Page 111 of Queen of Volts

He grunted and turned away. “You just don’t understand.”

After three months together, he sounded no less petulant and irritating. She hated that the person who could make her so furious could also break her heart. She hated that this was the hand she’d been dealt.

“I’m starting to understand why they got rid of you,” she said, rolling her eyes. “But you and I still need to talk. You left me. You joined a gang and you left me.”

He grumbled something unintelligible.

“What?” she asked.

“I said thatyou’re no better. You’re the second of the Spirits.”

“That was an accident. I never wanted to join a gang. Not after what happened to Sam.” Justin flinched at the sound of their older brother’s name. “Besides, it doesn’t matter. I’m not the second anymore.”

Justin scoffed. “Of course it matters. It’s why you have a card.”

Lola didn’t come in here to talk about herself. She didn’t want to think about Enne or the look in Levi’s eyes when she’d told him about Veil. She’d considered confessing to Arabella about what had happened, but Arabella had been gone a lot lately, disappearing for hours on end, returning reeking of smoke or seawater. And besides, she hadn’t forgiven Arabella for calling her paranoid.

Justin wrenched his arm against the cuff binding his wrist to the bed knob. “I don’t know what you want from me. I’m a prisoner here. You two can’t keep me here forever.”

“You’re a danger to yourself,” Lola told him coolly. “The fact that you even want to go back is—”

“I don’t want to go back,” he said, almost so quietly that she didn’t hear.

Lola froze. “But you’ve always said—”

“But if I don’t go back, they’ll find me. That’s the choice I’ve got. To go back or to die,” he told her. “I don’t want to, but that’s the way it is.” His gaze turned toward the window, to their view of a brick wall across an alley in the Factory District. “So you might as well let me go.”

Letting Justin go back to the Doves was unthinkable. The Doves were powerful, but not as much as he’d been trained to think. Rebecca probably didn’t even care about him, didn’t even notice his absence.

“Well, I’m not,” Lola told him.

He pursed his lips. “Then we’ve got nothing more to say to one another.”

Lola’s hands shook, and she managed to keep her voice level only because of the amount of times she’d rehearsed her words. “You abandoned me when I needed you. And I deserve an explanation.”

Justin shrugged. “I just wanted to matter.”

“You mattered to me,” she told him.

He finally turned to look at her, but he didn’t have the words to counter her. Maybe he’d been right. Maybe silence really could kill. Because the truth lingered in their quiet—Lola hadn’t mattered enough to him. She had never mattered enough to anybody.

It really was that simple.

Blinking back tears, Lola stood up and left the room. She found Arabella waiting for her in the hallway.

“That bad, hmm?” Arabella asked.

Lola wiped her eyes. “It’s nothing. I don’t know why I bother.”

“I think you should keep bothering,” Arabella told her seriously. “I wish I had. And now all my friends are dead.” Even after all this time, a bitterness still cut through Arabella’s words. Like Lola, the world had not been fair to her, but she was still alive, still angry.

Arabella had warned Lola that she was becoming more like her, but suddenly, that no longer felt like a bad thing. It was time for Lola to stop pretending the world was anything but self-serving and cynical. Time for her to stop letting other people wield the power to hurt her.

She deserved her anger. She couldn’t survive without it.

Before Lola could answer, Arabella said, “There’s someone for you at the door.”

A jolt of panic shot through her. “Is it Enne?”