Jess jumped and turned and followed her away. “Wait,” he said. “What happened to her? The girl in the bed?”
“I can’t discuss that.”
“Wait.” Jess drew her to a stop and met her eyes. “What happened?”
She looked away all too quickly. “I told you, I can’t discuss it.” But she hadn’t pulled away, either, and after a pause whispered, “She took poison. She’s not the first.”
He kept his voice as low as hers. “Why?”
“Not everyone is happy with their fate,” she said, and then did pull away. “Or suited to it. You should go. Now.”
Jess looked back over his shoulder at the closed curtains. Morgan must not have heard; he could see her shadow against the cloth, still bent forward. Still lost in her grief and fear.
I won’t let it happen to you, he told her. Whatever you feel about me now, that doesn’t matter. I don’t ever want to see you like Sybilla.
He walked Thomas back to the safety of the others and waited on the stairs until Morgan walked out onto the landing in front of the Medica doors. She didn’t look up to where he stood; she seemed tired and lonely, and she turned and took the stairs down. Away from him. Away from the rest of them.
Jess followed quietly and at a distance.
She descended two floors and went down a hallway, and as he stepped through and into sudden, thick darkness, he felt a knife prick the skin of his throat, and he immediately froze.
Then she sighed. “Oh, Jess. Please go away.” Her voice sounded thick and unsteady, and he knew she was still crying or on the verge of it. The knife moved away, and he heard her start to turn.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. That earned another sigh, even more quiet.
“For what?”
“For not understanding. Staying away from this place should always have been your choice. Not mine.” He hesitated for a second. “Your friend. Will she live?”
“Yes,” Morgan said. “And that’s almost worse. You see, they now consider her a danger to herself, so what little freedom she did have left will be taken away. She can’t bear that. Yet she’ll have to somehow.”
“Is he so bad? Her match?”
“No. Iskander is perfectly fine. But Sybilla . . . she was in love with someone else.”
“Who?”
Morgan turned and put her hand on his cheek. The contact was sweet and warm and unexpected, and he resisted the urge to put his arms around her.
And then she said, “Me.”
He couldn’t comprehend that for a moment, and then his stomach lurched and dropped two floors. “You— You and Sybilla?”
“No, Jess, that’s not what I mean at all.” Morgan’s hand dropped away and he felt terribly, icily cold now. He felt her move away. The hallway was starting to reveal itself to him in shadows and highlights of dark gray, and he could see her now, just a shape. A cipher. “She was kind to me. She was the only one, at first, and we spent time together. She liked me. I didn’t realize—I didn’t realize at first that she felt more for me than that.” The pain of that was still there in her voice, and he almost winced. “And when I did, I didn’t know what to say, except that I—I couldn’t be with her. I felt awful about it; I think she saw me as . . . as a refuge from Iskander. But it was never . . . I never . . .” This time there was no doubt she was crying; he could hear the agonized hitch of her breath. “Oh God, Jess. I didn’t tell her I was running. I left her here alone. You betrayed me, and I betrayed her. I should have at least tried to help her get out of here, too. I knew she was just as desperate!”
He still felt light-headed; his heart was pounding so hard it hurt. “It wasn’t your fault. You felt you had to help us with Thomas. You know that.”
“It was more than that. I was running away from Dominic, too, that night,” she said. “We both try to do the right thing, don’t we? But no matter what we do, it keeps coming out wrong.”
He put his arms around her, and after a second of stiffness, she collapsed against him. He kissed her cheek, and she put her arms around his neck and held him tightly. “I love you,” she whispered to him. “I never stopped, Jess—I want you to know that. I just—I just felt so alone here, and the only person I could blame was you.”
She loves me. She still loves me. That brought him a stunned kind of peace. “Forgive me?”
She kissed him gently on the lips. Sweet and a little sad. “I did already,” she said. “Now go to bed. I’ll see you in the morning.”
He was unexpectedly tired, he realized as he headed back to his room, but there was no chance to rest yet. Wolfe’s door was open, and Khalila, Thomas, and Santi were in with him. They all looked up when he passed, and Wolfe said, “Brightwell. In.”