Page 105 of The Dazzling Heights
“It’s okay, Leda. I’m here,” Mariel was saying, over and over, the repetition vaguely soothing. “I’m listening. It’s okay.”
“I want my mom,” Leda heard herself say. She wanted to run into Ilara’s arms, the way she had when she was little, and admit what she’d done.My sweet Leda,her mom would always say, tucking Leda’s hair behind her ear,you’re too stubborn for your own good. Don’t you understand that things won’t always go your way?And then her mom would punish her, but Leda always accepted it, because she knew there was love behind the punishment.
“It wasn’t my fault,” she whispered now, as if her mom were right here and listening. Her eyes were closed.
“What do you mean?”
“They were all there, Watt and Avery and Rylin. They knew it was dangerous. They should have pulled me away from the edge, shouldn’t have let Eris get so close. I didn’t mean to push her!”
“You pushed Eris off the roof?”
“I told you, it was anaccident!” Leda cried out, rasping. A fire seemed to be kindling in her head, flames licking at the inside of her brain, where Watt kept his computer. She imagined the blaze burning everything, leaving nothing in its wake but ash.
“How did you keep the others from telling the police, if they were up there?” Mariel was shaking with disgust.
“I knew things about them. I told them that they had to keep my secret, or I wouldn’t keep theirs.” In utter horror, Leda heard herself telling Mariel everything. About Avery and Atlas. About Rylin stealing from Cord. And worst of all, Watt’s secret, that he had an illegal quantum computer lodged in his brain.
Some dazed part of Leda knew that she shouldn’t be saying these things; but she couldn’t help it, it was as if someone else was saying the words, as if they were being pulled out of her of their own volition.
“You people are even worse than I thought,” Mariel said at last, when Leda was through.
“Yes.” Leda moaned, knowing she deserved this, welcoming it.
“You should never have brought Eris into all this. It wasn’t fair,” Mariel hissed, and Leda could hear the naked hatred in her voice. Mariel despised her.
A wounded stubbornness elbowed its way to the forefront of Leda’s mind. “Yeah, right. Eris was part of it too,” she protested. “She was fucking my dad, after all.”
Mariel was deathly silent.
Leda tried to rise to her feet, but her body wasn’t working properly, and she crashed violently to the ground. Her legs were bent at an awkward angle beneath her. The sand felt rough and grainy on her cheek. She closed her eyes, wincing at the pain, tears blurring her vision, but it had already been blurred anyway. “Please. Help me get back,” she croaked. She still didn’t understand how she’d gotten this drunk. “How many drinks did Ihave?”
Mariel leaned over her. Her face was as hard and unyielding as if it had been carved from stone. “Just the one. But I drugged it.”
What? Why?Leda wanted to ask, but pushed that aside in favor of her more immediate problem. “Please, help me get back.” The water was so close, and the tide was rising, creeping toward her with ice-cold fingers. She could see it, like a dangerous black mirror, as full of secrets as her own black heart.
No, she thought, she didn’t have any secrets anymore, she’d given them all away. Even the ones that weren’t hers to give.
Mariel laughed, a sharp laugh that had no mirth in it. The sound was like a million small slaps to Leda’s face. “Leda Cole. You really think I’m helping you go back so that you can keep screwing with other people’s lives? Youkilledthe girl I loved.”
“I didn’t mean to …” Leda tried to say, but she wasn’t sure if she’d really spoken the words, or just thought them. Her eyes were too heavy to keep open. Her hand was touching the water, but she couldn’t move it. She felt a distant twinge of panic, imagining the water slowly flowing over her whole body, its darkness pulling insistently toward the matching darkness inside her.
“Before I leave, there’s one thing you should know. Eris wasn’t having an affair with your dad.” Mariel spoke slowly, each word delivered with frosty clarity. “She was spending time with him, yes, but not for the reason you think. Which just goes to show how bad a person you are, that you assume the worst of people.”
The words seemed to be coming from very far away, and Leda was falling, but with every last force of her being she listened, reaching up to hear what Mariel was saying, because it frightened her; and because she could hear the truth behind the hatred, ringing with the force of a gong.
“Your dad was Eris’s dad too. You killed your sister, Leda,” Mariel spat.
And then Leda did fall into the blackness, and there was nothing more.
WATT
WATT HAD BEENlooking for Leda for an hour now.
He’d circled the entire party at least three times, barreling clumsily into the thick of the dance floor, edging through the gardens alongside the Tower to check whether Leda might be in there. He’d gone upstairs to check the hotel room, but it was empty. Desperate, he’d even flickered Avery to ask whether she’d seen Leda, but Avery hadn’t answered.
Normally, of course, he would’ve just gotten Nadia to hack Leda’s contacts and determined her location that way. But her contacts feed was blank, which meant that wherever she was, Leda was asleep or passed out.Or dead, some horrible voice in him whispered, which he studiously ignored.
Any update, Nadia?She was doggedly searching through the contact feeds of everyone at the party, keeping an eye out for any hint of where Leda had gone.
