Page 41 of True As Steel

“Jarog, what do you mean? What’s going on?” Tamryn asked, her voice filled with worry as she slipped a soothing hand over my short-cropped hair.

“My self-righteous cloak of loyalty and honor, of discipline and logic has just been the shield of a coward,” I spat out with self-contempt.

“You’re not a coward!” Tamryn exclaimed with outrage.

“I am!” I snapped back in a tone that brooked no argument. “I hid behind my oath so that I wouldn’t have to make the painful decisions everyone else was making. My so-called word and logic allowed me to traipse through difficult situations without having to shoulder any responsibility. Thanks to that, my questionable actions weren’t me being cruel, selfish, or immoral, but the result of the oath I had taken or the path of logic.”

“Things aren’t always that black and white, Jarog,” Tamryn said in a soothing voice. “You’ve got to give yourself some slack.”

“No, Tamryn! I need to stop burying my head in the sand,” I replied firmly. “That day when our escape pod landed here on Xyva, Inevershould have abandoned you to what was an almost certain death.”

“Well, as much as I hated your arguments, they were fair,” Tamryn countered. “I saw the speed at which you took off that day. I never would have been able to keep up. And you accompanying me to Eraka would have just gotten both of us in shackles. The choice you made allowed you to meet with those mercs sooner than if I’d been holding you back. But more importantly, you came back for me and have looked after me ever since.”

“Yes, but rather than just leaving you, I could have tried harder to come up with—”

“STOP! Jarog, stop!” Tamryn said sternly. “Woulda, coulda, shoulda is a fool’s litany, and you are no fool. Whatever happened in the past, whatever choices we made, good or bad, are irrelevant today. The only thing that matters is who we are now.”

My woman cupped my face in her hands, her thumbs gently caressing my cheeks while her eyes flicked between mine.

“I know you’re beating yourself up about remaining loyal to Shui,” Tamryn continued. “You’re whipping yourself over Loreus’s question about whether or not you would have ratted out his pod brother had he approached you about turning on the Emperor.”

“What kind of monster am I that I can’t even say with certainty what I would have done?” I asked, shame burning in my gut.

“I can,” Tamryn said with a conviction that left me reeling. “You wouldn’t have ratted them out.”

“You can’t be certain,” I argued.

“And yet, I am. You wouldn’t be this tortured otherwise,” she said matter-of-factly. “That you feel this horrified at the thought that a single word from you could have gotten these men executed confirms to me that you couldn’t have gone through with it.”

Her words gave me pause. Could she be right or was this just wishful thinking on my part because I didn’t want to accept that I could have chosen the alternative?

I heaved a deep sigh. “I want to believe you are right. Either way, I haven’t answered your question. The answer is no, I will not leave with Loreus.”

Tamryn’s eyes widened in shock. For a split second, a glimmer of joy and hope flitted over her face before she took on a suspicious expression.

“Why not?”

“Well, first, he hasn’t offered for me to tag along,” I replied with a dismissive gesture. “Which isn’t surprising under the circumstances.”

“That’s silly,” Tamryn argued. “He hasn’t offered yet because he needs to run it by his pod brothers first.”

I nodded in concession. “Yes, I have considered that, as well.”

“On our way back from Tarkis, Loreus pretty much told you that he forgave you for having been a loyalist, that his brother wanted you with them, and that you would be welcomed, now that your eyes were opened,” Tamryn said.

“I… I wouldn’t necessarily go that far, but your arguments hold a certain ring of truth,” I replied cautiously. “But the fact that he hasn’t offered is only one of the reasons I will not leave with him.”

This time, Tamryn appeared to hold her breath.

“If I leave with him, it will be for all the wrong reasons,” I explained. “It would be about falling back into the routine where I’d feel safe. I would belong to a pod again, play my role to the best of my abilities, and be the voice of logic. I wouldn’t go with him because it’s where I truly want to be, but because it felt like what I should do.”

“What do youwantto do, then?” Tamryn asked in a whisper.

“I want to stay with you, whatever you decide to do.”

Tamryn’s breath hitched, and she stared at me, her lips parted in shock.

“My parents were right when they expressed their fear that, by becoming a Cyborg, I would lose myself,” I said, my gaze going out of focus as I reminisced. “I did. In all the ways that mattered, I became a machine. In the few days we have spent together, you have reminded me how to feel, how to make jokes—terrible though they are—and how to smile.”

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