“Hey!” said Theo. “Use your words!”
Diana cast Jason a swift glance. His jaw was set, his shoulders stiff as always. Was that what he’d been wondering? Or, as Alia would say, was Theo just being Theo?
She cleared her throat. “I’m wondering what tomorrow might bring,” she said. “I can’t imagine it will be as simple as just finding the spring. We don’t know what might be waiting for us.”
“Sure we do,” said Theo, swatting at a branch. “We get to the spring, Alia gets cured. We argue over the best choice for our We Saved the World victory dance.”
“I do enjoy your optimism,” said Diana.
“And I admire your ability to lift a car over your head without breaking a sweat and look fine as hell doing it,” said Theo with a bow.
“Why do I have the feeling it’s not going to be as easy as you think?” Jason said.
“Because you’re a glass-half-empty kind of guy.”
“Whereas you’re an it-will-all-work-out-or-someone-else-will-take-care-of-it kind of guy?”
“Unfair.”
“I’m serious, Theo. If this all goes to hell, you can’t just reboot or re-up or whatever.”
“You mean one-up. And good to know you’re concerned, even if you did think I was some kind of traitor.”
“Theo—” Jason attempted.
Theo clapped Jason on the back. “I get it, okay? Just maybe give me a little more credit. You guys are my family. More than my dad has ever been. Besides, without me you’d currently be riding a mule over a mountaintop.”
“The mule would talk less,” Jason noted.
“Probably smell better, too,” said Theo.
Was it really that simple? A shared joke, a pat on the back, forgiveness given when no apology had been offered? She’d seen Jason’s frustration with Theo’s glib ways, Theo’s irritation at how easily Jason dismissed him. But they seemed perfectly happy to avoid talking about any of it. Boys were peculiar creatures.
Diana left Jason and Theo to set up their makeshift camp across the clearing from the car. Through the windows of the Fiat, she could see Alia and Nim already dozing. She hated to wake them.
“Sorry,” she whispered as she slipped inside and used two knotted socks to bind Nim’s hands together.
“It’s okay,” said Nim sleepily. “My mom duct-taped oven mitts on my hands when I had the chicken pox.”
Diana wasn’t sure what cooking and infectious diseases had to do with anything, but she made a polite humming noise.
She shifted in the passenger seat, trying to find a comfortable position, listening to the quiet of the night. She wanted to sleep, but the car was miserably cramped, and her mind didn’t want to shut down. A run might help.
She slipped outside as silently as she could. Someone was snoring loudly from the other side of the clearing, and based on the timbre, she suspected it was Theo. Diana stretched, then walked back to the outcropping to listen to the rush of the waterfall and see if she could find another trail.
She was surprised to see Jason standing there, gazing out at the water. He’d shed his shirt again, possibly to bind Theo’s hands, and the mist from the falls had beaded on his skin.
As if sensing her presence, he turned sharply.
“Sorry,” she said. “I wasn’t spying. I couldn’t sleep.” Well, maybe she’d been spying a little. She liked looking at him. But hadn’t Nim said that most girls did?
“Me neither,” he said. “Theo snores.”
“So I heard.”
Jason looked back out at the falls. “What if it doesn’t work?” he said quietly.
Diana didn’t ask what he meant. “The Oracle didn’t lie.”
“Then maybe she made a mistake. Oracles have been wrong before.”
“Not this one.”
He leaned against the rock by the bell and crossed his arms. “Would you have played the game if we’d kept going?”
“With the lasso? I don’t know. Would you have?”
He expelled a short breath. “Absolutely not.”
Diana perched beside him on the rock. “I meant what I said. I’m sorry for using the lasso on you.”
Jason shrugged, the muscles shifting smoothly beneath his skin. “What I am, what I can do, I’ve kept it secret a long time. Keeping people out gets to be a habit.”
“I shouldn’t have forced my way in. Truth means something different when it’s given freely.”
He tilted his head back, watching the stars. “Early on, my parents saw that I was stronger than the other kids, faster. And I liked to fight. I was on the way to becoming a bully. They taught me to hold back, to be careful not to hurt anyone. But sometimes I feel it in my blood, the desire to use this strength, to prove myself.”
Diana tried not to show her surprise. This was exactly the behavior she’d been told to expect in the World of Man. And yet, Jason recognized the urge to violence that had been passed down to him through the Keralis line. He’d struggled to temper it.
“Is that why you value control so highly?”
“It’s that. But it’s also the way I was raised. My mom taught Alia and me that our money could only protect us so much. People would be waiting for us to fail, to prove we didn’t deserve what we had.”
“I know that feeling,” she admitted.
He cast her a skeptical glance. “Do you? It’s a trap for us. Alia and I always have to be better. We always have to be a step ahead. But the stronger you get, the more you achieve, the more people want to make sure you know your place.” He bumped the back of his head gently against the rock. “It’s exhausting. And all that caution doesn’t leave much room for greatness.”
Maybe she understood less than she thought. On the island, Diana had always known her failures meant more, but she’d also known her achievements would be her own, that if she ran quickly enough, fought hard enough, thought fast enough, her sisters would treat her victories with respect.
She nudged her arm against his. “It wasn’t stupid. What you said on the plane. We all want a taste of greatness.”
Jason turned his head to look at her. “What if you want more than a taste?”
Something in those words made her pulse quicken. “How much more?”
“I don’t know.” His gaze shifted back to the sky. “You take a bite. You take another. How are you supposed to know when you’ll be full?”
I see you, Daughter of Earth. I see your dreams of glory.
“Then your desire to run Keralis Labs, your parents’ legacy—”
“Their legacy,” he repeated, and released a bitter laugh. “Do you know some part of me wants to believe Alia’s power caused the car accident that killed our parents?”
Diana drew in a sharp breath, and he glanced at her, dark eyes glinting.
“How’s that for truth?” he said. “It’s why I pushed Michael so hard on the investigation. I wanted there to be a conspiracy, an explanation, a reason for all of it. If wanting to do great deeds isn’t stupid, that is. It’s the way little kids think.”
What would it do to someone to lose so much in a single night? Who wouldn’t search for order, for some measure of control?
“You wanted to find meaning in their deaths,” she said. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”
Jason pushed off the rock and prowled to the edge of the cliff. “I wanted to remake the world. Make it into something I understood.” He crossed his arms, profile turned to the sky, and she remembered seeing him alone in the orchard, a stone sentinel, keeping the watch. “I still do.”
“That’s why you want to retain control of the company.”
He cocked his head to one side and slowly made his way back to the rock. “Why do I feel like I’m always the one who ends up talking instead of you?”
“I’m an excellent listener?” she ventured.
He snorted. “I’ll make you a deal. We’ll play twenty questions. You answer, and I’ll forgive you for the lasso.”
She cut a hand through the air. “Twenty is way too many.”
“Ten.”
“Three.”
“Three?” he said incredulously. “That’s nothing!”