"You all right?" Caryn asked me gently when I got back downstairs. I guess my puffy eyes and Kieren's absence tipped her off to the fact that our conversation hadn't gone very well.
"Fine," I grunted, my throat still sore from crying. But I didn't want to be rude to Caryn. She had always been so nice to me—to us—the last time I was here with Brady. "Thank you."
Ado pulled up a couple chairs when he saw Sage heading down with Adam to meet us. I followed Caryn's lead and grabbed another chair for myself, forming a semi-circle with the others.
"Caryn, man the floor," Sage said in voice that reminded me of a dry riverbed.
"But I want to be part of the meeting."
"And I want to not get arrested when the MPs show up and we're all clearly down here conspiring. Do it, please."
Sage dismissed Caryn with a forceful plop into the nicest of the chairs Ado had procured, and Caryn had no choice but to do as she was told.
That left just the four of us in this secret meeting, whatever it was, once Adam had claimed the seat next to mine.
"I want you to know," Adam began before Sage could say anything, "that I never meant to be gone so long."
"It's not important now—" Sage began.
"It is important," he countered. "I did everything I could to get back here."
I bowed my head, feeling ashamed once again that I had inadvertently cut these people off from someone who was trying to help them. When I glanced at Adam, I realized he was looking to me for reinforcement. "He's telling the truth," I offered.
But Sage just sighed in response.
"It's my fault, Sage," I continued. "I didn't do it on purpose but... but it's my fault."
"Nothing's your fault," Sage said to me, although no warmth radiated in my direction. "It was inevitable."
Ado had remained uncharacteristically silent through this exchange, maybe because he just wasn't interested in blame or true confessions. Ado wasn't the type, I understood, to spend too much time thinking about stuff that made no practical difference in the end. And while I still didn't like him very much, I had to admit that his philosophy made a lot of sense to me.
What difference did it make whose fault this was? It was real. So what were we going to do about it?
"Now that I'm back," Adam said, addressing Sage directly, "we can begin again. We'll just pick up where we left off. We'll let the kids from the school know that we need them to start training again. And do we still have assets within the palace itself? Where do we stand with that?"
Adam was getting so excited as he listened to himself talk that he didn't seem to notice—maybe didn't want to notice—that Sage and Ado's body language was shutting down everything he said.
"If not, no worries. We can use Marina for that," he barely glanced in my direction when he said this before hammering on. "Rain will take her under her wing when she learns who she is. It might take a few months to gain her confidence—"
"Adam," I gently prodded, dipping my head in his direction to try and meet his eyes.
"What?"
He finally looked up long enough to realize that Sage and Ado were still staring bleakly in the distance, letting his speech slide off of them like water over ice.
Sage finally opened her mouth to speak, and even Adam seemed to realize that he shouldn't interrupt her. "It was a good idea, Adam," she began. "And everyone appreciated that you... that you wanted to help us."
The fact that Sage was using the past tense pretty much told me all I needed to know. And yet my throat clenched shut with anticipation as I waited for her to confirm it. Adam's body shrunk next to mine as the same realizations seemed to dawn on him.
We sat in silence for a moment, and when Adam spoke again, his voice was an octave lower.
"The kids at the school?" he asked.
"The disease got half of them," Sage said, any emotion she might have felt about this buried deeply beneath a steely resolve. "Some disappeared..."
I took a deep breath, trying to keep the room from spinning around me.
"And some..." she finally looked up at me, her glassy eyes unreadable. "Some work for your mother now. True converts. Kids who used to come in here for a hot cocoa, a cookie. Kids I watched grow up. Kids I loved. They'd arrest you now in a heartbeat if you crossed the street without your papers."
I shook my head, not wanting to accept it.
Sage turned back to Adam. "We have no assets in the palace. They were discovered, tried, and hanged in the middle of town. The MPs sold tickets. They handed out cotton candy as the bodies swung from the gallows."
Ado shot up from his seat now, pushing back so forcefully that the chair beneath him skidded halfway across the floor before toppling over onto its back. He headed into the bathroom and slammed the door.
Sage seemed unaffected by the outburst. "You should go home," she said to Adam, but she meant both of us. "After dark tonight. Take her back."
I felt her words like a slap. Her was me. She couldn't even look at me. Couldn't say my name.
"Back where she's safe," Sage concluded. Then she stood up and straightened her dress. "Excuse me. I have to get back upstairs."
Before Adam could react, Sage left us, her heavy footsteps thudding as they ascended the staircase, and closed the door at the top with a fateful click.
Adam hadn't moved an inch.
"Adam?" I asked, trying to gauge how was reacting.
"Don't talk to me," he said under his breath. He pushed his chair back and looked around for somewhere to escape to. But we knew we couldn't leave. Trapped in this room like a mouse in a maze, he simply sat on the edge of Sage's bed and buried his head in his hands.
I stayed in my chair a long time, having no idea where to go.
****
Keep reading for chapter 22!
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