As Zian treads lightly between the trees to approach the house, Andreas rubs his mouth, his expression unusually pensive. “All of the guardians we tackled on the way here—in their memories of talking to her, it seemed more like they were her jailers than her protectors. She always sounded like she was irritated that they were insisting on staking out the house.”
There were three more guards stationed along the path through the woods, just as I’d thought I’d determined from the one we questioned. None of them revealed anything more useful than the first, though—other than what Andreas just said.
I think back to the other things we’ve learned about Ursula Engel. “They pushed her out of something she set up… They’re probably worried she’s going to reveal secrets they don’t want getting out.”
To us? Or to the general public?
Whatwouldordinary people think if they found out that people like me and the men around me exist?
An image of Brooke’s crumpled body flashes through my mind. That wasn’t our fault—but we’ve dealt out plenty of violence ourselves.
Somehow I don’t think we’d get a cheerful reception from the average human being. Every monster movie I’ve ever seen, the strange creatures, the mutants, and the freaks are greeted with screams and gunfire, not open arms.
But the woman inside that house knows what we are and cared for us almost like a parent. She had some part inmakingus, I have to assume, whether directly or just instructing others.
And maybe we’re about to find out how and why.
Andreas motions toward me, his fingers skimming the air a few inches from my arm without quite touching me. “Riva, can I talk to you for a second?”
He’s beckoning me away from Jacob and Dominic. As the other guys give him a curious look, my legs balk instinctively.
Andreas swallows audibly, a trace of queasiness crossing his face. “Please,” he adds. “I’ll give you plenty of space. I really just want to talk.”
It was talking that ruined everything to begin with, but the rawness of his voice tugs at my heart against my will.
If I don’t like what he has to say, it’s not as if I can’t march right back to the others without finishing hearing him out.
“Fine.”
He leads me back through the brush in the opposite direction from the house until the others are just fragments of color between the trees. Then he stops, keeping a good five feet of distance between us as promised, and turns to face me.
Andreas has always been the most fun-loving one of us, the quickest to toss out a joke or latch on to an opportunity for amusement. But there isn’t the slightest trace of humor in his expression now.
His hazel eyes are shadowed, his lips pressed in a tight line. His normally rich brown skin looks tarnished even in the bright daylight, as if the base color has been leeched out of it.
In spite of everything, seeing him like this makes me want to grab him in a hug. My arms itch with the urge, but I hold them rigidly at my sides.
“I’m sorry,” he says abruptly in a low voice. “I know I said that before, and I know it’s not enough—I just don’t know what else to do, and we’re about to walk into that house, and I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
He stops to drag in a shaky breath, and I just stand there silent, my stomach twisting itself into knots. How can I ache so much with both the agony this man inflicted on me and the pain I can hear twined all through his voice?
Andreas holds my gaze with a glint of determination lighting in his eyes. His hand twitches as if he wants to reach for me but held himself back.
I can taste his nervousness. He thinks that what I do here, what I say, could hurt him.
“I shouldn’t have believed the guardians’ story or that stupid video,” he goes on. “I should have realized you were telling the truth from the first moment you came back to us.”
My jaw clenches. “Yes, you should have.”
His head droops slightly, but he doesn’t break eye contact. “I was wrong and an idiot, and I’m going to do whatever it takes to make up for that, however long it takes. But I need you to know—that night in the farmhouse, I’d been trying to convince Jake that we could trust you beforehand. Iknewyou were on our side. I wanted to understand everything you’d been through, and I was hoping if I had more of the story I could make him see what I already had.”
“You still…” I grope for the words through the constricting of my chest. “You nudged me in the direction you wanted. You manipulated the conversation. You told me those stories, talked like you thoughtyouwere failing the other guys—”
“That was all true,” Andreas breaks in with a rough laugh. “Hell, I have been failing. They all fell to pieces, and I’m the only one who wasn’t really shattered, and I still couldn’t figure out a way to put them back together, not properly. And now I’ve failed you too.”
“Ican’t fix that.”
“I know.” He drops his gaze for just a second before catching mine again. “But I meant everything I said that night. Every single thing. I love you, and I’ve loved you for as long as I had any idea what the word even meant. It’s a fuckinghonorto be connected to you however I am.”