Secret of Betrayal: Book Two of The Destroyer Trilogy (10 page)

Even still, I can’t help feeling disappointed
when Braden steps back. He sees it, and takes his time with his next step. It
requires all my control not to reach up and stop him. But I gave him my answer,
and I know without him saying so that he’s going to respect it. He won’t give
me his Oath until he is personally committed to my cause.

If I had chosen differently, would I already
have another Oath? I don’t really want to think about what that might mean.

“Okay, then,” Braden says, “
are
you going to explain what happened with Casey?”

Thank goodness.
“Yeah, sure.”

I plop down on the bed, wishing I could just
fall asleep right now and put this whole day behind me. Braden’s weight
settling on the mattress next to me banishes that thought. Not yet.
No
sleeping yet. I have to get the professional killer out of my room first.

As quickly and simply as possible, I give Braden
the muddled rundown of what happened with Casey, leaving out the tiny detail of
how the Ciphers said something bad was coming for them. Braden already knows
who the Ciphers are and how the Spiritualists lock them away, but I don’t think
he’s connected my interest in the Ciphers to anything other than my boyfriend’s
being one.
Used to be one.
Better to leave all that
out until I have his Oath securely under my thumb. When I finally finish,
Braden surprises me with his reaction.

“Do you have any idea how dangerous that
was!
You could have killed yourself wrapping your spirit
around Casey’s! What were you thinking?” he demands.

The force of his anger shocks me. “I wasn’t
thinking! I was trying to save her. It was the only thing I could do. I
couldn’t just let them kill her, Braden.”

“You could have died.”

“How?
Why would
wrapping her up like that hurt me?” I ask.

Braden rubs his hand across his forehead. “You
really have no idea what you’re doing with your Spiritualism, do you?”

“Well, I wouldn’t say that,” I scoff.

“I would.” He shakes his head and laughs.

“What?”

“Nothing, it’s just that I expected Cassia the
Destroyer to be able to do anything she wanted to do. I thought you would be
this amazingly powerful terror,” he says.

I smack the side of his leg.
Hard.
“I am powerful. I just don’t know how to use my power sometimes. I’m still just
a regular person underneath all this Destroyer crap. I still have to learn to
use my talents just like everyone else.”

“I only have one problem with that, Libby,” he
says.

“And what’s that?”

He looks over at me, holding me in his serious
gaze. “You are not a regular person. You are unique and amazingly special.”

I have to remind myself to take a breath.
Time to change the subject.

“So are you going to help me with this, or not?”
I ask.

“Of course.
I’d say
tomorrow night, but I’ll be out of town.
So, two nights from
now.
Same time, same place?”

Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me. “Can’t you just
tell me now?”

“It’s a little more complicated than that. You
have an obvious spiritual block when it comes to the spirit world. It’s
affecting every aspect of your Spiritualism. I’m going to have to help you get
over your block. It’s a long process, and you look like you’ve had a long
enough
day
already.”

I snarl at him.
“Thanks to
you.
Mostly.”

“But not just me, right?” he asks with a smile.
“I’m not all bad.”

I don’t even dignify that with a response.
Partly because he’s right.
He has been, in large part, the
worst part of the last couple weeks for me, minus the renegade Ciphers and
teenage vigilantes. But as I remember the way he makes me feel, I have to admit
that he has been a bright spot in my days, too. A second later, guilt for my
admission sours my stomach.

The electric sensation is an oddity, one that
makes me want to feel it again. There’s nothing more to it than that, and it’s
only affecting me so much because he always manages to corner me when Milo
isn’t around. With Milo next to me, I’m sure I could ignore this connection
with Braden. The insane desire to drive back to Milo’s house and scale the tree
in his backyard to get to him grabs me so strongly I can barely shake it.

Braden needs to leave.
Now.
I stand up and walk resolutely over to the door, pulling it open for him. He
smirks at the not-so-subtle hint and rises from the bed. He takes his coat off
the uncomfortable sling chair next to the bed and slips it on smoothly as he
approaches the door. Please just go. He’s almost over the threshold when he
stops.

