“What the hell happened to you?”
To my surprise, I laugh. And though it’s a soft, sad sound, my chest loosens. I haven’t spoken to another human in three days. “The swamp happened to me,” I say, and her mouth quirks a little. “I’m so sorry, Sof. I wish there was something I could say that would make a difference. I know there’s not.”
Her mouth tightens to a thin line as her eyes slide away. She looks so tired. “You shouldn’t have come here, Flynn. Your face is on every holoboard in town. Kidnapping an officer? What’s going on?”
“It’s an incredibly long story. Listen, Sof, I’ve got nowhere to go. I came here because…because I thought you might understand.”
“Nowhere?” Her brow furrows, and I realize no one’s told her about the massacre, about my choice to save Jubilee. “But the caves…”
I swallow hard. Three days, and I still can’t speak about it. “McBride and the others want me even more than the soldiers do. I made a choice, and they don’t understand why.”
Sofia’s eyes widen a little, but she’s too good at concealing her feelings to show me anything else. “What did you do?”
“I saved a soldier’s life. After she—” I clench my jaw, trying to keep control of myself. “It was the Fury.”
Her gaze shifts, falling on the oversize waders by the door before coming to rest on me, her own grief welling up in response to mine.
“I just need a place to sleep for a night,” I whisper. “And some answers. I know it’s dangerous. I’ll be gone by morning.”
“Come,” she says softly. “I’ll draw some water, and you can get clean. You can borrow some of my father’s clothes.” She speaks without a hitch in her voice, but despite the long years we’ve been separated by this fight we’ve inherited, I still know her well. I can see the pain drawn clear on her face. “You’ll stay here with me as long as you need to.”
My heart thuds hard, fear and relief warring with each other. “I can’t accept that, Sof. They find me here and they’ll arrest you too. How can you—”
“Because you tried to save her from this Fury,” she interrupts, voice quickening with the same fire I remember from when we were children. “Because if someone had tried to save my father, I would’ve kept them hidden until the soldiers came to drag me from this house.”
It takes four basins of frigid water before the dirty washcloth wrings out clear, but Sofia keeps bringing new buckets from the pump anyway. Though the shirt and trousers she finds for me are far too large, the feel of clean, dry fabric without a trace of blood or grime is bliss. But once I’m sitting on the floor in front of the tiny stove, my thoughts return; my eyes are on the cuffs of my trousers, which have been carefully mended over and over again. The stitches are neat and orderly; the thread is a faded butter-yellow.
When Sofia sits down, handing me a thick, doughy slice of what we locals call arán, I notice the thread mending her father’s cuffs matches the color of her tunic, which is a few inches shorter than it ought to be.
I close my eyes, the arán suddenly tasting like ash in my mouth. This isn’t her fight—and yet it is. It’s all of ours. I just wish it weren’t coming to this violent end.
“Don’t you need to eat too?” I ask once I’ve managed to swallow.
She shrugs, eyes on the glowing red coils of the stove. “Seems like all I do now is eat and sleep. People keep bringing me food. But I can’t eat it all—there’s only me now, after all.”
It’s always been just Sofia and her father, since we were children. Her mother left when the first rebellion started heating up, and as far as I know, Sofia hasn’t heard from her since. I glance at the table piled high with offerings from the town. “It was you, wasn’t it?” I lower my voice, though we’re alone. “The girl in the security footage, right before…right before.”
Her face tightens, eyes closing as she swallows hard, cheeks flushed. I want to take her hand, show her I feel this agony too, but the tension singing through her body keeps me still. “You know,” she whispers, “you’d think the worst part about this would be the looks I get. It wasn’t all soldiers who died in the explosion. People here lost family too. They all look at me like I should have known it was about to happen, or stopped it. But I don’t care.” Her voice thins and catches roughly. “I just miss my dad.”