Page 2 of The Flame

Jessie went to sit at the oak table while I made coffee in the expresso pot. My gaze kept darting to her. She sat forward with her elbows on the table. She’d slid her hands down her face and kept them there, dragging the skin beneath her eyes. She looked broken. That’s what this truth did to a person.

The pot hissed and I prepared two mugs of coffee. By the time I joined Jessie around the table, she still hadn’t said a word.

But as I pushed one mug in front of her, her eyes met mine. “Our eggs aren’t rotten. We can have children.”

“Not anymore,” I said softly. “Up until the age of around fourteen or fifteen, maybe later in some cases. In The Smoke, they harvest the eggs of girls before that age. It’s too late for us, Jessie.”

“Yes, of course…” She sucked in a long, slow breath and, as she expelled it, the air of depression hanging over her turned heated. “You didn’t tell me. You never said a word.”

“I told you most of it,” I argued. I had. “And I was going to tell you the rest, I swear. But I know how much it hurts. I was just waiting for the right time.”

Her brown eyes sharpened on me. “The right time? Sure. I had to find out with everyone else, when you screened it to the whole town! You didn’t trust me? What did you think I’d do? Shout it from the street corners before you got your chance to shock Capra and use it to overthrow the council?”

“That’s not how it happened.”

I reached for her and she straightened in her chair, backing away from my touch as if I were a leper.

“Jessie.” That sharp look in her eyes was a knife cutting into my chest. “Don’t be mad.”

She shook her head so vigorously, her glossy black curls slapped her cheeks. “Do you have any idea what it felt like, seeing your face lit up on that screen, hearing your secrets spill out, and knowing how much you kept from me?”

“That’s not fair, Jessie. I told you almost everything, and the reason I held back on our eggs is because—”

“Don’t!” She slashed a hand through the air between us. “You led a revolution last night. A revolution, Georga!”

“I didn’t lead anything.” Ice shivers covered my skin. My hands wrapped the warm mug of coffee, but nothing could shift the cold. “That was the Sisters of Capra. Geneva.”

“Our entire world up-ended last night and you couldn’t be bothered to give me a minute’s warning?”

“I didn’t know that was going down,” I said. “I had no idea what the Sisterhood had planned.”

Jessie didn’t believe me. The scorn on her face cut just as deeply as the look in her eyes and the sting of her tone. “That wasyou on the screens. You were speaking. You were exposing the lies and hurts. Your face. Your mouth. Your words.”

“Yes, that was me, but I didn’t know they were going to use it for that,” I protested. “And I certainly didn’t know they were going to use it last night. Do you honestly think I wouldn’t have given you some warning?”

Her brows hitched. “Yes, I honestly think that.”

Was she right? If I had known, would I have told her? Could I have said anything without betraying the Sisterhood?

“Just like you never said anything about being part of this Sisterhood,” she went on. “The Sisters of Capra.”

She said it like it tasted bad in her mouth.

My heart fell. “You’re not a Sister of Capra.”

“I’d never heard of them before last night.” Her eyes widened. “How long have you been part of this organization?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“How long?” she demanded.

“My mother inducted me into the Sisterhood when I turned sixteen,” I finally admitted. I knew this truth was not going to help my cause with Jessie, but no more lies. “I always hoped you were also a Sister of Capra, but I couldn’t ever say anything. I was bound to secrecy.”

“We don’t have secrets between us.”

“This was bigger than you and me.” Desperation weighed down every word, taunting me, testing me. I believed what I was saying, but if it was me sitting in Jessie’s chair, would I feel any less betrayed? “If word ever got out, even a rumor that the Sisters of Capra existed, there would have been a witch hunt. It’s happened before.”

Jessie said nothing. She just looked at me.

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