Page 84 of Darkness I Become
Another pause, and when he didn’t reply, she repeated it for emphasis. She was too sleepy for dread to grip her, and yet she felt certain, underneath her drowsiness, that something was terribly wrong. She felt a couple of wet drops hit her cheek, followed by more silence.
Finally, Cade kissed her, and she heard him get up and leave.
Chapter 26
“Youpromisedme!” Asha’s voice was a howl of misery.
She’d awoken hours later in Leo’s clinic and sought out Cade, only to find him in Angel’s Wing…but it didn’t look much like the rooms Angel had lived in anymore. The place had been trashed. The art had been torn from the walls and destroyed, anything remotely fragile shattered on the floor, and the bed was ripped to shreds.
He did this,Asha realized when she walked in, wide-eyed.He was that angry.
One look at Cade’s face was enough to tell her why. What he’d done.
“You promised you’d end this. That’s what the whole stupid assassination plot was for!”
Cade was unnaturally quiet, his eyes sharp and focused on her.
“I know,” he said. He seemed outwardly calm, but there was a storm in his eyes. “But the game has changed. There are new players we didn’t bank on. The goal is the same, though: survival. And right now, to survive, this is the price we pay.”
“The pricewepay?” she shot back furiously. “You mean the price that those young girls pay, for the rest of whatever’s left of their lives. Meanwhile, we live here, in relative comfort at their expense.”
He folded his arms. “That was always our position, long before now. You and I lived inside safe, fortified compounds with food and water and electricity, while the Wastelanders lived in poverty and ruin. This is no different, and this would be happening to those girls whether we were involved or not.”
“That’s a fucking copout and you know it,” Asha snarled, and to her horror, hot, desperate tears formed at the corners of her eyes. How could he not understand what this meant to her? “Just because something evil is going to happen, it doesn’t mean we actively participate in it. It doesn’t mean wehelp it along,for God’s sake. What the fuck is wrong with you?”
That, she noted with satisfaction, seemed to pierce the façade of calm he’d been maintaining. A crease appeared between his heavy brows.
“What’s wrong with me?” Cade replied, with a shade of contempt she’d never heard from him before. “I’m sorry I’m not a stupid idealist pretending that there’s a choice other than the one in front of me. I’m sorry I’m not willing to sacrifice you and me, and everyone else here, for a bunch of—”
“Of what?” Asha cut in sharply. “A bunch of whores? Slaves? I was one of those whores. Any one of those women could’ve been me.”
His frown deepened. “You’re not one of them, Asha.”
She choked on something between a laugh and a sob.
“Not like the other girls, Cade?” she croaked. “Really? That’s funny, because I seem to remember being sold at a slave market, and the only thing that kept me from being sold off to people likethatwas you. Had you not been there—or had you decided I wasn’t worth saving—”
“Youareworth saving,” Cade interjected furiously. “That’s why I’m doing this. Why Ihave todo this. Why can’t you wrap your head around that?”
Asha recoiled as though he’d struck her.
“Don’t you dare,” she said, low and furious, “don’t you fucking dare say that you’re doing this for me. This is the opposite of everything I ever wanted, Cade!”
“What the fuck other choice do I have?” he growled. “They almostkilledyou, Asha! What was I supposed to do, saythanks, but no thanksand let you fucking die? You had a fuckingseizureand you expect me tonegotiatewith these people, who’d kill my woman right in front of me? They have weapons that you can’t imagine, but I can. We don’t stand a chance if they decide to attack.”
He threw another clay dish at the wall, shattering it into a million pieces.
“I’m not committing suicide on behalf of all of us just so I can say I was better than them in the end,” Cade bellowed. “That doesn’t fuckingmatterif we’re dead!”
Asha paused, her stomach churning painfully. She swallowed back a wave of nausea.
“We could leave,” she said quietly. “Together.”
“That’s your solution?” His disgust was palpable. “Run away? To where, exactly? Have you ever tried to survive in the wilderness alone? Oh wait, the last time you did, you ended up abandoning your friend to be eaten by cannibals and then captured.”
His words twisted an invisible knife in her gut. He was using her past, her guilt, against her. Every bit of trust she’d so painstakingly built with him was crumbling faster than she’d ever thought possible.
“You know I’m fucking right. Leaving is suicide, and I’ve worked too hard for too long to throw our lives away on something so monumentally stupid.”