“Can I ask you something, Libby?”

“What?” I groan.

“The bonds you have with Lance and Milo, how
strong are they?” he asks.

I so don’t want to talk about this with him.
“Why?”

“I’ve never known anyone to give their Oath to a
single person. I’ve heard that the connection can be different, stronger, that
the Guardian can feel more than whether their charge is in danger. Is that
true?”

I can’t imagine why he would want to know other
than pure curiosity, so I tell him for the sake of getting him to leave so I
can bury myself in my bed and hopefully never come out again. “Milo can’t, but
Lance can. He can feel my emotional responses.”

“Really?”
Braden asks.
“I would have thought it would be the other way around.”

“No kidding.” Now can I go to bed? Please?

“Oh well, I guess it works just as well this
way,” Braden says. “I dislike Lance even more than Milo.”

“Works for what?”

He moves toward me. I try to shut the door on
him, but his Speed catches me first. The second his lips touch mine fire
scorches its way through my body. I can’t resist his warmth. I can feel my hand
trembling on the door knob. It’s begging me to reach for him, but I can’t move.
I can only stand there trapped by desire. Slowly, Braden pulls back. I move
toward him, my hand leaving the door knob, but rational thought slaps me across
the face and I stop.

Braden’s fingers caress my cheek. He leans
forward, and says, “Just let me know if you want to change your mind about that
reason.”

I watch him leave. I stand there in the freezing
cold long after his car lights have disappeared. When my fingers and toes start
to lose feeling, I close the door and slump against it, landing in a miserable
puddle on the floor. I groan and drop my head to my knees. There’s no way Lance
didn’t feel that.

Chapter 8

Possibilities

“So,” Lance says as soon as he joins me in the
gym, “I thought you were going home alone last night.”

He tries for his usual confident swagger, but I
can hear bitter anger roiling underneath. I knew this was coming. I had hoped
that, for once, my fantastically bad luck would pass me by.

“I did go home alone last night,” I say
casually.

For a few seconds he doesn’t say anything. When
Lance promised to back off from trying to break up me and Milo I had hoped that
meant he would stop harassing me about what Milo and I did together. No such
luck. What Milo and I do when we’re alone isn’t any of his business. Lance
knows all of this, but he can’t stay silent.

“Don’t lie to me, Libby.”

“Why does everyone keep saying that to me?” I
snap. Actually, why does everyone keep catching me in my lies? I’m usually
better at deception than this.

Lance rounds on me, towering over me with his
anger. “I know you were with Milo last night.”

“Let’s get started, class!” Guardian Clement
bellows.

Lance grunts, but steps away from me and faces
our Speed and Strength teacher. Hope that I’ll be able to avoid this
conversation entirely puts a slight bounce in my step.
Until
Guardian Clement speaks again.

“Okay, class, I want you to partner up. We’re
starting our mid-year evaluations today.”

He starts handing out clipboards to each pair.
Before I can force someone else to be my partner, Lance grabs my wrist. My
teeth grind together painfully. Milo should be in this class with me. I
unlocked his talents. He has Speed and Strength. But since I’m not an official
Inquisitor, the school refuses to accept the results of Milo’s second Inquest. Even
though his first Inquest was fraudulent, that’s the one they’re sticking with.
Idiots.

Milo would be my only hope of partnering with
someone besides Lance, anyway. It’s not like anyone in this class would take
me.
Or Lance, for that matter.
Not anymore. Guardian
Clement doesn’t even look at us as he drops a clipboard in Lance’s hands. Lance
used to be his pet. But that was before the theater. Once he saw Lance working
with me to save
Milo, that
was the end of his
favoritism. He can’t kick Lance out of his class for his betrayal, but he’s
made no secret of the fact the he’ll personally make sure Lance is never
initiated as a full Guardian.

