Page 46 of Supernova

Before she realized it, she was crying. Tears pooled in her vision and quickly began to slide down her cheeks. She gasped at the sensation of the two warm trails making their way to her jaw, and she wanted to rub them away, but couldn’t move. Nova sniffed loudly, hoping she could inhale the tears back into her body, but it was too late.

Adrian moved closer to the window, and he had given up trying to be emotionless. The hurt was written plainly now: in the tension across his brow, in the tightness of his jaw, in the squint of his deep brown eyes against the threat of his own tears.

“How could you do this?” Adrian said, his tone vicious and sharp. The sound of such unbridled anger surprised the tears into a temporary cease-fire.

Nova gaped at him, jaw hanging open, and found that she had no response to give.

Her mind was blank. Empty of everything but the sound of Adrian’s disgust.

She remembered everything. Every lie. Every betrayal. The weight of the gun in her hands as she prepared to kill Captain Chromium. Her elation when she reclaimed the helmet. The sight of Danna’s butterfly beating against the sides of the mason jar.

Nova gathered herself as one last tear crept down, tracing the path of those before it, and said—with so much conviction that she almost could have believed it herself—“Adrian, I’m innocent.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

ADRIAN’S SCOFFwas so loud and unexpected that it only served to bolster Nova’s defiance. She could convince him of her innocence. She had to.

He opened his mouth to speak but Nova pressed on, letting real desperation color her tone. “I mean it, Adrian. I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m not Nightmare!”

“Danna saw you!” he yelled. “She followed you to those ruins… that cathedral. She led us to Ace Anarchy, and she would have led us to you, too, if you hadn’t…” He hesitated, warring with a brief uncertainty. “If you hadn’t done whatever you did to her to keep her from re-forming!”

Nova studied him, her mind racing, devouring and dissecting every word.

Danna had seen her go to the cathedral ruins… but not the house?

And they didn’t know about keeping the butterfly in a jar, which had to mean Nova was right. That butterfly’s memories had been lostwhen Nova killed it. That butterfly at least—the only one that would have seen Nova and the other Anarchists at the house—couldn’t incriminate her.

She swallowed. She could work with that.

She hoped.

“I don’t know what Danna thinks she saw,” she said, “but it wasn’t me. I don’t know if I’m being framed, or what, but—”

“Oh, please, Nova,” Adrian said. “The inventions? The access to the artifacts department? Knowing about Max and Agent N? I can’t believe we didn’t figure it out before. Is Nova even your real name?”

“Of course it’s my real name! But I’m not Nightmare! I’m not an Anarchist. Adrian, you know me!”

He grimaced. “Yeah. That’s what I thought, too.”

“Please, just tell me what Danna told you, and I can—”

“You can what? Lie some more? Come up with more outlandish stories about your uncle and hisbeekeeping? Or how about when you were so worried that your uncle wasn’t feeling well, you had to leave the gala, conveniently right before Nightmare breaks into headquarters. Or what about how your entire house was destroyed right when we were coming to arrest you! Are you going to tell me that was a coincidence, too?”

“I was designing a new weapon,” said Nova, who had had a lot of time to concoct this particular explanation. “I was working with some new chemicals, trying to build an explosive that I thought the patrols could use. But it got out of control and… well, you saw. But think about it, Adrian! If I knew you were coming to arrest me, why would I have stayed? Why wouldn’t I have run when I had the chance?”

“Because you needed to destroy evidence,” said Adrian. “It all makes sense. The only thing that doesn’t make sense is…”

He hesitated, and Nova’s pulse jumped. She waited, sure his nextwords would have something to do with him, withthem, but his eyes were burning into her again, quickly dousing any such hope.

She shook her head. “You’re searching for evidence that isn’t there. Maybe… maybe there are some coincidences, but I swear, I’m not—”

“Just drop it, Nova.”

“But, Adrian—”

“Drop it.”

She pursed her lips together.

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