Page 104 of The Towering Sky
Still Rylin kept going, because even useless movement was better than stillness right now. At least if she kept moving, the air would hiss past her sweat-dampened skin, calm the heat pounding through her. She ran faster and faster, until her hamstrings were burning and she could feel a blister forming on her left ankle. Ahead of her was an artificial pond, where a group of small children were racing miniature hovercrafts, a flotilla of toys with colored flags waving in the breeze.
This was the point where Rylin usually turned back. Buttoday she pressed onward. She wanted to run until she sweat out all the anger still clinging to her from last night, if that was even possible.
She couldn’t believe what Cord had done. How dare he get involved in her relationship with Hiral? It was so typical of him, of all the highliers, to think that he could bend and twist the world to his will. How gross, that he had usedmoneyto try to knock down the obstacles between them.
She remembered theSkyspear, the way their bodies had been intertwined in the dawn glow, and fought back a sudden sense of shame. Knowing what she knew now, the memory no longer seemed magical. If anything, it made Rylin feel rather cheap.
She couldn’t keep doing this. No more thinking about Cord or Hiral. Rylin was more than the sum of the boys she’d loved. She refused to let them define her.
Her contacts lit up with an incoming ping.
Rylin tripped from the shock of it, but managed to catch her balance before she fell. She slowed to a walk and turned around, toward the pond. Flecks of golden sunlight danced over its surface.
She hesitated another instant before giving in and accepting the ping.
“Hiral. I thought we agreed not to talk,” she said acerbically, lowering herself onto one of the benches.
“Chrissa reached out. She told me I was supposed to ping you?”
Rylin winced. She’d been banging around the apartment all morning, letting out loud angry sighs, until Chrissa bullied her into sharing what was going on. “It sounds like you need to talk to Hiral,” she had said. To which Rylin responded by grabbing her sneakers and escaping for a run.
“That sounds like Chrissa,” she muttered under her breath.
“I see. Younger sister, meddling again,” Hiral replied. Rylin heard a note of concern beneath the false lightness of his tone.
Rylin wanted so badly to be angry with him—royally pissed, in fact. But she found that she didn’t really have it in her.
“How is it?” she asked, because no matter what had happened between them, she still wanted to know that Hiral was okay.
“Awesome, actually.” She heard the excitement in his voice. “I’ve finished training and started work in the algae-harvesting pens. The only drawback is that I’m eating way more green-protein than I ever wanted to see. I feel like even my sweat is turning green.”
“Gross,” Rylin snorted at the unexpected image.
Hiral fell momentarily silent. “What was it that Chrissa wanted me to talk to you about?”
“It doesn’t matter now.”
“Okay,” Hiral said, as if he didn’t quite believe her. “For what it’s worth, though, I’m sorry. For everything I put you through. I know you’re still upset with me for leaving town without giving you much warning. But I also know that it was the best thing for us.”
“I’m getting really sick of everyone telling me what’s best for me, without any actual input from me,” Rylin couldn’t help replying.
“Trouble in paradise for you and Anderton?”
This was really weird, talking about Cord with Hiral. “How did you know?”
“Because I knowyou, Ry. I saw it in the mall that afternoon, when we were working on your ridiculous project; I wanted to ignore it, but it was there. The way your whole face lit up when you made eye contact with him. I know that look.” Hiral’s voice was very faint in her eartennas, and it suddenly struck Rylinhow utterly distant he was, on the other side of the world. “I know because once upon a time, you looked at me that way.”
Rylin lifted a hand to her eyes, disconcerted. The sunlight was getting brighter.
Hiral didn’t say anything, just let the moments of silence tick away, though god knows how much those minutes were costing him.
“Cord told me that he helped you leave town,” Rylin said at last.
“You know about that?” Hiral asked, and she recognized the guilty note creeping into his voice. “I’m sorry. Please don’t judge me too harshly, okay? I didn’t have a lot of options.”
It took a moment for Rylin to process his words. “Judgeyoutoo harshly?”
“For going behind your back, asking your ex-boyfriend to help me flee the country. That’s what you’re upset about, right?”