Supporting me killed Lance’s lifelong dream of
following his father, but he has never complained about it. I asked him once, a
few days after the theater, why he jumped up there with me and destroyed
everything he had worked for. His answer was simple and verging on heart
melting. He said he did it because I was worth it. He knows we’re through, but
I know he won’t turn away from me regardless of what our futures might hold.
And not because of his Guardian Oath, but because I think he’s finally realized
that it just isn’t in him to turn his back on someone he loves—and has loved
his entire life.

Apparently that’s enough to keep him going in
the face of his former mentor hating him. He takes the clipboard with a polite
nod. Maybe his good mood has more to do with getting me alone, though. Lance
yanks me toward the corner of the gym eagerly. Releasing me once we’re away from
the rest of the class, Lance says, “Sit ups. Three minutes. Go.”

I flop down on the mat and start working in
silence. If only Lance were kind enough to do the same.

“Look, I know we aren’t together anymore, but I
can’t stand it when you lie to me. All that time growing up, dating, I thought
I knew everything about you. Finding out you were lying about almost everything
the whole time … that hurt more than anything,” he says.

“But, Lance,” I argue, still pumping out sit
ups, “you know why I had to lie to you. I couldn’t tell anyone I was the
Destroyer.”

“One hundred,” Lance says, dutifully keeping
track of my sit ups. These tests are annoying, but it is nice not to have to
hide my talents so much anymore. I try to focus on the movements of my muscles.
Lance stays with our conversation. “You could have told me.”

I think
his own
actions
have already proved that statement wrong. “No, I couldn’t have. I couldn’t risk
anyone figuring it out. Look what happened when you did find out.”

Lance’s eyes flash with dark anger. “That was
after almost a year of Guardian Clement shoving anti-Destroyer crap down my
throat! If you had told me before my Inquest, before the training, I could have
prepared. I never would have reacted like that.”

I freeze halfway through a sit up. “No … You
still … You would’ve ….”

“No,” Lance says, “I never would have tried to
hurt you if I’d known beforehand. If you would have told me before Guardian
Clement got to me, I would have been able to ignore what he was saying. I
thought I was protecting you by listening to him. I swallowed every bit of his
rhetoric like it was candy. You should have told me everything.”

“I …” Could that really be
true?
Would Lance actually have supported me back then as he is now? I
thought for a while that Lance’s main reason for sticking with me, other than
his hormones, was his guilt for trying to kill me. Is this the true Lance
instead of the one who pulled his knife without thinking that night? The
possibilities of what might have been if I had only trusted him make me sink
back down to the mat. If he hadn’t tried to murder me that night, we never
would have broken up. I never would have felt the stab of his betrayal, the
crushing loneliness of thinking I had been abandoned again.

But I never would have met Milo, either.

I honestly don’t know how to feel about this
realization. There’s really only one thing I can say. “I’m so sorry, Lance.”

He sighs. “I just wish you would have trusted
me.”

“It wasn’t a matter of trust, Lance.” Until I
actually saw him draw his blade that night, I never believed he would hurt me.
Never.
“I didn’t tell you because I was afraid of losing
you. I thought I’d scare you away, not that you wouldn’t keep my secret. I
wanted to keep you as long as possible.”

“You wouldn’t have lost me,” Lance says. “You
still haven’t.”

I sit back up and push a stand of hair out of my
face. Forget the sit-ups. I’ve already done more than anyone else will do in
the entire three minutes. “Lance …”

“Look, Libby, I’m not trying to change your mind
about me. I know we’re never going to date again, but I hope you agree that
we’re back to being friends. All I’m asking is for you to be honest with me
from here on out. After the lies you’ve told
me,
and
everything I’ve given up for you,” he says, gesturing at Guardian Clement, “I
think I deserve at least that.”

Trust isn’t an easy thing for me, but I know
he’s right. Well, right in every way but one. “Lance, I won’t hold anything
back from you when it comes to freeing the Ciphers and whatever other missions
we take on, but my relationship with Milo is none of your business.”