Page 371 of Shadowblood Souls
“Wouldn’t want morale to dip too low,” I say with forced wryness.
Riva’s head droops. She tears a chunk off her roll but then just holds the piece rather than bringing it to her mouth.
Then she drags in a breath. “I guess we’re stuck with this place. Might as well make the best of it.”
The strain in her voice and the quiver of anguish that touches my chest through my mark fill in the blanks in her words. She’s afraid of how true those statements might be.
A similar hopelessness swells inside me. I’ve been thinking it over since the moment I regained consciousness on the helicopter, heading back here—how could we pull off another escape?
No brilliant plans have occurred to me. Or even mediocre plans, for that matter.
Every spark of an idea that lights in my mind sputters out before I follow it more than a couple of steps from its instigation.
Clancy has too much power. He’ll have safeguarded all the weaknesses of the facility that we’ve discovered.
And the very fact of being on an island with little means to leave it limits our options to barely any.
“We’ll make the best of it,” I agree, attempting to push a little energy into the words. A nudge of encouragement that if there is an opportunity to turn this situation around, we’ll find it.
Riva aims another smile at me, smaller but softer, so I think I’ve succeeded. She pops the bit of roll into her mouth and chews thoughtfully. “Have you found out anything more from Clancy about his mission or whatever else he’s working on?”
Her wording and her tone give me the sense that she doesn’t mean finding out only by conventional means. She thinks I might have learned something interesting from his memories.
But I haven’t dared to sneak a peek inside the facility leader’s head since we’ve gotten back. I’ve only seen him briefly anyway, when he came to collect my answer yesterday.
I shake my head. “No. He hasn’t come around to talk to me.”
She hums to herself, her gaze going momentarily distant. “I wondered a little about the older man from the Guardianship who talked to him when we got back. It sounded like he might have some say in the missions or other things.” She pauses. “I guess you didn’t even see him to recognize him—they had your eyes covered at that point.”
“I didn’t.” But she’s caught my interest. I did hear a fragment of conversation between Clancy and a gravelly voice I didn’t recognize.
Is there still someone else who has authority over Clancy himself? Could there be a weakness we could exploit not in the facility’s construction but in the hierarchy of the guardians?
“I’m not sure I could describe him all that well,” Riva goes on in a casual tone. “I’ve never been as good at bringing memories to life as you are.”
She flicks her gaze toward me, a meaningful look, and understanding snaps into place. If I wanted to search the other guardians’ memories for this man, I could get a solid impression of him by looking insidehermind first.
My spirits lift, but the rest of me balks with a twinge of uneasiness. I obviously don’t do a good enough job suppressing my discomfort, because Riva’s brow knits with concern. “What’s the matter?”
“I…” I grapple with the words and decide that it doesn’t matter if I express this regret. The past has already happened—Clancy can’t expect me to feelhappyabout how our escape fell apart.
Swallowing thickly, I meet Riva’s gaze. “It’s been bothering me that I didn’t figure out what was going on with Griffin intime. Ishouldhave been able to pick up on these things—I’m supposed to be good at reading people in all kinds of ways—but I totally missed something so important…”
The previous time we were caught, I missed recognizing that Griffin was there at all, pretending to be Jacob. This time, I missed what he’d picked up on: that Celine wasn’t actually happy about gaining her freedom.
That she was looking for opportunities to signal the guardians and screw the rest of us over.
I’d been searchinghismemories when I got the chance, checking for any sign that his efforts to help us weren’t genuine. My guilt about my previous lapse made me extra conscientious… but in the wrong way.
I know that his act in the end, when they caught us, really was an act. Claiming he’d called them in was the first lie he told through the whole trek.
But I was so focused on confirming his loyalty, it didn’t even occur to me to worry about the younger shadowbloods. I got misdirected all over again, and now I can only blame myself.
If I’d checked the kids earlier, if I’d noticed the signs of Celine’s discomfort, maybe we could have stopped her before she alerted Clancy. Maybe we’d have made it to the city, however things would have played out from there.
Riva doesn’t challenge my implying that Griffin was the one who betrayed us—for all I know, she thinks it’s actually possible. “It was a chaotic situation, and we were dealing with a lot. We all had the chance to notice that something was off, and none of us did. You can’t take the responsibility.”
That’s not what I’m really stewing over, though. I’m afraid that if I try to get us out of this mess again, I’ll miss yet another crucial detail.
