ravaged hearts

CHAPTER FOURTEEN,

RAVAGED HEARTS | CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  FIORA CHEVALIER HAD lived a life that was more than exciting enough. All she wanted was to enjoy the simple luxuries of life, and for a while she'd managed that. Nine months. That was how long she managed to stay out of the wrong side of the interrogation table, the wrong part of a cell.

  She was too tired to fight now. Despite it all, the Swan, Sanchez and those pesky Vayantean agents weren't illogical. They'd let them go once they found Bailen's children, which they would. These were the same people who'd brought down her country, after all.

  She brushed a lock of her blonde hair out of her eyes. "Here we are again."

  "My first time in a cell," Lilia replied, voice as soft as she'd remembered.

  Fiora paused for a moment, thinking back. That was true, actually. Lilia was rarely, if ever sent on high-risk missions, which meant she'd never been imprisoned before. She said,  "Wow. First time for everything."

   "I'm sorry," Lilia suddenly said. "I know you didn't want to get roped back into this. I know that but I still came to find you—"

  "Hey. Shush. Shush. It's not your fault. You were under orders. Lysandra? And Harris. Those two were always thick as thieves. Never liked them if you ask me. Don't tell them I said that."

  There was a hierarchy between the Falcons. There were the people at the top and the people at the bottom. Fiora had always fluctuated near the top, and Lilia had stuck staunchly at the bottom. But she'd always taken a liking for the younger girl. She'd always thought that give it enough years, and Lilia would have risen to at least a medium spot on the hierarchy.

  But Melique had fallen before that could happen.

  Lilia shook her head and laughed. "Believe it or no, Bassanio's the one barking orders now."

  Fiora felt her eyes bulge as she sputtered out, "Bassanio?"

  "I know. Shocking, right?"

  Fiora sat back down. All things considered, it was a comfortable cell. Two beds, two tables, two chairs. The bedding wasn't crusty and disgusting but rather crisp and clean. A cell reserved for people like her and Lilia. Wiccai. Falcon wiccai.

  Fiora murmured,  "He never struck me as the type who wanted power."

  Lilia shrugged. "People have hidden depths. I was side by side with him for years and never saw a glimmer of this kind of ambition."

  "You were young."

  "I was twelve when Contreras took me in. I knew how to spot these things. He's far more intelligent than any of us ever gave him credit for. You know, when Melique fell, he was the only one with a backup plan. He was the only one who saw it coming and prepared for it. Lysandra and Harris didn't have a choice."

  "Who else...?"

  "Mali. I think she's planning to risk it and run away soon, though. Brekson. He's... invisible these days. A shell of who he was. Remember when he was always the man with the plan?"

  "He's broken. For once he didn't know what to do. I remember those final weeks."

  "We both do."

  They fell quiet for a while. They remembered the final week with painful, startling clarity: Contreras' irrationality and mood swings, Caba's slow yet steady decline, Contreras' sudden death, Caba's arrest and subsequent assassination by a faction of Vayantean extremists. They were in the centre of the hurricane through it all, watching the only home they knew crumble bit by bit. Fall brick by brick. It was a fascinating and mesmerizing experience, watching your entire world be destroyed in the blink of an eye. Seeing it completely flip, years of effort and work vanishing instantaneously.

   It was the aftermath Fiora had fortunately missed. But Lilia would have been right there watching it happen. She did not pity the girl's position. Most of the Falcons were good people, but a few had always been unnecessarily cruel. The ones at the top were usually the worst. They had the most power to wield and abuse, after all. It was all perfectly logical.

  Lilia said, "I think all of us saw it coming."

  "Deep in our hearts, yeah," Fiora admitted. It was only blind loyalty and delusion that kept them going. Both of those things were wondrous fuels, she'd realised. If she ever felt like becoming an evil mastermind...

  Though evil mastermind was perhaps a bit of a stretch. No one was evil in this situation. Not the Saians, not them.

  "We'll be here for a while," she remarked. "Not too long, though. They'll find them soon. It won't take too much effort. They're Iolanthe Mi and Louis Sanchez and Constanza Castrillo and the Enrique Zevallos twins. With what they've gotten from us, they'll have the case solved in a week and Bailen's kids happily in their parents' arms."

  Lilia said nothing, just looked down at her hands. She still felt guilty, felt that this was somehow her fault. Fiora had felt the same for a long time after the war had ended, but slowly she'd realised that there had been no option. Bassanio had been the only of the Falcons who'd planned a backup route. None of the others expected Melique to ever fall. They'd had blind loyalty instilled within them, telling them that Melique was infallible. And because for many of them Melique was the first safe home they'd ever had, they'd all foolishly believed Anthony Contreras and his lackeys. What did it mean if Diego Contreras prodded his sticky figures in their direction and bossed them around once in a while? Nothing. Safety and security had been what they'd all been after.

  The Meliqueans used their craving for stability. And they'd all happily, willingly fallen into their trap. Because even though it wouldn't be a perfect world, at least it was their world. To a band of scrawny, starving street urchins who wanted to be destined for something more, it had been a golden ticket to the life they wanted.

  Fiora didn't regret it. Didn't regret a single choice she made. Even when the guilt trickled in during those dark nights, she never regretted it.

  Lilia said, "You really think we'll go down that easily?"

  We. Fiora resisted the urge to tell her that she'd stopped being Falcon the day she'd been found by the Saian agents half-dead in an alleyway. That moment, the day she'd let the Saians dress her wounds and put her in chains, that was the day she'd turned her back to the people who'd raised her, who'd brought her up, who'd turned her to what she was.

  "We have already been defeated once," Fiora said softly. "It does not take much difficulty for them to repeat history once more."