The Fates Divide (Carve the Mark #2)(37)
“That’s . . .” He made a frustrated noise. “That’s the worst possible way to interpret what I said!”
“Yeah? Well, it’s my way,” I snapped. “I don’t want to be the gift someone gets when they’ve already lost. I don’t want to be a happy inevitability. I want to be chosen. I want to be wanted.”
“You think I don’t want you? Haven’t I made that clear? I still chose you over my family, Cyra, and it wasn’t because of fate!” He was mad now, practically spitting at me. Good. I wanted to fight. Fighting was something I could do, something I had trained myself to do whenever things got difficult. It was what kept me safe—not avoidance, because when had I ever been able to avoid the things that hurt me? No, it wasn’t pretending I wouldn’t get knocked down that protected me, but the knowledge that I would get back up as many times as I had to.
“How do you know?” I demanded. “It’s not saying yes if you don’t feel like you have a choice!”
“This isn’t about me, this is about your own insecurity.” He spoke fiercely, hotly, against my face. We were too close together but neither of us moved back. “You don’t think anyone could possibly want you, so therefore, I must not be able to really want you. You’re taking something good away from yourself because you don’t think you deserve it.”
“It’s because no one has ever wanted me that I feel this way!” I was almost yelling. There were people milling around, and they stopped at my sudden increase in volume, but I didn’t care. He was knocking me down, again and again, every time that he didn’t say what I wanted him to say—that he chose me, that he wanted this, that he knew it, that fate was irrelevant.
All I wanted was for him to lie, and for me to believe it. But I didn’t have to be an oracle to see that of all the possible futures that existed, there wasn’t a single one where that outcome was possible. I would never believe a lie. And Akos would never tell me one.
“I am in love with you,” I said. “But for once in my life, I want someone to choose me. And you don’t. You can’t.”
I felt the mood change, as we stepped back, Akos looking suddenly bereft, like he had had his arms full and someone had come along and taken away everything he was carrying. I felt the same way. Empty-handed.
“I can’t change the way things are,” he said. “You can’t blame me for that.”
“I know.” He was right, and that was why there was no point in arguing anymore. I had begun the conversation with a demand for honesty, but honesty didn’t need to come from him—it needed to come from me. His fate was a reality, and as long as he had his fate, he couldn’t care about me the way I needed him to. And I only knew that I needed him to because he had encouraged me to try to value myself more highly. So we were tangled in a web together, cause and effect and choice and fate all intermingling.
“So you’re going to stay here, because your fate is with me,” I said hollowly. “And I’m going to stay here, to help them figure out how to handle my father. And you and I . . .”
“Will be what we are,” he said. So quiet.
“Right.” My eyes burned. “Well, I need to talk to them about Lazmet. Can you find Teka and make sure she’s all right?”
He nodded. I nodded. We both walked back into the mess hall, where everyone was still gathered around the screens, which now showed the wavy blur of heat above the sands of Tepes.
CHAPTER 15: CYRA
THE PROBLEM WITH OGRA, I decided, was that it was dark.
Well, that was obvious.
But it was a different kind of dark than other places, where you could turn on a lamp and see everything in a room. Here, no matter what lights you attached to your clothes or fixed to a wall, the darkness crept in, devouring.
So though everyone in the storm shelter—the most trusted and capable among the exiles, Jorek had told me—wore something that glowed, and though lanterns hung from long chains, like vines, from the ceiling, I still felt like I was surrounded by shadows.
It was thanks to Jorek that I was invited to this meeting at all. Though I had acted as something of a leader when called upon to do so, I had not earned a place among them, not really. But I knew more about the family Noavek than all the people in this room put together, so here I stood, at Jorek’s shoulder, too stung by what Akos and I had said to each other to pay much attention to the exiles’ bickering.
I had told him I loved him. Loved him. What had I been thinking?
Jorek elbowed me. He had embraced the bright adornments of Ogran clothing with enthusiasm, the lines of his jacket traced in bright fabric panels two fingers wide. The afterimage of the green bars lingered for a few moments after I looked away from him, and across the room, at Sifa and Eijeh Kereseth.
They were oracles, after all. A group of fate-faithful Shotet couldn’t help but hunger for whatever scraps of vague wisdom they could offer, if any.
“Sorry,” I said, and cleared my throat. “What did you say?”
Aza raised an eyebrow at me. Whatever I had missed had been important, it seemed.
“I asked you if you could offer us any guidance as to whether your father will come after us here, on Ogra, or not,” she said.
“Oh.” It was my supposed expertise on my father that had won me my place here, and now was the time to put it to use. I shook my head. “He knows better than to fight a war with two fronts, particularly when the targets are so far apart. I’m sure he doesn’t view you as worthy of his attention, so he’ll focus on Thuvhe.”