Page 97 of Sparktopia
The funny thing is, I don’t think it’s got anything to do with me. Somehow, we’ve stopped talking about me and moved on to him. And I think he just realized that he gave up some information about himself that he didn’t actually mean to.
I don’t lower my eyes. I meet his gaze, heavy as it is. “You know what I think?”
“Can’t wait to hear.”
“I think… I would like to be the one person who doesn’t disappoint you. The one person who exceeds your expectations.”
“Now why would you wanna go and do something like that?”
I lift up one shoulder in a half-hearted shrug. “Because I can relate.”
“Did that boyfriend of yours disappoint ya, Clara?”
I nod as I try and stop the frown, but there’s no way I can.
“He sent ya into that tower? Sacrificed ya? For a god he’d never even met?”
I suck in a breath, but my throat is tightening up with an oppressive sadness. “He didn’t even try.” I feel the tears welling up in my eyes, and I have a very strong urge to stop them. To pull myself together. To handle this heartbreak with grace, the way I was taught to handle all the other things that came with being a Maiden. But I have to face this truth eventually. Not justlet it stew inside me, knowing it’s true, but never admitting it. So I keep going and let the tears fall where they may. “That’s what hurt me. It wasn’t the god or the tower. It was him. Because if I were Finn and he were me, I would’ve tried. I would’ve…” I exhale loudly with frustration. “I would’ve done something daring to try and save him.”
“Would ya? I mean, people think that way, Clara, but most of the time, when presented with a situation as out of control as that, most people surrender. Almost no one plays the hero. So before ya give up on him entirely and condemn him to a dark place in your heart, never to be heard or seen again, ya might just cut the man a break, ya know?”
“I do. I get it. And, to be honest, that whole time I was sitting in the health center I was imagining what I would say if I ever saw him again.”
“What would you say?”
“Well, I’d apologize, obviously.”
“Why obviously?”
“Oh”—I laugh, and my smile is big—“I threw a fit, Tyse.” I lower my chin and give him a serious, steely stare. “Absolutefit. I cursed him, and called him names, I think.”
“You don’t remember?”
“I was so mad. I just lost it.”
“And now?”
“Well, first, I’m embarrassed about that. But more importantly, I know for sure that he had no choice. And it was the right call.”
“How do ya know that?”
“Because when I got within a certain distance of the door, it pulled me in. I didn’t walk through of my own accord.”
“Why’s that matter again? Maybe you told me, but I forgot.”
“Because he said if he didn’t send me in, the god would take the Maidens-in-Waiting—which is just Gemna now—and then all the Little Sisters too.”
“These little sisters are…? Relations?”
“No. Pledges. Prospective Maidens. And there were seventy-five of them. So if Finn had refused we all would’ve died.”
Tyse was leaning forward, his arms on the table, as this conversation played out. But now he leans back. “It’s a logical assumption that he was right based on the pulling you described. But that don’t make it a fact, Clara. Not that it matters. You should just think a little more critically. Sometimes things aren’t that simple.”
I don’t know what to say to that, so I say nothing.
He’s staring at me. Hard. But not in a mean way. A new way, maybe. He’s not unwilling to give Finn the benefit of the doubt, but he’s not gonna give him a pass.
And he doesn’t want me to, either.
