Page 92 of Claiming Sarah

I pulled back, and Jac released me. I stared out at the murky swamp, trying to sort through my emotions. “How am I supposed to react, then? What would Valor say about all of this between Deacon and Rex?”

“To be honest, nothing good,” Jac said quietly. “But if he were inyourshoes, he would try to give Deacon the benefit of the doubt.”

I glanced up at Jac. “Wait—why wouldn’t Valor react well, if he were to find out about Deacon and Rex?”

Jac braced his hands on his hips, hesitating for a few seconds before finally looking at me and answering. “Because when it happened, Deacon lied to him.”

I shook my head. “It didn’tjust happen. He made a choice—”

“It was an impossible choice, Sarah,” he said, his voice defensive on Deacon’s behalf.

I hugged myself, thinking back to the memory I’d witnessed, trying to recall other details besides Deacon killing Rex. “I know what he did.”

“So do I,” Jac said quietly. “More than you do.”

“I saw it—”

“Not all of it. Not if you’re this upset by what happened,” Jac insisted. “There are things you need to know about that day, Sarah. You said you saw everything before Rex died, but how far back did the memory go?”

I closed my eyes and took a breath to clear my mind, but it didn’t work. The memory was planted firmly in there. The memory of the pain. The memory of dying. Sinking into the black…

“I saw Deacon standing in front of a little Ladrian girl and he refused to let Rex kill her. He fought him—hard. But Rex bested him. Rex apologized to him, and then the little girl before he aimed his weapon at her. She looked so scared, Jac.” I started to cry again, but this time, it was for her fear. “Deacon stabbed Rex in the back, right through his heart. Like he was trying to make it quick. Then he took the little girl and left. A half-dead woman on the floor gloated to Rex that he had failed. He agreed with her and then died.”

Jac slowly nodded. “So you did not see what had come before that?”

I shook my head.

With a heavy sigh, Jack began, “It was near the end of the war. Deacon and I had seen some combat, and it was hard on him. He is a soldier, a fighter, but thecostof war,” he paused, a sudden haunted look in his eyes. “Deacon is not the kind of man to relish in death. It’s just not in him. He asked his father to get us reassigned, and his father obliged. We were sent to some of the outer islands, where the last of the rebels were holed up. We were told to clear them out. We had thought they meant for us tochase them away, maybe shoo them to the last of the swamps on Orhon…”

My body felt light, like I was going to throw up as realization dawned. I lowered myself to a nearby tree stump. “That’s not what they meant, was it?”

“No,” Jac said in a soft tone. “We got to the first of the outer islands, and it was beautiful there. Almost like the best parts of Halla. Overgrown and heavy with, well, I guess the conduits would call them islandfolk. My CO, Hurried, and I had broken into a cottage, but it had already been cleared out. It was the neighbor to the one Deacon and Rex were supposed to clear. Hurried was ransacking the bedrooms, when I heard a hand cannon fire.”

I frowned at Jac. “The memory I saw, Rex never got a shot off.”

He shook his head. “I imagine even Rex blocked the memory of what he had done before his fight with Deacon. But I saw it. After he got the first shot off, I climbed out the window to go help them—I thought the rebels were attacking. I looked through the window to make sure it was safe to breach and I saw Deacon look around at the others in the room. They were cowering in the corner. Deacon asked Rex what he thought he was doing. Rex told him, he was doing their job and shot another Ladrian.”

I gasped in shock. “In cold blood?”

“Following orders, Rex told Deacon.” Jac sat on a tree stump opposite to me. “After going through the houses and seeing what was happening in them, in that moment, everything clicked. I was young and stupid—I should have realized it much sooner than I did. They had sent us to the outer islands where people were unarmed and helpless and poor. I found out later that Justice Bateen wanted to gift those islands to his loyalists, so he needed the residents gone. The people there weren’t rebels—their only crime was being too poor to be useful to Justice.”

Disgust and horror turned my stomach into knots. “And that was theeasyjob Valor set you up with?”

“Valor honestly didn’t know,” Jac said quietly. “The forged reports had said they were rebels. He didn’t know it was poor families until afterward.”

“That’s horrifying,” I rasped, my hand at my throat.

“That’s war.” Jac’s coloring was off, just talking about it. “I watched at the window as Rex shot the last adult in the house and was about to kill that little girl. I was frozen. Being unclassed, for me to go against a CO or someone classed…that would have been a death sentence for me and everyone I was related to, and I didn’t have enough experience to figure out another way around it all. But Deacon wouldn’t allow Rex to do it. You saw what happened next.”

Now knowing the entire truth, I could only imagine how terrifying all of that was for them. “Yeah.”

“Hurried asked Deacon what happened, and he told him one of the adults had fought him, got ahold of his knife, and killed Rex. It was obvious that Hurried didn’t believe him, but he didn’t want to go through the paperwork of a CO’s death by his cadet’s hand. After seeing the little girl, I think Hurried understood everything. He helped Deacon forge the report and never spoke of it again.”

“You should have told me,” I whispered, feeling devastated for both of them and the choices they’d beenforcedto make.

But Jac shook his head. “I couldn’t. Not without Deacon finding out that I knew.”

I jerked back in surprise. “Wait, what?”

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