“Then who does?” she demanded.
He gave her a small, impassive shrug.
“Does the arrow aim itself?” he asked.
Libby, rather than answer, turned frustratedly on her heel, launching herself toward the stairs and making her way back to her room.
On the landing of the gallery she collided with someone who’d been turning the corner simultaneously, the two of them barreling into one another. Had she been more able to focus on anything outside her thoughts, she might have heard him coming. As it was, though— Tristan steadied her, hands around her shoulders.
“Have you seen Parisa?” he asked her, and because Libby was distraught—because she was fucking human—she glared up at him.
“Fuck you,” she said venomously.
Tristan blinked, taken aback. “What?”
“You knew.” Ah, so that was why. In a fit of delayed recognition, Libby suddenly understood the force of her resentment. “You knew this whole time, didn’t you? And you didn’t tell me.”
“Knew—” He stopped, contemplating her face. “You mean—？”
“Yes. The death. The fucking murder.”
He flinched, and for a moment, she hated him. She loathed him.
“I can’t—” She broke off, agonized or anguished, unable to tell the difference and unwilling to locate the divide. “I can’t, I won’t—”
“Rhodes.” Tristan’s hands were still tight around her shoulders. “I should have told you, I know. I know you’re angry—”
“Angry?” She wasn’t not, though that hardly seemed the proper word for it. She was feeling something that festered, true, and it could easily have been rage. She had learned long ago to control her magical impulses, restraining them, but at the moment she could feel it spark, smelling smoke.
“Believe me, Tristan, angry,” she seethed, “doesn’t even begin to describe it—”
“None of us actually knows how much this Society controls,” Tristan reminded her, dropping his voice to a conspiratorial hush. “Do you really think anyone can walk away from this? Believe me, I know recruitment, I know the difference between institutions and cults, and there is no innocence to this one. You do not get to walk away.”
He may have quieted, but she refused. “Then why? Why do it?”
“You know why.” His mouth tightened.
“No.” The thought sickened her. “Tell me why anyone would do this, tell me why—”
“Rhodes—”
“No. No.” She wasn’t entirely sure what had inflamed her so maniacally, but she beat a fist against his chest, letting her delirium take over. “No, you’re one of them, aren’t you?” Her lips felt cold, impassive, the words tumbling out like debris, retching from her unfeeling mouth. “It means nothing to you, because of course it doesn’t. Sex is nothing to you, this is all a game—Everything is just a game!—so what’s murder? What is a life, compared to all of this? This Society is just a poison,” she spat, her fury so rapidly spent her head fell heavily against Tristan’s chest, fearful and exhausted.
“They dose us,” she muttered, “a little at a time with it, a little more each round, until we can’t feel anything anymore—until we’re blind and deaf and numb to everything—”
Tristan took her hand and tugged her around the corner, pulling her wordlessly into his room. She nearly flung herself inside, swaying unbalanced beside the hearth, and he sealed the door shut behind them, staring at the handle.
“What’s really going on, Rhodes?”
She shut her eyes.
Ask yourself where power comes from, Ezra said in her head. If you can’t see the source, don’t trust it— Don’t tell me who to trust!
“Rhodes.”
Tristan came no closer, and she couldn’t decide whether she wanted him to.
“Why would we have done this?” Her voice sounded thin, girlish. “Why?”
“Because, Rhodes. Because look around you.”
“At who? At what?”
He didn’t answer. Bitterly, she conceded that he didn’t need to.
She had more power now than she had ever possessed. It wasn’t a matter of what she was born with or what she was given; being here, among them, with access to the library’s materials, she had every opportunity to travel miles beyond herself. She could feel the outer edges of her power more distantly than ever, further than the tips of her fingers or the soles of her shoes. She could feel herself in waves, pulsing. She could feel herself expanding, and there was no end to it, no beginning. Who she had been once was as distant and unrecognizable as what she would, inevitably, become.