.
“He’s the one who dug up the information you sent to us on Avon?” Jubilee asks, staring at me.
Lilac ignores the question. “You’re the one who helped us set up our security system?” she bursts out, breaking through her shock, finally sounding for a brief moment more like the girl I knew as a child. “But why…you weren’t really helping us, were you?”
The muscles in my jaw seize, a flare of anger making me want to grind my teeth. “What a conclusion to jump to, Miss LaRoux. I’m hurt. Historically speaking, it’s not usually my family screwing yours over.”
Lilac takes a step forward, moving away from Tarver’s hand, her eyes on my face. “I’m sorry I never came to see you after—” Her voice cracks, and she tries again. “I was only fourteen. I was heartbroken, and it was my fault, and I couldn’t…”
I can feel Flynn’s and Jubilee’s stares, but worse, I can feel Sofia’s eyes on me, and some distant part of my mind wonders how much of this story she’s able to put together from the fragments. Focus on that. Focus on her. Don’t think about Simon. The blood’s roaring in my ears, rushing like wind, like whispering voices. I try to focus on that and not on the girl in front of me.
“I loved your brother, Giddy.” Lilac pauses, not coming any closer to me, though I can tell from her body language that she wants to. “I never wanted anything to happen to him. And I never, never forgot him.”
Behind her, her fiancé is silent. If hearing Lilac talk about her so-called love for another guy hurts him, Tarver doesn’t show it.
“Yeah, well.” I long to shove my hands into my pockets, slouch my shoulders, hide away from all of this. Face-to-face stuff is Sofia’s thing, not mine. “That makes two of us. At least you had no problem moving on.”
“That’s not fair.” Lilac’s voice quickens a little, making the blood surge harder in my ears. “Giddy—Gideon—just because I fell in love with Tarver, that doesn’t change the way I felt about Simon. Simon is—Simon will always be—with me. The same way he’ll always be with you.” She lets her breath out, long and slow. “You look so much like him.”
“Well, you must not think much of either of us, then, if your first thought was that I helped you guys with security just so I could screw you over.”
“Why all the secrecy then?” Lilac demands. “Why hide behind pseudonyms and, and—why not just tell us who you were?”
“Because that’s not who I am anymore,” I spit back, trying and failing to find calm. “Simon’s little brother died when he did.”
Lilac is slow to answer. “Then I have that on my conscience too.”
“Look,” says Tarver, breaking into the conversation gently. “Whatever’s going on here, this isn’t the time or the place to talk about it. From the look of it, we’re not the only ones you’ve been deceiving.” His gaze flicks over toward Sofia, and abruptly I realize that he sees far more than he seems to.
When I follow his gaze, Sofia looks back at me for a long moment, her face wooden. I know I’ve lost her. I lost her the moment she found my brother’s playing card. But now, with this link to Lilac LaRoux, I’ve lost her even as an ally, and I’m not prepared for the depth of that cut, the burn of it in my chest. It’s like a tangible blow, so visceral I can almost taste it in my mouth, a bitter flood of copper.
Flynn Cormac finally finds his voice, though it’s soft. “They’re here for the whispers. They know what he’s doing with them. We have to talk about this.”
“And we will,” Tarver agrees, calm. “But Lilac and I have to get back before we’re missed. She’s still got her speech to make.”