“For sending you away again. For not warning you in time.”
“No way,” he said, the grogginess disappearing from his tone. “We’re not doing that.”
“It’s my fault—”
“The fuck it is.” He lifted her face to meet his gaze. The lines around his eyes ran deeper, and his dark brown skin had taken on a cool tinge. He looked tired, old. But his warm eyes shone with determination. “You didn’t know what was happening before we left; there’s nothing you could have done.”
“It may not be directly my fault, but I should have seen it coming. The signs were there.”
“No,” he said again, tone even more adamant. “I’ve watched you wither from guilt over the last five years about what happened on Paxus. Like hell I’m going to let this extend that even further.”
“I know you think I’m too hard on myself about that—”
“That’s an understatement.”
“But there’s something I never told you about what happened.”
His brows knit. She took a deep breath, then hesitated. He’d gone this long without knowing, what good would it do now?
But Griffith knew everything about her, except that. It’d been the only thing she’d ever kept from him, and that didn’t feel right anymore. They’d come too close to death too many times in the last twenty-four hours. She didn’t want either of them to die with a lie left between them.
“Why are you still beating yourself up about it?” he asked. “The targets got away, it happens. It’s not your fault. It was Lugen’s decision to cover it—”
“They didn’t get away.”
“What?” he asked, his voice a dull croak. “Yes, they did. I was with you.”
“Not at the end. You were confirming the mountain pass was clear, and I was already inside.”
“I think I would have noticed a bunch of corpses once I got there.”
She shook her head.
“So they were never there?” he asked. “Bad intel?”
“I let them go.”
He didn’t respond in any perceivable way, expression blank as he stared back at her, unblinking. He cleared his throat quietly. “You … what?”
She just nodded slowly.
He blew out a heavy breath. “Why?”
She looked down at her hands, entwined in Griffith’s thick, calloused fingers. “I … couldn’t. That’s why I’m hard on myself about it. I still can’t say whether I did the right thing.”
He didn’t speak, but when she looked back up at him, his confusion had disappeared, replaced with serious, intent concern.
His jaw tightened. “You’re not kidding, are you?”
“No.”
“What do you mean you let them go?”
“I just … I couldn’t do it. I was standing there with a gun to the head of the last breeder. And they were staring back at me, and all I could think was I would be the last thing any Viator would ever see.”
“Right, which was the whole objective,” he said, voice thick with bewildered disbelief. “The whole point of the campaign. Hell—of the war.”
She cast her gaze down, unable to stomach the astonishment in his bloodshot eyes. “I know, Griff.”
Unwinding his fingers from hers, he sat up, swinging his legs over the edge of the exam table. He groaned along with the too-sudden movement.