Page 108 of The Dazzling Heights
Why would a boy like Cord ever pick a girl like Rylin, when he could have Avery Fuller?
LEDA
LEDA SCREAMED ANDkept running down the corridor. It went on and on, no doors or end in sight, just the jagged floor beneath her and the shadows chasing her, flapping their great dusty wings above her face. They looked like harpies, scratching her with her claws, cackling maliciously. Leda recognized them for what they were.
They were all her secrets.
Her cruelty to Avery, her bitterness toward her father, the things she’d done to Watt … every last one of her misdeeds, her years of meddling and spying and plotting all coming home to roost at last … and foremost among them was what she’d done to Eris.
The harpies came closer, scratching at her face. They drew blood. Leda fell to her knees, wailing, and threw her hands up—
A sudden wetness on her face jostled her awake. She rubbed at her eyes. They stung a little. She put her hands below her, feeling the unfamiliar, lumpy surface. She was on a couch somewhere.
“Leda! You’re awake!”
Watt’s face appeared before her, his strong jaw dusted with a shadow of stubble. “You’ve been out for hours. What happened? Nadia hacked a med-bot, got it to deliver adrenaline, which we’ve been feeding you in small doses—she thought you might be getting close to waking just now, which is why I threw the water on you—”
Poor Watt, Leda thought drowsily, he always rambled when he got anxious. It was so endearing.
And then her mind flagged to sudden, violent alert as she remembered. Watt couldn’t be trusted—Watt was the enemy.
“Let me go!” she shouted, though it came out raspy and broken. She tried to stand up only to tumble toward the floor instead. Watt swooped down and caught her.
“Shh, Leda, it’s okay,” he murmured, settling her back on the cushions, but not before she’d gotten a look at their surroundings. They were in their hotel room in the Moon Tower. She regretted not booking Watt his own room, the way she’d done for rehab. Where could she escape now?
“What happened?” he asked again.
Leda reached deep within herself, gathering every last shred of her strength. It wasn’t much, because she felt as though she’d been crunched beneath the weight of the Tower itself. But she managed to lean back, her eyes half closed; and then in a quick, sudden motion she shot her fist upward toward Watt’s head.
It hit his skull with a satisfying, resounding crack, right where she’d been aiming—at the spot where Nadia was implanted.
Watt yelped, momentarily blinded by pain. Leda took advantage of his confusion, pushing herself up and trying to run away—she staggered a few steps but the world spun off-kilter, the ground veering dangerously upward, and she fell heavily back to the carpet.
“What the hell, Leda! Next time your head might hit a table, okay?”
This time Watt kept his distance, crouching a few meters from where she lay on her side. He seemed to know better than to try to help her.
Slowly Leda sat up. Her head was pounding, and her mouth felt dry. The brightness hurt her eyes, and she lifted a hand to shade them, but the room was already growing dimmer. She looked sharply at Watt—she hadn’t seen him make any motions for the room comp—then realized that, of course, his damned supercomputer had done it.
“I hate you,” she managed to say, through her pain and her violent, rending grief. “Go to hell, Watt.”
“Whatever happened to you, I didn’t do it. What do you remember?” he asked urgently.
Leda pulled her knees to her chest. She didn’t care that her gorgeous white gown was ruined, ripped at the hem, smudged with dirt and blood. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that she was here, still breathing, still alive. That bitch left her for dead—wanted her to fall into the ocean and drown—yet she’d survived.
“Have you sent me to jail yet, or were you waiting till I was awake?” she snapped. “Don’t lie to me anymore, Watt. I know your computer is in your brain. You were recording me earlier, when I told you about Eris. Weren’t you?”
Watt stared at her in evident shock, the color draining from his face. He reached unconsciously up to that same spot on his head, as if to check whether Nadia was still there. “How did you know?”
“So you don’t deny it?”
“No. I mean, yes, Iwasrecording,” he stammered, “but I’m not sending you to jail, Leda. I wouldn’t do that to you.”
“Why on earth should I believe you, when you’ve been pretending to care about me this whole time?”
“Because I do care about you,” he said softly.
She narrowed her eyes, unconvinced.
