The Girl Who Dared to Endure (The Girl Who Dared #6)

He shook his head, his eyes closing again, as if he were fighting against pain of his own. “It wasn’t enough, what I felt. Maybe I was just kidding myself, thinking I could understand the complexities of human emotion. Lionel said I had the capacity, that growth came from experience, but I think maybe he was wrong. The fragments never change, so why would I? I am nothing more than determination, a will to succeed in the face of adversity. Maybe that explains why I pursued you with such intensity.”

“Leo,” I said, reaching out for him, my heart breaking. “You kissed me, on the bridge. You said all those things about thinking about it, dreaming about it, but never having any memory of it until you made one with me. I resisted you for so long, and you still came after me. You protected me and made me feel safe. Leo, I feel things for you that I don’t want to let go of. Please don’t do this.”

“I have to,” he choked out, squeezing his hands into fists. “I’m sorry that I confused things for you, Liana, but it’s now clear to me that all of this… between us… was due to Grey’s elevated hormonal response to your own natural pheromones, and nothing more.”

Pain radiated from my chest. His words, so decidedly clinical, sliced deeper than anything he had said thus far. He’d spent all this time convincing me that it was him, making me see him through Grey’s body, and now that I finally had, he was taking it away from me.

Anger, slow and biting, came over me, and I swallowed down my pain, shoving it behind a carefully placed mask. It was a dark and bitter thing that would only put me on attack if I gave it any freedom. I didn’t want him to see how much this devastated me. My pride wouldn’t allow it.

“Of course,” I said, trying to force a pleasant smile to my lips, only to feel the corners of my mouth lift barely a fraction of an inch. “Right. I will… go sleep with Zoe. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it earlier.”

Scipio help me, my voice sounded tinny, like it was coming from the other end of a long, narrow pipe. It was as if I were shrinking, growing very small and insignificant while the rest of the world warped and expanded, on the verge of implosion.

Leo blinked at me, his brows furrowing in wary confusion. “Are you okay?”

Not even remotely, I thought to myself. Out loud, I said, “Perfectly fine,” manifesting a little bit more volume. I struggled to find something else to say, something that wouldn’t show that I was breaking on the inside, and floundered. The conference room was the largest room in my quarters, but I could feel the walls as if they were millimeters from my skin, slowly pressing in. My uniform felt hot, tight, and irritating, and there suddenly wasn’t enough oxygen in the room. I needed to get out. Now.

“Excuse me,” I managed thickly.

I made a wide berth around him, heading for the closest set of stairs—ones that would lead to the hall beyond, and straight to freedom from him. And I was almost there, when his voice stopped me.

“It really is for the best, Liana,” he told me, and I was glad my back was to him. It meant he couldn’t see the first tear that slipped from my eye, burning a hot line down my cheek. “Grey will be back to you soon, as good as new. You don’t have to tell him anything. We can just pretend—”

I couldn’t let him speak any more. Every word that came out of his mouth was like an extra twist of the blade. Besides, if he thought he was doing this to spare me telling Grey what had happened while he was injured, then he needed to know that he was wrong.

“I won’t lie to him, Leo. Much like you won’t take a person’s body against their will, I won’t lie to someone I care about. I owe him more than that.”

I resumed walking, and sped up a little, needing to retreat. Luckily, Leo didn’t say anything else, allowing me to make my escape.





23





I woke up the next morning and experienced several disorienting seconds in which I wasn’t entirely sure where I was. The sensation was so strong that I shot out of the bed, almost afraid I had slept so deeply that the legacies had snuck in and taken us. It wasn’t until I noticed Zoe jerking straight up from where she had been sleeping next to Eric, her eyes wide in alarm, that everything came rushing back. The talk with Leo. Crying on Zoe’s shoulder. Zoe crying on mine. Eric sleeping through it all.

“What is it?” she asked, and I pressed a hand to my heart, trying to still the erratic pounding my fear had caused. I took several deep breaths, and then gave her an apologetic look as she added, “Liana, what’s wrong?”

I shook my head. “I just… I was confused as to where I was, that’s all,” I explained, shaking some of the excess adrenaline from my limbs. “How’s Eric?”

She shifted up to one arm and leaned over him, her thick brown hair swinging forward to hide her face. Her hand reached up to check his pulse, and then cupped his cheek as she studied him. “Eric,” she said lightly. “Baby?”

His chest lifted up and fell, but his eyelashes were still. There was no sign that he was waking up, but that didn’t mean much this soon after being shot. Zoe sighed and scooted up on the bed, pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes and taking a shaky breath.

I moved instantly to her side and reached over Eric to pull her into a hug. “It’s okay,” I said, stroking a soothing hand over her hair. I glanced down at Eric’s still form, noting that his skin color was much better than it had been last night, and that his breathing was steady and sure. The blanket over him had been pulled down enough to reveal the bullet wound on his chest, just below his pectoral muscle on the left, the flesh bright pink and shiny after the rapid regeneration, thanks to the bio-foam. There was no bruising on his stomach to indicate internal bleeding. All very excellent signs.

Besides, him not waking up yet wasn’t necessarily cause for alarm. He had lost a lot of blood, and two of his internal organs had been punctured by the bullet. What he needed was rest, and time for his body to recover from the shock.

“He looks much better this morning, Zo. I really think he’s going to be all right. He just needs to sleep right now.”

She nodded against my shoulder, taking a shaky breath. “I know. I just… I can’t imagine him not in my life, and when Quess said there was no hope… Oh Scipio, I never thanked you, Liana. You didn’t give up on him. You brought him back to me.”

Tears sprang into my eyes as she clutched me tighter. “I’m not letting anyone else I love die,” I told her.

She sniffed and gently pulled away from me, a tremulous smile on her lips. “But now we don’t have to,” she pointed out. “We just have to hold on long enough for Alex to negotiate a place for us in this Patrus place. If we can just keep our heads down—”

My spirits, which were already low, plummeted the moment she brought up the Patrians. I had managed to put them out of my head, though I had spent half of last night idly thumbing through the graphic novel Thomas had given us, reading about Violet and Viggo’s story. Now that she had brought it up again, it was all I could think about. All of my friends—my entire support network—were going to disappear, and soon I would be on my own for the rest of this battle.

Yesterday, my entire focus had been on damage control and figuring out our next step in this fight. Today, I wasn’t even sure I could ask the others to help me go through Sadie’s files to see if we could figure out what she was up to and who she was working with. I wasn’t sure they would want to, now that they had hope of getting out of the Tower. If I were them, and was hoping for escape, I would want to put my head down and wait for rescue, not go borrowing more trouble by helping me figure out what we were dealing with.

“Hey,” Zoe said, giving my shoulder a little shake. I blinked up at her and realized I had missed everything she had been saying. “Why do you look so sad? Isn’t this good news?”