Page 69 of Us in Ruins
“I don’t need to do anything for you anymore.”
“Margot, you don’t understand.” He stepped forward, and she moved back, foxtrotting around the tomb entrance. “I would never do anything to hurt you like that. We’re partners.”
The Mourning of Virgil watched them, her head propped up on her palm and her heavy lids blinking. Bored or bemused—or maybe both. Like she’d seen two thousand years’ worth of heartache from her perch, and this was another rerun.
Heat crawled up Margot’s neck, staining her cheeks and ears. “I understand perfectly fine. You probably took one look at me in the temple and thought she’ll work.”
“It wasn’t like that,” Van said, but his mouth had worked into a pinched frown.
“Two looks, then?” she wagered. Bold for a girl who’d just dribbled snot onto Van’s shirt. “You know what I think? I think you betrayed Atlas, too.”
His eyes narrowed. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I absolutely do.” Margot pushed her curls away from her face. Every word was vitriolic. “Atlas had been the brains behind the operation, and you were just the brawn. Some kid from the city with a chip on his shoulder, desperate to prove himself.”
The muscle in Van’s jaw twinged. “I trusted him, and he betrayed me.”
“Like you were going to betray me?” Margot knew, deep in her bones, that every quicksilver word off her tongue would leave a mark. “Maybe Atlas stood right here, the shard in his hands, and realized that only one of you was going to get the treasure. And maybe he tried to warn you, told you not to construct the Vase. But you thought he wanted the treasure for himself. So, you turned on him first.”
Van’s armor cracked, if only briefly.
So, she hit where it would hurt. “Someday, you’re going to realize that if you’re so hell-bent on doing everything on your own, that’s exactly how you’ll stay. Alone.”
God, the humiliation of it all. She’d trusted him. Some part of her actually thought she might have even been able to love him—all of him, not just the idea of him.
Van didn’t retreat. Didn’t cower. The only sign of agitation was a breath pushed out through his nose. “If you’ll calm down, I can explain, but you aren’t going to like it.”
“Most people don’t like finding out they’ve been used, Van. I don’t know what it was like a hundred years ago, but now there’s this thing called basic decency, and maybe you should think about getting some.” Margot started down the stairs, a white-knuckle grip on the strap of her tote in case he’d gotten any bright ideas from Enzo.
Behind her, Van said, “I tried to leave you out of it, but you said you’d do anything.”
“And anything usually doesn’t include voluntary human sacrifice.”
His voice trailed after her, saying, “I’d hoped we could find another way.”
Her face burned red-hot. Every step raised her blood pressure. Calm down, he’d said. Calm down. She couldn’t. Margot had never been enough to keep anyone around for the right reasons—she should have known Van was only here for the wrong ones.
And despite everything he’d said, he didn’t chase after her. Even when she had the one thing he needed most, he was still too stubborn to apologize.
Wait. He wasn’t chasing after her.
Margot peered into her tote bag, rustling through the mass of emergency snacks and loose pens, but there was no fragment of hardened clay shoved down at the bottom.
She turned back, fuming. “How dare you?”
The shard was clutched in Van’s palm. He must have slipped it out of her bag while they were arguing. He said, “You know why I need this.”
The tempest inside Margot stirred faster, like a hurricane finding a pocket of warm water. Even if she wanted to stop it, she couldn’t. The words spilled out of her, floodwater through an opened dam. “You can’t just steal it from me! I’m the one who almost got pancaked for it.”
His jaw clenched, lips thinning. “I tried to tell you not to barge in there, but did you listen?”
No. She hadn’t.
“You don’t deserve the shard,” she seethed. “Turning your back on the only person you have left to care about you? If it weren’t for me, you’d still be trapped in that temple.”
“And what about you?” he asked.
Margot’s fists clenched at her side. “What about me?”