Wicked Like a Wildfire (Hibiscus Daughter #1)(41)
FIFTEEN
LUKA DROVE US HOME IN SILENCE SO LEADEN THAT IT tamped down even Niko’s usual helium-light chatter. It was so quiet I could hear each of Lina’s unsteady breaths as she sensed the contained maelstrom of everything the rest of us were feeling. I couldn’t hear Luka like she could, but I knew how I felt: like the apex of a collapsed triangle, having failed him all these years by not telling him something so big, while Lina failed me terribly in turn by telling Niko.
They dropped us off by the bridge that led to the Old Town’s Southern Gate, Niko murmuring a subdued good night to both of us while Luka death-gripped the wheel and stared mutely ahead. I stormed up the bridge, taking deep lungfuls of the sweet night-and-river air while Malina scrambled to keep up with her shorter stride. Now that we were finally alone, the full breadth of my anger and betrayal had expanded and slid into full view, like a hidden planet inside me with its own mass and orbital plane. Even with that, I thought to glance at the crenelated fortification of the bastion up ahead, wondering if I would see Sorai there again.
But there was no one. Just the two of us, me and my wretched liar of a sister.
Beside me, Lina heaved a ragged sigh as she struggled not to cry. For once it made me viciously glad that I could hurt her with nothing more than feeling, that she could sense every iota of my pain.
“How could you do it?” I finally said through gritted teeth, letting us into ?i?a Jovan’s garden. The gate wheezed rustily shut behind us. “How could you tell her? Don’t you think I wanted to tell Luka myself, a thousand times? But I didn’t, did I? Because Mama said not to, to keep us all safe. And all that bullshit you gave me how it was all right, it was better that I barely had any gleam left. It was what all of us needed. While you were singing for Niko, spilling out all our secrets to her.”
“It wasn’t like that,” she said, her voice shaking. “I swear it wasn’t. I just . . .”
“‘Pie,’” I broke in, rounding on her. “Is that why she calls you that? Pie, like cherry pie? Did you tell her Mama’s story about you and me, the fruit and the flower? Even that?”
“Yes.” Almost under her breath. “I’m sorry.”
“You are not,” I whispered furiously, my stomach hollowing. “You say that all the time, just throwing it around, like it means nothing. Sweet Lina who’ll do whatever she likes, but not to worry, she’ll be so sorry for it later.”
“Unlike you,” she mumbled, sullen and tearful. “Who never apologizes for anything, no matter what.”
“Apparently I don’t need to,” I snapped, slapping my hand on the wrought-iron table beside us, so hard my palm stung. “Compared to this, apparently I’ve never done anything to you worse than maybe a three, possibly a four, on the ‘accidentally flat-tiring someone’ to ‘breaking the most sacred of vows’ scale. Does that sound about right?”
“I just don’t . . .” She trailed off, running her hands over her face and into the thick, shining mass of hair backlit by the lantern light from the Bastion, her curls both brighter and darker than the clouded night above us. She looked so much like a tragic damsel in deep, melodramatic distress, as if she were the injured party, that the sight of her pissed me off that much more. Fuming, I turned away, fumbling with the door.
Inside, the lights were blazing and the doors to all the rooms flung open. I cringed inwardly at the thought of ?i?a Jovan waiting for us for hours as the sun peaked and then sank, pacing up and down the gauntlet of the apartment and puffing at his cherrywood pipe. In the whirlwind of the day, we’d forgotten to worry what he might think had happened to us.
“Jovan?” I called out, heading for the studio. If he’d managed to settle anywhere, it would be there.
“Riss, wait,” Lina said, and the strained pitch of her voice stranded me in place. “There’s a note for us. It says he’s at the hospital. It says we need to go as soon as we get back.”
THE CAB RIDE to the hospital was the closest thing I could imagine to being trapped in purgatory. Lina kept reaching out for me, then remembering we were fighting and dropping her hand to twine it frantically in her skirt.
“Do you think she died? All the way?” she finally whispered hoarsely.
My insides contracted around my pounding heart. I was so queasy with twinned dread and anticipation that every bump and pothole made my stomach come climbing up my throat. “I don’t know.”
“Or do you think she—”
“Lina, I don’t know!”
We lapsed into quiet after that, both of us laboring just to breathe.
?i?a Jovan met us in the hospital’s dismal entryway, his haggard face flicking from relief to devastation and finally to fury, like a flurry of projector slides. “Where have you been?” he demanded, gripping me by the shoulders and giving me a shake. This was the angriest I’d ever seen him, his thick white hair rumpled from raking his hand through it, his eyes blazing beneath bushy white brows. “How could you go and not tell me, with who knows what maniacs out there waiting for you? And you too, Malina. I would have thought at least you might have more sense than this. One of you could have picked up your phone, or checked your messages. Given me a single moment’s thought.”
I bit the inside of my cheek, steeling myself for yet another lie. “We just . . . Luka offered to drive us to Perast to our Lady of the Rocks, so we could leave an offering for Mama. A prayer and a love token, if it makes any difference to her now. Jovan, why are we here? What’s happened to her?”