Page 67 of Anchor

So, I said, “Nothing, Cassie. I’m just tired. I was made to lie—you know I was Mud. They made me lie about it and I hate it.”

“Howdidyoudrain that Rainbow, by the way? You never told me,” Cassie said, and I realized she was right.

But to tell her the truth meant to tell her about Taland, and I’d already decided that I wasn’t going to do that, so…

“I made a deal with another player,” I said.

Cassie nodded. “Jack Collins.” That was the name under which Taland had entered the game. Of course, she knew I’d worked with another player—she probably saw all the videos the Council posted.

“Exactly,” I said, my voice getting drier by the second. Fuck, I hated to lie… “Yes, exactly. Jack and I made a deal that he would loan me his magic whenever I needed it, in exchange for a million bucks.”

There. I said it.

And I was willing to bet a limb that Cassie knew it was a lie. She knew, but she paused for only a split second before she whistled and patted me on the shoulder.

“I’d have done it for five hundred grand, I swear. What a lucky fucking bastard,” she said with a grin. “So, does that mean you’re onlyfour milliondollars rich? Because that breaks my heart.”

She laughed and laughed, and I joined her, too. The sound of her was contagious, and for a while, that’s all we did.

“But it’s for the best that they decided to lie,” Cassie said after a minute. “Imagine if every Mud out there thought they couldwin the Iris Roe—just imagine it.” Her eyes sparkled in the dark like she was imagining it—and vividly.

And I did imagine it, too. I had a little girl who thought she could. Who wanted to. Whohopedfor exactly that, to win the Iris Roe and to get out of that trailer she lived in.

“I just hate to lie,” I repeated—toher, specifically. About Taland and about that bracelet I’d stolen from the Vault by basically using her.

It had been so stupid, now that I thought about it. I needed to return it before she got in trouble fornothing, a piece of metal, an ugly bracelet without even a name. Fucking hell, I shouldn’t have kept that thing for so long, and I swore to myself that I was going to return it tomorrow, first thing in the morning.

When I left Headquarters, I couldn’t bring myself to go back to the mansion for fear Poppy would be up, waiting for me. I really didn’t want to have to talk to her right now.

Tomorrow. I’d apologize tomorrow.

And I had no other place to go, so naturally, I found myself walking on my tiptoes around that trailer, and going into the forest behind it, sure that Taylor would hear me and come find me in no time. It was almost midnight, but she was always up when I came to visit.

This time was no different.

It took her all of two minutes to find me and to climb up without a word until she sat right next to me on the branch.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey,” she said.

And together we looked at the moon for a while.

“What was it like in the playground?” Taylor asked, and she had never asked me this before. We’d talk about my home and theIDD and my missions, but she hadn’t once brought up the Iris Roe since that first time.

Tonight, I was in a sharing mood, apparently, because I said, “Bloody. Dark, most of the time. Terrifying.”

“Which was the worst challenge?” she asked in that sweet voice of hers, and before I knew it, she’d grabbed the bracelet from my hands to play with it, like always. She liked to keep her fingers busy with that thing just as much as I did. I let her—why the hell not?

“Hmm. I’m not sure. All were bad in their own way, but the last one was…particularly bad. It wasevil.” They’d made us bond our souls to innocent animals, and then they’d infected the animals with a disease nobody could even heal with their magic, so players had been forced to either sit there on the ice and watch them suffer, or kill them to end their suffering, just to complete the challenge.

Yes—evilwas the right word, and Taland had predicted it long before we ended up in the Valley of the Roc.

“What was your favorite?” said Taylor, and it caught me by surprise.

“I didn’t—”have a favorite,I wanted to say, but I stopped. Because I did. “Night City.” It was my favorite because Taland had been there with me. We’d been together from there and to the end.

“What’s Night City?” said Taylor, her eyes wide and her lips parted, and she looked so fascinated I couldn’t help it.

---