Free Unravel by Imogen Howson

guess . . . it seemed more like her style than yours?”
    Elissa opened her mouth to reply, and realized that she was right on the edge of tears. She clamped her mouth shut, clenching her teeth so hard her jaw twitched. Hell. Hell and hell and hell . She had to get control of herself or she was going to cry. And she was damned if she was going to cry in front of everyone—in front of Lin, who’d done this to her. She lifted her cup to take a sip, needing to do something to distract herself, but her hand was shaking enough that a little of the hot liquid slopped over the edge, sploshing onto the floor.
    â€œLissa.” Cadan put down his own cup and plate, and both his arms came around her, one hand steadying hers. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
    â€œI can’t . . . ,” she said, her voice a whisper, a thread holding back the tears. “I can’t talk  . . . not here . . .”
    â€œThat’s no problem,” said Cadan, and then somehow he’d gathered up her drink and his own food and, arm still around her, he was turning her away from the table, turning her so they wouldn’t get a glimpse at her face, steering her toward the nearest door. “Markus,” he threw over his shoulder, “Lissa and I need some fresh air. We’ll be back in thirty minutes, okay?”
    Over at the other side of the table, Ivan chuckled. “Fresh air is what you kids call it nowadays, is it?”
    Cadan laughed, as if everything were normal, as if the worst thing going on was Ivan trying to embarrass him. “Keep your comments to yourself, would you? You’ve surely seen me go get some fresh air before Lissa came along?”
    â€œActually, Captain, that’s something I’m glad I always managed to avoid,” said Ivan, a world of suggestion in his tone, and Elissa heard several people break into laughter too as she and Cadan reached the door and he let go of her to slide it open.
    â€œJeez,” he said, as it snapped shut behind them, and now there was embarrassment in his voice, “I should have known I was opening myself up to that one, huh?”
    They went along another of the dim corridors, then out of the building to where floodlights poured over the sand, colorless, and so bright that Elissa’s eyes stung momentarily.
    Cadan set their sort-of meal down on the sand and dropped to sit beside it, picking his fork up from where it had been standing upright in his potato plate. He patted the ground beside him, and Elissa sat. She picked up her cup, then put it back on the sand and hugged her knees to her chest.
    â€œTell me,” Cadan said.
    Where she’d moved the cup, the edge of spilled chocolate on the bottom of it had left a semicircle of damp stickiness in the sand. She ran her finger along it, pushing the sand up to cover the sticky line. “It was both of us,” she said.
    â€œYes.”
    â€œBut I didn’t want to. Lin”—she spread her hand, digging each fingertip under the sand, still warm from the heat of the day—“Lin made me.”
    She heard hesitation in Cadan’s voice. “You mean, like when they were doing the procedures on her and she dragged you into going through them with her?”
    â€œNo.” What Cadan was talking about—that had happened, and it had caused the pain and blackouts that had wrecked three years of Elissa’s life. But she’d never blamed Lin forit—it had been involuntary, a terrified, automatic reaction to pain that the human body wasn’t meant to bear.
    â€œNo, not like that. She . . .” Elissa swallowed. It should feel like a relief to be telling someone, but it didn’t. It felt like revealing an awful, shameful secret. “She exploded that first ship herself, and then she was trying to do the same with the next one. But she couldn’t, she was running out of strength. She asked me