Page 77 of The Divide that Binds Us

Master Azul crosses her arms.“Evangeline, do you deny this?Speak, now.”

“N-No,” she croaks.

“And your association with him?”Azul presses.

Evangeline sighs and wraps her arms around herself.“He’s someone I’m seeing romantically.”

Silence spills into the room with its cold, invisible presence.It lurks and continues to seep from Evangeline and Azul until I’m trapped, stuck in the moment.

Azul looks at the floor at first but shifts her attention back to the screens and remains silent.

“Are we the bad guys,” Billie says, her mouth drawn in a straight line with her blue eyes piercing Evangeline.“That’s what you asked me.”

“Same here,” I murmur.My ears are hot with rage, but my stomach is tight, and my chest is heavy.Billie’s face is hard to decipher, but anger wants to be there beside her.Azul turns to us; her brows draw together creating forehead wrinkles in smooth waves.Rebecca sits back down, but her face is a blank canvas.Her large spaced-out eyes appear more tired than anything else, her wavy Trace Mark against her brunette skin flashes erratically.

Evangeline faintly puts her hand on her chest, laboriously breathing.Tears well up in her eyes as she shakes her head.

“I’m...I’m so sorry!I was scared and didn’t know what to—”

I tense up to catch her from collapsing.Azul doesn’t flinch when she walks to her desk phone and page the nurses to come upstairs.Billie shuffles back against the TV, frozen in place.It doesn’t take long for the nurses to arrive, and they’re prepared with a wheelchair to put Evangeline in before rolling away.

“Go,” Azul encourages us.“I’ll text you later.”

“That would be...great,” I mumble, noticing Billie’s trance.“Bills?”

She slowly blinks and meets my worried gaze.“I’m fine.I’m gonna—yeah.”

We leave Azul’s together while Rebecca stays, but Billie catches up to the nurses before the elevator closes and beckons me to hurry.I smile and keep walking to take the stairs and cut through the lobby out the entrance.

Billie finds me thirty minutes later waiting outside, sitting on the front steps.She plops next to me and rests her head on my shoulder.The view is awful with everything wasted away, but Billie’s company radiates warmth.I want to be angry that Evangeline compromised herself with the enemy, but this probably meant a lot to her.She must really like this guy.

“Oi, should we check on her tree?”Billie asks.

“Already did,” I mumble.“It looks fine; took me long enough to figure out how to get back.”

“Is that why you didn’t come to the infirmary?”

“Yeah.I thought it was because of the world dying, but I wanted to be sure,” I note.

Billie grabs my hand and squeezes.“Hey, when she wakes up, let’s be there for her.We’ll listen and make a safe space for her to feel comfortable talking about it.”

“Mhm.What did they say?”

“No underlying illness, so they’re not sure.I’m going to stay with her.What about you?”

The outdoors is eerily desolate but inside is hopeless, too.There’s just something dismal about Evangeline being affected by the dying world and not knowing why or who’s next.

“I need to stay distracted,” I reply, keeping my eyes steady on the clouds blocking the sun.“Azul wants to pause my suspension.She sent me details to check out an abandoned subway.Rebecca is sending Nicholas with me, but without any context as to why.They probably knew you’d stay with Eva.”

“Oi, Nick Hardy is comin’ out to play?!”Billie lifts her head and does that wagging thing with her jumpy brows.“But wait—what subway?Zeala doesn’t have any.Are you gonna be okay?”

I sigh and pull my hand away to rest my arms on my knees.“I’ll be fine, but do you remember the subway before the islands were split?Like the subway that ran all over Zeala?Once the land separated, the subway collapsed, and no one thought to revive them since the Era of Chaos.”

“I remember learning zero percent of that, but SUPER exciting, omigosh!”Billie gushes.She nudges my arm to get my attention.“Maybe, oh gosh—MAYBE government authorities constantly patrol those areas since we’re never allowed to.”She breaks down into a whisper.“If Mildred has Guards on her side, then they may be the ones overseeing the tunnels so no one else goes down.”

“Ah, good point,” I murmur.

The doors slide open; I look back in time to meet a mirror of my golden eyes, except buttery with more wrath.Nicholas approaches us in tan tactical boots with his black cargo pants tucked in.His uniform jacket is tossed over his shoulder, leaving his terra cotta short-sleeve shirt to expose his fit physique.

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