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Jacin
Jacin cocked his head to one side. "So, what did you want to talk about?"
Winter fidgeted with the hem of her shirt. Before they had gone outside, Jacin had insisted that they change out of their uniforms. He hated all the stares they attracted outside of Rampion headquarters, especially when the stares were aimed at Winter. True, she drew her fair share of dumbfounded looks with just her face, but the uniform held their attentions and made them stare at her for minutes at a time.
Honestly, they were just glorified soldiers. That wasn't an invitation to have people gawk at them.
Winter gulped. "I-I want to tell the others."
"Tell the others what?" Jacin asked, though he had a sinking feeling that he already knew. Please let me be wrong, please let me be wrong.
"That we're Lunars."
He wasn't wrong.
Jacin rubbed his temples. "Winter, you know as well as I do that that's a terrible idea."
"It is a worse idea to continue to spy for Levana."
"If we keep spying for Levana, we might have a chance of keeping our lives!"
"At the cost of how many others? The last thing this city needs is more blood!"
Jacin sighed and placed his hands on Winter's shoulders. "Winter, listen to me. I know you don't like what the Lunars are doing, but they'll kill you if they know you've even been thinking about betraying them, assuming Levana doesn't force you to kill yourself."
"I know the consequences Jacin." Winter murmured, "I know how dangerous this is. But following her orders almost ended in Cress-friend's death, and it did end in the deaths of seven innocent people. I see them, lying in the darkness with blood spilling from their throats and their necks bent in strange ways. They're staring at me, they blame me for their deaths, I can see it in their eyes!"
"Winter, those deaths weren't your fault." Jacin told her softly. "Levana gave the order, not you. You were shoved into it against your will."
"But I let them die. I let them die, and they know it." Winter whispered, her voice cracking.
"You had no choice. It was their lives or yours."
Winter shook her head, her golden-brown eyes shining with tears. "No. It was their lives or yours."
Jacin blinked at her, wondering if he misheard. "Their lives… or mine?"
Winter nodded miserably.
"Winter, what are you talking about? How was my life in danger?"
"L-Levana wasn't pleased with my work." Winter stammered, "I wasn't giving her enough information. She told me that-that if I didn't work harder as a spy, someone would suffer. You know who the someone was."
Jacin did know. And it filled him with a rage he doubted even his powers could truly cover up. Of course, of course Levana would use him to get to Winter! The psycho witch would do anything to harm her stepdaughter's psyche even more! It's not enough that the girl sees bleeding walls and corpses crying out to her all the time. Nooooo, no punishment is good enough for the girl who dared to be born prettier than the queen of the Lunars! Winter had been so excited to see the outside world, but Jacin was starting to think this newfound "freedom" was even worse than her prison in the Lunar base. There, at least, Levana wasn't actively driving Winter further over the edge of insanity.
"Now do you see?" Winter whispered, tears pooling in her golden-brown eyes. "If we continue to work with the Lunars, Levana can have you killed at any time. If we left, became proper Rampions, then they'll be able to protect you. You'll be safe."
"But you won't be." Jacin replied softly. "Levana will just use you leaving as an excuse to finally get rid of you."
"She won't. My father made her promise to take care of me."
"And how well has she kept that promise? Don't you get it? This is what Levana wants. She's been looking for a reason to get rid of you ever since she realised you're prettier than her. Now, you're just going to hand it to her on a silver platter!"
"To get to me though, she will have to get through the other Rampions."
Jacin sighed. "Winter, you're just assuming that they'll still want to have us on once you tell them. The Lunars are the Rampions' biggest enemies. Once they find out that we've been spying for them, they'll kick us to the curb."
"No they won't." Winter smiled, "Our friends will protect us."
"You're seriously willing to put our fate in the hands of the son of the leader of the Council, a fashion-obsessed metal girl, a half-robot who's been here for about as long as we have, a angry French redhead, a criminal and a girl who's been abused by the Lunars for pretty much her whole life?"
"They will protect us." Winter said firmly.
"Did you even listen to a word I just said?"
"Yes, and they are all our friends. They will protect us."
Jacin stared at his best friend, the girl he dedicated his life to protecting, as she stubbornly continued to insist that they basically commit suicide. Although, they were both pretty much doomed anyway. Levana would still somehow find some reason to justify killing Winter, and probably end up killing him in the process. This plan, idiotic as it was, would just end up speeding up the process. And who knows, maybe Winter's whimsical view of the world would actually be correct and her idea, ludicrously hopeful as it was, might work.
He saw Winter's triumphant smile even before his shoulders slumped in defeat. "Can you at least wait until after the Rampions unveil their new weapon? When they find out what we are, it's pretty much a given that they'll use it on us."
Winter nodded, eyes glimmering with relief. "Yes, yes, just so long as we tell them."
A/N: This chapter was mostly filler, but next week I promise that we'll have something more interesting: the unveiling of the Rampions' new weapon!
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