Map of Fates (The Conspiracy of Us 2)

Jack fiddled with the end of the curtains. “Avery. This is no longer worth it. Any of this. After we get the bracelet, we do whatever we have to do to trade it for your mom, and then we get out. Together. Forget what anyone else thinks.”

I looked up. “You’d leave the Circle for good?”

“You wouldn’t? You don’t want this. You don’t care about the Circle.”

“But you do.” I’d wondered whether he’d actually leave with me if that was what I chose to do. I realized now that, deep down, I hadn’t believed he would.

Jack palmed his forearm, running his thumb over his compass tattoo. “I thought I did. I cared about the Saxons. I thought staying with them, with the Circle, was the right thing to do. And now—” He shook his head. “Now I feel like the right thing is to get as far from this mess as possible.”

Did he ever think the right thing to do might not be so simple?

The thought surprised me. Because, honestly, I should agree. I should want even less to do with the Circle now. My father was willing to swap my freedom for the tomb, and now Jack was saying he’d come with me. I no longer had to consider how I felt about leaving my newfound family. I should be ecstatic.

But that wasn’t what was going on inside me right now. Of course there was part of me that wanted to run away, but there was another part of me that felt like I had the whole Circle on my shoulders now. Like I could earn that hopeful look they kept giving me: Dev’s people, and Takumi’s. Even Scarface.

That I could be thinking anything like this hadn’t even crossed Jack’s mind. For good reason—it was crazy. I thought of Stellan’s words in the apartment in Montmartre. There was no leader of the Circle, but the closest thing to it was me. Us.

And besides, if Jack and I did run away together, what would that mean? Would we be pledging to be together forever? Yes, I cared about him—a lot—but when I looked at it that way, it was a big commitment.

The knot inside me felt too tight, on the verge of snapping.

I still hadn’t answered, and I didn’t know what I was supposed to say. I just smiled and wished I felt it as much as I should. “I’m going to go clean up.”

When I came back after washing dirt and traces of Stellan’s blood off me, Jack was sitting on the bed. He was shirtless, inspecting his right shoulder in a mirror on the far wall.

He started to pull his shirt back on, but grimaced.

“Don’t,” I said. “What is it?” I dropped my towel on the bed and came around in front of him, taking the shirt from his hand. I touched the darkening bruise across his shoulder, and he jerked away.

“The fall from the window. Landed right on my shoulder. I’ll fix it up tomorrow.”

I ran my fingers over his cool skin. Now that I felt a bit more settled, there was something else I had to say, something I’d been pushing out of my mind since seeing Lydia at the Arc de Triomphe. Something I really had to know if I was considering running away with Jack. The train jolted. We were moving. I paced to the window and pulled the curtain aside to look out as we slowly left the station behind.

I didn’t want to ask, but I couldn’t not. “How did Lydia and Cole know where we were today?”

There was a pause. “I don’t know.”

The knot tightened even more. It was hanging in the air, implicit, but I had to say it. “Did you tell them?”

He let out a long breath. “No.”

I rested my forehead against the cool glass with a thump. Thank God. I don’t know what I would have done if it had turned out that he’d . . . I shook my head.

“I guess they have sophisticated tracking equipment,” I thought out loud. “We told them we were going to Paris. They must have figured it out somehow. And Scarface—oh.” I stood up straight. I hadn’t told Jack about that part yet. I watched the Paris suburbs go by out the window as I told him the short version of my encounter with Scarface. Branding him with my necklace. The killing of the other guards. How he’d pledged his loyalty to me. I felt strangely detached talking about it.

The bed springs squeaked, and I felt Jack come up behind me. “I’m so sorry. You shouldn’t have to deal with something like that—”

“Yes, I should.” I twisted to face him. “This is my fight as much as anyone else’s. More, really. You can’t protect me from everything. Okay?”

Jack put his good arm around me. He smelled like sweat and blood. I leaned into his cool bare chest. “Okay,” he said.

The door creaked open, and Stellan poked his head in. “Oops, I’m interrupting,” he said. “You should really learn to lock the door.”

“You’re not interrupting.” I slipped out from under Jack’s arm. “Is your head okay?” He looked a lot better than he had earlier.

Stellan nodded. He didn’t have a shirt on, either, and wore pajama pants that were a good deal too small for him.

“Are those Elodie’s?” I said.

Stellan pouted. He actually pouted. “My clothes, they have blood all over.” His accent was much thicker than usual. “She said I could not sit on the bed unless—” He indicated the pants, and I fought an inappropriate laugh. He surveyed Jack. “Shoulder’s dislocated.”

Jack nodded.

“His shoulder, it dislocates if you look at it wrong,” Stellan said to me. A nostalgic smile brightened his face. Far more lighthearted than he should look after tonight. And definitely woozy.

“Are you drunk?” I said, crawling onto the bed.

Another inappropriately dreamy smile. “Concussion. Pain medication. Too much pain medication? But they are not working yet. Are they working yet?” He touched his head and winced as if remembering how much it hurt, and then looked up again like he was surprised to find himself in the room. His eyes focused back on Jack. “Lie down,” he ordered, gesturing to the bed.