Page 50 of Waters that Drown Us

“I don’t—” I start, but she immediately cuts me off.

“You lied to me as much as I lied to you,” she accuses, and I clench my jaw, my tongue sliding to the unfamiliar gap in the back of my mouth nervously. She notices. Because of course she does. “You had no idea who I was. As far as you were aware, I was a researcher in the wrong place at the wrong time. And you lied about your entire life, making me trust you when you were drawing danger closer and closer every day.”

“You think we’re even then?” I bite back, taking a step closer to her so she has to crane her neck to meet my gaze. It doesn’t make her any less intimidating. “I did what I had to do to protect myself. You did what you had to do touseme.”

And I’m not wrong. Her sins are greater than mine.

But we both put each other in danger. We both prioritized our missions, the things we needed to protect ourselves and get revenge on the same man, over each other. When we first met, I would have said that Emily and I couldn’t be more different. Her strength to my weakness, her anxiety to my fearlessness, her need for control to my desire for freedom. But it’s clear now that at the core of us, we are cut from the same cloth.

“Bea, tell Alisa what would have happened if I didn’t bring her to Clara,” Emily requests. I jolt at the reminder that I’m still not safe. That a half-dead Ilya in the corner is only half my battle, and the two Costa cousins in front of me may still use me to lure my father into the open. I shift and feel slightly comforted by the warm metal of a barrel tucked into the band of my sweatpants. It’s likely naive to believe I could outdraw Bea, but at least I’d go down swinging, as the Americans like to say.

“You would have been excommunicated from The Syndicate of Fate. A public award would have been placed on your head,and each member of your family would be tasked with hunting you down and bringing you home for punishment.”

Bea doesn’t seem affected by this horrid explanation, but I suppose she hasn’t been affected by much in the short time I’ve known her. I, however, feel my pulse in my fingertips, and I cross my arms over my chest, digging my nails into skin to avoid acknowledging her words.

“You brought Bea here. You weren’t running from them, you were calling in reinforcements,” I spit out. Emily’s confident, almost lazy grin should be infuriating. I cannot stand that I find it attractive. Something is wrong with me.

“Not to defend my irrational, hardheaded cousin, but she in fact didnotcall me in,” Bea corrects, the first hint of something like humor coloring her tone. “Clara sent me because Emily couldn’t be trusted to complete her mission independently.”

I don’t want to believe them.

Ireallywant to believe them.

“Ask her why I couldn’t be trusted,” Emily says, her confidence cracking slightly, letting desperation bleed through. I can’t look at her, so I keep my eyes on Bea.

“No,” I say, my voice too quiet to be convincing.

“Tell her, Bea,” Emily directs. Bea pushes her long, dark hair over her shoulder, raising her eyebrows at the back of Emily’s head.

“She doesn’t want to know.”

“Yes, she does,” Emily says, and I can feel her gaze on my cheek, my neck, my lips. “She knows what to say if she really didn’t want to hear it.”

I could say it. It would be a test of Emily’s willingness to listen, to maintain boundaries, to stop when I really need her to.

But I don’t want that word to be associated with these kinds of tests anymore. In the darkest parts of me, where the woman I will be when my father is dead resides, I only want to use thatword how it was meant to be used. To take a breath with the person who makes it easier to breathe.

Bea waits a few heartbeats.

“She put your life before the mission,” she says. Her face is carefully neutral now. Not the easy indifference I’ve seen her wear so far. I know what it looks like when someone is hiding beneath their own skin, and that’s what Bea is doing. “She implied that sacrificing you to your father was inherently contradictory to The Syndicate’s values, regardless of his actions against us. It was clear she’d compromise our ability to enact our retribution if it meant risking you.”

I swallow hard. My heart feels like it’s beating in my throat, choking me, making it impossible to respond, even if I knew what to say.

It’s wrong to let my own weakness and insecurity drive my feelings about Emily. She lied to me, manipulated me, used me. Just because she was allegedly willing to give up her entire life, everyone and everything she valued, to keep me safe, doesn’t justify her dishonesty and exploitation.

But there’s a small, jagged, broken part of me that desperately wants someone who will sacrifice everything for me. The little girl who only wanted to be something more than a pawn, finally becoming someone’s queen, their most valuable and treasured piece.

Perhaps it’s toxic. An extension of the objectification that my father and Ilya and everyone else that raised and groomed me required. But the queen can move any way she wants on the chessboard. And I have to hope that’s a step in the right direction.

“I don’t forgive you,” I say, the exhaustion and pain I’ve been withholding finally staking its claim on my body. My shoulders sag as I look at Emily, still bound and in her chair.

“You shouldn’t,” she says, and I believe she means it. “But I’d like the opportunity to earn it. And to forgive you too, for nearly getting me killed by your ex.”

Bea moves quicker than I can blink and smacks Emily on the back of the head.

And for the first time in what feels like a lifetime, I laugh.

Chapter 22