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

“I know.” I sighed.

Her face was thoughtful for several long seconds. “How long until the outsiders come back?”

“Maybe a week,” I replied tiredly. “Possibly longer, depending on how fast their government works. I’ll get more information from Alex when I call him on that thing.” She bit her lip, her eyebrows twitching. “What?”

She shrugged. “Ask everyone to keep helping you until the time comes. There’s no guarantee that the Patrians will be able to secure a place for us anyway, and I think everyone will agree that the Paragon-dependent population will have to go first, if we can even go at all. That way you can keep moving forward with us, and maybe even inspire everyone to stay.”

Zoe’s suggestion sounded so easy, but it didn’t change the fact that we didn’t even have a way forward until we had more information. “But there’s no plan, Zo.” It was hard to admit that, but there it was. “We can hope that Sadie was stupid enough to leave the list of every legacy she worked with on her computer, but to what end? We don’t have enough people to go after them all at once, and we can’t completely trust every single one of my Knights, as any one of them could be working for her. If Sadie’s people even hear a whisper that we’re mobilizing against them before we get everything in place, they will figure out that their covers are blown, and disappear! And even if we do manage to grab them all at once, what would we do with them? Dump their bodies off the side of the Tower and keep going as if nothing happened? Do I do that with Sadie? What if there’s another council member helping her? Do I become responsible for the execution of not one, not two, but three council members? What sort of mission is that?”

Zoe considered this, and then shrugged. “Going after the legacies makes the most sense. And you’re right, going after them all at once is the best way to get them. But why execute them when we can take a page from our neighbors, and put them on trial? We’ve never once stopped to think about how this ends without causing a civil war. But what if there’s another way to do it?”

She picked up the graphic novel as she spoke and held it out to me. I accepted it slowly, the weight of it feeling heavier in my hands then yesterday. But it wasn’t the book that felt heavy. It was me. Was Zoe right? Could I somehow grab all the legacies and then pass the situation over to the council? If we managed to get them all, and presented a strong enough case against them, then the council would have to step in and handle it legally. I had no doubt that they’d want to implement the expulsion chambers, but in this case I felt that would be warranted. And then they’d be obligated to fix Scipio, and with Leo and me watching them to make sure they did what they were supposed to… Could there finally be an end in sight?

I wasn’t sure, but it was at least the start of a plan. One that required Sadie’s files to pay off for us, yes. But at least it was something. And maybe Zoe was right; maybe I could get the others to keep working on it with me, on the off chance that leaving wasn’t an option. Either way, maybe we’d make some progress on catching the legacies before they left. Maybe even give my friends a victory strong enough that made them want to stay.

It wasn’t much—but it was something to hold on to.

Really the only thing I had, at this point.





24





The talk with the others went pretty well, although I didn’t tell them about my plan to stay. I wasn’t ready to talk about it, and a part of me wondered if it would just be manipulative. I wanted them to stay for their own reasons, and I didn’t want my decision to influence them one way or another. I also asked Zoe to keep it to herself before we left the room to grab breakfast with the others, and she had agreed. She warned me that she might spill the beans when Eric woke up, but swore up and down it would be to him and him only. I didn’t like it, but what could I do?

I was nervous when I explained to them that I wanted us to start searching through Sadie’s files to see if we could find every single legacy and accomplice she and her people had worked with, as well as evidence of the changes they had made to Scipio, in order to build a case against them to present to the council. It was a bold plan, one that I couldn’t accomplish without them, and even though my argument was sound, they still had every right to refuse me.

Understandably, Maddox had wanted to know why, and I told her the truth: I couldn’t leave without doing something to stop them. I couldn’t abandon the Tower without devoting every last moment I had to trying to make things better. Everyone had been surprisingly understanding, especially after Zoe mentioned the fact that the Patrians might not be able to help us. There was every chance that they would refuse to grant us refugee status, and if we spent a week simply waiting for them to refuse us, then that was a week our enemies could use to get to us or cause further damage to Scipio. We couldn’t allow them to get the drop on us just because we thought we were getting out.

Things got a little more complicated when Quess revealed that he still hadn’t broken the encryptions on her files.

“How long is it going to take?” I asked, finally sitting down in a vacant chair at the table. My knees were still a bit wobbly from the conversation, but now, at least, I could sit. Everyone was on board with helping.

“I don’t know,” Quess replied tiredly. He ran a hand over his face and sighed heavily. “It would move faster if I could get some assistance.” He shot a pointed look at Leo as he said that.

I followed his gaze, and my breath caught in my throat. Leo looked like crap. There were dark shadows under his eyes, and his hair was mussed and unkempt. He hadn’t even shaved, and his cheeks were roughened with the beginnings of a beard. Even his uniform was wrinkled, which told me he had probably slept in it. Or tried to.

A part of me felt a savage satisfaction that he looked so rough. Clearly, he wasn’t as unaffected by what had happened as he had seemed last night, which told me that he did indeed have feelings for me. But I shrugged that off, reminding myself that he likely looked the way he did because he’d stayed up all night to work on Jasper and Rose. Grey had also given Eric a lot of blood, and that probably wasn’t helping. I wondered if I should pull him aside and order him to get some sleep, because pushing himself too hard would only hurt him and Grey. But I held back, uncertain of how he would perceive it.

Leo seemed oblivious of his own slobbish state and took a careful bite of a piece of toast before saying, “Jasper and Rose require my attention,” in a neutral voice, not meeting anyone’s eyes. “With everyone leaving, I want to make them as strong as possible before we are on our own.”

Righteous indignation shot through me like a bullet, and it was all I could do to keep from coolly reminding him that I had promised to stay and help him fight. The condescension in his voice rankled me, and I wanted to smack him for thinking that he was alone in this. It wasn’t even about him; it was about Scipio, and restoring him to his full capabilities, freeing him from legacy control. I had just spent the last fifteen minutes making an argument for us to continue working on it, dammit! And he had the audacity to sit there and not be a team player?