Chapter 27 · After the Last Bell

"Get your hands off me!"

I spat the words, but I didn't pull away.

Dax was shaking. It was barely a tremor in his fingers where they gripped my wrist, but to me, it felt like an earthquake. He wasn't looking at me like a judge anymore. Not like the man who held my life in a ledger. He looked like he’d just watched his own soul rot in real-time.

"I did it," he whispered.

His voice was raw. Gone was the polished, arrogant authority he used to keep the slums in line. "I signed the order, Mara. I locked the vault. I locked him in."

I yanked my arm back. Static jolted through the air. "Don't say his name. You don't get to say it."

"I have to!" Dax stepped in, looming over me. For once, it wasn't to intimidate. He looked desperate. "You gave up your memory to save me, and now I'm the one who destroyed everything you were trying to remember. Do you get how sick that is?"

"I don't care about the irony, Dax!" I screamed. The sound slammed off the cold stone walls. "I can't see his face!