“Easy,” he says gently, so, so gently. The kind of gentleness I’ve only ever heard from Jay.
I want to cry. I want to sink against him and hear him murmuring softly to me again and feel his touch against my face and disappear into nothingness.
But he lifts the glass back up and I try to drink again.
My senses slowly come back to me. We’re in my room in Regail Hall. Al sits on the end of my bed while Erik stands at the head of it. They’re all watching me with more concern than I could ever imagine any of them showing.
With the return of my senses comes more awareness of the pain. I gasp as I try to move, and fire ignites in my arm—no, what remains of it. The fight. Ellis. Fiona.
The force of the pain is almost too much. I can’t differentiate the physical hurt from the emotional. I feel myself slipping back, but Jay’s grip on my shoulder tightens almost painfully, and he says in a strained voice, “Lai, stay with us. Please. Please.”
“My fault,” I whisper, but I can’t tell whether or not I actually said it or if I just thought it. By the stricken look on Jay’s face, I must’ve said it. “I—”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Jay says forcefully. “You couldn’t have known.”
“Shouldn’t’ve gone,” I whisper. Jay’s face is losing focus again. “Alvaro. Sierra. Markus. Hugh. Maya. Ori. Fiona.” My breath catches in my throat. I didn’t think I was crying, but Jay gently wipes tears from my cheeks. “Fiona. Fiona.”
I cry. I cry like I can’t remember ever crying. Not even when Paul was killed. Not even when Luke died. The pain in what remains of my arm can’t compete with the weight crushing my chest.
Everything is abruptly starker and more real than it’s ever felt. Like everything up until this point was just a video I was watching, occasionally directing, but mostly keeping my distance from on the other side of a monitor.
I can’t stop crying. For once, I don’t try. There’s too much. Everything washes over me, and I struggle to keep my head above it all, to keep breathing, because each gasp for air is a thousand pieces of shattered glass scraping against the inside of my throat down into my lungs, piercing through my chest.
Jay holds me close to him. The warmth of his body is too much, too hot, burning me, but I don’t pull away. Then Al is hugging us, too, and Erik’s arms wrap around us all.
As I dissolve into my grief and pain, it feels like they’re the only things keeping me anchored in this world.
26
JAY
IT TAKES SOME time for Lai to calm down. Once she does, she looks so exhausted I’m somewhat surprised she doesn’t go straight back to sleep. But she sits up and leans against the wall. Her eyes watch us, but they’re flat. “How long?”
“Three days,” I say. I still can’t believe she’s awake—she’s okay. She’s alive. It pushes away my exhaustion better than sleep could. “Things are keeping together relatively well. Clemente and Peter have taken over with reorganizing and getting supplies from around the sector for those who were injured. Everyone’s doing what they can.”
“And Ellis?”
“The rebels haven’t moved since they ambushed us.”
“They might’ve dealt us a heavy blow, but we took down a good number of them, too,” Al says. “It’ll probably take some time for them to recover before their next attack.”
Lai doesn’t say anything.
“So?” Erik asks. “What now?”
Lai blinks at him like she doesn’t understand.
“I mean, what’s the Order’s next move?” he clarifies.
“Erik,” I say in soft warning. “She just woke up.”
“No,” Lai says. “This is important. The Order can’t wait for me. It shouldn’t have to.” She takes a moment. I wonder if talking so much is hard for her right now. She looked like she was in a lot of pain earlier. My gut twists at the memory of her screaming, struggling to breathe, crying uncontrollably. Most of her minor injuries have already healed into scars, adding to her extensive collection, but even with a Nyte’s extraordinarily fast healing, her arm must be in agony. I wish there was something I could do to take away her pain.
“I’m resigning as leader of the Order,” Lai says.
We all stare at her. No one speaks right away.
“What?” I finally croak.
“It deserves someone better than me.” Lai’s eyes are on her hand, her fingers twisted into the sheets of her bed. “Someone who won’t lead them into the ground.”
“Lai, that’s nonsense—”
“I can’t fight like this anyway.”
“Lai!” I shout. Erik and Al both flinch, but Lai doesn’t so much as glance at me. That she refuses to do even that cuts at me. “Lai, you can’t take all of the blame for this on yourself. And even if it was your fault—so what? You’re just going to give up and walk away because the Order suffered its first defeat?”
She doesn’t reply.
“This is war.” I feel my voice getting hotter the more I speak, but I can’t stop it. I don’t want to. “You knew what this would be like going in. Did you think the Order could get by without a single loss? Were you really that conceited? And now that things didn’t go exactly as you planned, you’re just going to quit? Abandon all the people who are still relying on you?”
“What am I supposed to do?” Lai snaps. Finally, something like life returns to her eyes. Even though I’m angry, that spark pushes relief through me. “Who’s going to follow me after I led everyone straight into a trap? I couldn’t even take down Ellis. They all lost friends; so many of them were there—they’re not going to believe in someone so weak. This is for the best for everyone.”
“You truly think losing their leader on top of everything else is for the best?” I demand. “You’re merely wallowing in your own self-pity. You’re blaming yourself for everything that went wrong because it’s an easy out. I thought you were the kind of person to see something through to the end—but you’re only running away.”
“Jay,” Al hisses.
It’s not as though I don’t understand. Lai’s lost her arm and one of her oldest friends, has been unconscious for three days, and has barely been awake for ten minutes. However, I can’t just ignore this. If I don’t speak my mind now, what if this new resignation sets in? What if she truly begins to believe what she said and steps down?
This isn’t the Lai I know. The Lai I know would never give up so easily. She’d already be asking for details on what the Order’s been doing to recover and giving new orders to help it move forward. She’d push herself despite her injuries until we all forced her to rest. That’s who she is. That’s what I love about her.
But now, Lai won’t even acknowledge me. She keeps staring down and remains silent.
I’ve been holding everything inside me together these last few days for her—for the hope that she’d wake up, that we could keep moving. Now, something inside me breaks.
I stand up. “Clemente and Peter told me they wanted my help when I was available. I’d better go see them.”