Page 6 of The Flame

“Roman.” My voice was scratchy. “Say something.”

His voice was even, a deep baritone without inflection. “I’m going to take a shower.”

I watched him turn his back on me and walk away, and I was helpless, at his mercy in where we went from here.

I’d known exactly what my damning confession would do to us. That’s not why I did it. I wasn’t trying to sabotage us. Sure, right now I felt like I didn’t deserve Roman, but that wasn’t why I did it.

I was just done.

I was done with the secrets and lies between us.

2

When Roman next emerged from the bedroom, he was freshly showered and dressed in warden black.

A hundred protests clawed up my throat. He should be resting, taking it easy. So far as I was concerned, he should be at the Medi-Center in the Quantum Zone, hooked up on IVs and monitored around the clock. He was in no shape for warden business.

“You’re going out?”

He barely spared me a look. “HQ has called an emergency meeting and I’ve been summoned.”

Roman wasn’t a senior warden. He wasn’t a High Warden. That’s what he’d aspired to, why he’d collected that blackmail material against the councilmen…just another thing I’d derailed in his life, his plans to reform The Smoke in the name of Amelia. It no longer even mattered that he’d exposed his blackmail material to the council last night to save me. There was no longer a council in Capra. They wouldn’t be voting when it came time to select the next High Warden.

I drifted behind him as he walked out, grabbing his windbreaker from a hook by the front door. “Is that normal? Meeting with the High Wardens?”

“No.” He paused, and turned to give me a proper look. “You kick-started the revolution, Georga. It was you on the screens last night, broadcasting the Sisterhood’s propaganda.”

Propaganda?

“And you’re my wife,” he finished.

Understanding hit me. “They think you have inside knowledge on what’s going on.”

“And what’s to come.”

We stood there, looking at each other, the air heavy between us. It took me a minute to figure out that he was asking me something.

“Geneva made it clear that while I might be the spark of this revolution, she’ll stamp me out before giving me any real power. I have no say in anything. She doesn’t trust me with any vital information.”

He shrugged. “If you say so.”

“For goodness sake, do you honestly think I’d have let last night go down the way it did if I’d known?” I threw a hand up, tears in my voice as I looked at his bruised face. “Do you think I would have let it all play out, watch you get hurt, if I’d known?”

Last night, Roman had believed in my innocence—or in mynaivety, anyway.

Now, standing here, he wasn’t giving away a thing, but I knew. I knew he was doubting everything. I’d confessed so there’d be no more lies between us. But all that confession had done was open up a chasm of mistrust.

“Roman.” I swallowed. “I’m sorry. Do you at least believe that?”

There was no softening in his expression. “Do you regret a damn thing about anything?”

The question of the hour. Again and again. “There are things that have happened that I regret.”

“Don’t evade, Georga.” His gaze bore into me. “You said it. You’re not a passive member of the Sisterhood. Do you regret anythingyou’vedone? Would you do anything differently?”

How much should I regret? What should I have done differently? My true naivety was thinking real change could come about without devastating consequences. Roman. Daniel. They were casualties of the revolution. Maybe even my marriage.

So what was I supposed to want? Roll back the revolution and return to the way things were?

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