Page 101 of The Towering Sky
Except itwouldn’tbe okay. Not for Eris or Mariel or any ofthe rest of them. Not until this whole thing was over for good.
“At least let me walk you home,” Watt offered, but Leda shook her head, and dug into a bleak corner of strength somewhere deep within her.
“I need to be alone right now.”
Watt opened his mouth to answer, then seemed to change his mind. He gave a jerky nod. “I’ll see you later,” he assured her.
“See you,” Leda said quietly, knowing it was a lie.
She waited until she saw his form disappear into the crowd, until she was certain he was long gone. Then Leda let out a great, tremulous breath. It had taken every last shred of her willpower to watch Watt walk away from her, knowing it was the very last time.
Somehow, blindly, she made it home. The silence echoed eerily around her bedroom. She managed to drag herself into bed—her ordinary bed, rumpled past recognition, which only last night had held both her and Watt. She couldn’t believe that just this morning she had woken up with him, feeling so safe in his arms.
But she wasn’t safe. None of them were safe, and it was her fault.
She loved Watt so much that it hurt, so much that it frightened her. Which was why she should never have let him back into the disaster that was her life. She was too toxic. She had done too many terrible things, things she couldn’t run from, and she refused to let Watt be dragged down with her.
On and on her thoughts swirled, circling wildly through her fevered brain. She must have drifted off at some point; she kept waking in a cold sweat, pressing her fists against her closed eyes, but the images wouldn’t go away. Because they weren’t nightmares; they were her reality.
No matter what road she went down, Leda kept returning tothe same conclusion. The cops were getting closer. Which meant that none of them would be safe until someone was arrested for Mariel’s death.
Leda couldn’t fix what had happened to Eris or Mariel. But she could still save Avery, Rylin, and Watt—that much still lay within her power. They didn’t deserve to be punished for what had happened, but she did.
AVERY
THE MORNING AFTERher father’s inauguration ball, Avery paced back and forth across the living room like a caged animal. She walked the same path each time, halfway between the cloudlike custom couches and the door that led to the two-story foyer. She was waiting for whatever would happen to happen.
It was too quiet. Avery imagined she could see the silence, undulating and cool, its waves lapping against the walls and then falling back with a soundless splash.
“It’ll be okay,” Atlas assured her from where he sat on the couch by the window. He reached out an arm as if to pull her toward him, then seemed to think better of it.
Avery hadn’t slept. How could she, after everything? She kept picturing the way Max had stood there, staring at her and Atlas with unabashed horror. He’d retreated a step, his eyes wide and wounded. Avery had stumbled to her feet and torn after him, calling out his name as she tried to chase him downthe unfamiliar hallways, but Max had escaped down a staircase. He had literally run away from her.
Avery had been trying to ping and flicker him all morning, with no response. She wanted to tell Max how sorry she was, for betraying his trust in such a terrible way, and that she’d never meant to hurt him. That she hadn’t been lying when she said that she loved him.
Somehow she had loved Max and yet beenin lovewith Atlas at the same time.
Max had been the one who put her back together again after her heart was shattered last year. He had given herhisheart, had tried to build a life for them, and Avery had given him nothing in return except pain.
She was starting to lose count of all the people she and Atlas had wounded, trying in vain to fall out of love with each other. Leda, Watt, now Max: They were all collateral damage. Avery swore to herself never to make that mistake again.
Earlier this morning, she had even ventured out in search of Max, heading to his dorm room only to find the bedcovers smooth and unslept in. Eventually she gave up and came back here, where she’d spent breathless hourswaiting, though she didn’t know what for. She just kept walking back and forth in her artech pants and sweater, restless and agitated, unable to shake the sense that something terrible was looming on the horizon, like a great dark thundercloud.
It was the zetta she really worried about.
She and Atlas had turned the problem over and over, but there was ultimately nothing they could do, not knowing which i-Net site it even belonged to. To own a zetta, you needed a commercial license, and the licenses were prohibitively expensive—after all, no one wanted swarming clouds of these things clogging up their city.
Whoever had that picture, Avery knew she would be hearing from them very soon. She could only hope that they would reach out to her directly, maybe hold the picture for blackmail, rather than go ahead and post it.
She reached the end of the room and turned again, fidgeting uselessly with the end of her ponytail. Next to her, Atlas sat holding his tablet on his lap, still open to the same article he’d pulled up two hours ago. They hadn’t spoken much since last night; as if they’d used up all their words onI love yous, and needed to hoard the remaining ones for whatever lay ahead.
Both of their heads whipped up as the front door slid open. Avery felt every cell in her body spring to instant alertness. She heard voices, the familiar hollow sound of her mom’s heels echoing down the hallway, and for a single instant, everything was blissfully, blessedly normal.
“We need to talk about the pro-am golf tournament,” her mom was saying. “How many people do you think you’ll be inviting?”
Pierson didn’t answer right away. Then he cursed, loudly and angrily. “What thehell,” he snarled, probably holding out his tablet.
And just like that, Avery knew that everything had changed.
