I told her, and the look of dismay on her face told me I wasn’t being crazy in my worry. We sat in a corner of the mess hall with two bowls of canned chicken and rice soup.
“I barely escaped Linette,” Remy said, taking a sip. “It’s so weird. She legit wants to hang with me, and I keep waiting for her to make fun of me. It’s hard to take her friendliness seriously.”
“Who knew,” I said. “That the way to win her over was to kill for her?”
Remy laughed and rolled her eyes. “It was a lucky shot in the dark.”
“Doesn’t matter. And you shouldn’t underestimate yourself.”
She swirled her spoon around in the soup. “I’m glad she’s alive. The friendship thing is just going to take some getting used to.”
As I ate, she kept staring down at her soup, stirring, lost in thought. I wondered what all she’d been through in that camp. She definitely seemed . . . off. Not herself. She told me she’d been a teacher to the alien children, and I knew Remy. I knew her heart always got involved.
I braced myself to ask her. “Do you miss the, uh, Baelese kids?”
She sucked her bottom lip in and set down the spoon, holding her hands in her lap and staring away. My heart ached. I rubbed her back, and Remy flinched.
I dropped my hand. “I’m sorry.”
“No.” Her voice shook. “I’msorry. We weren’t allowed to touch. Ever.”
“What else happened in there?” Remy wouldn’t look at me. “I won’t tell anyone.”
She looked at me now, and the remorse in her eyes gutted me. “Senator Navis made me his liaison to the humans.”
“Okay,” I said.
Remy looked down again, and realization smacked me with an open hand.
“He liked you, didn’t he?” I shuddered with a gasp. “And you . . .” She hunched, and I couldn’t help myself. I put a hand on her back again, and she let me. “It’s okay, Remy.”
“No, it’s not.” She shook her head. “I’m, like, a traitor. Linette told me to get out of there, so I knew something was about to happen, and I wanted to save him and the kids. I wanted to get them to safety. I tried, and then—” She choked up, bringing her fingertips to her lips.
Remy’s heart had always been big and soft. She saw gray, malleable space where other people saw rigid black and white.
“You’re not a traitor,” I said in a firm voice. “Don’t ever say that again, and don’t think it for a second longer. You’re a good person with a tender heart, and you got to see a side of the enemy that nobody else did.”
Her shoulders remained slumped, jaw quivering, and I knew there was more to the story than she was letting on. Remy usually told me everything, so if she was holding back, it had to be huge. Maybe she’d confide in me someday, but I wouldn’t press her. Instead, I twined my fingers with hers and made her look at me.
“Eat, okay?”
She nodded and picked up her spoon. At that moment, Tater and New York Josh walked into the room. Something electric seemed to stretch across the space as my brother and Remy made eye contact. Tater stopped mid-step to stare at her, making Josh go around him.
For too long there had been games between Remy and Tater. Things left unsaid. I’d come to expect it. So imagine my surprise when Remy stood without looking back and went straight to him, sliding her arms around his neck. His went around her waist and his eyes closed as he pulled her close. And right there in front of everyone, they held each other.
