I watched Jack's fingers curl into Stellan's shirt, his jaw twitch. "I haven't-"
"Oh really? You felt so guilty about being with Avery that you betrayed her to the Circle. You felt so guilty about Oliver Saxon's death that you turned on me and Elodie."
Elodie hissed in a low breath, and I held mine. Oh.
"Do you remember that?" Stellan went on. "You were practically my brother until you decided not to be my friend anymore. It wasn't your fault what happened to Oliver, and it certainly wasn't mine."
There were some things between them I'd scratched the surface of, and there were plenty I knew nothing about. But I did know Jack blamed himself for the death of Lydia and Cole's older brother. He also, to an extent, blamed Stellan and Elodie and the relationship the three of them used to have for being a distraction that led to the tragedy. If that's what this was about, it had been building for years. Since they were younger, more naive, less broken. And since they were smaller and less powerful and couldn't actually kill each other.
Jack's biceps strained with effort, whether from holding Stellan off or holding himself back, I couldn't tell.
"It's not my fault that I'm this thirteenth bloodline, either," Stellan said, strained. "And it's not my fault-"
Stellan glanced at me, and then Jack did, too. I wanted to melt into the wall.
"For years you've been blaming other people and hating yourself for bad things that happened." Punctuating his words with shoves against Jack's chest, Stellan said, "It is not. My. Fault."
Jack punched him.
Stellan staggered backward, bracing himself against the wall. He worked his jaw back and forth, and then he laughed. Laughed. Jack might actually kill him.
I started forward again, but Elodie grabbed my arm.
"I'm just sorry you're stuck with us when you'd rather be with a real Circle family who plays by the rules." Stellan stalked toward Jack again. He might have been laughing, but the fists balled at his sides said something different. "I guess it is my fault that I wanted someone around who I used to trust."
And then I realized it. As much as all of us had been afraid of losing people we cared about lately, Jack and Stellan thought they'd lost each other years ago. They'd both suppressed the feeling for so long that it only took a spark to make it explode.
Love and hate. They weren't opposites.
Stellan shook his head slowly. "I thought maybe one day you would wake up and see that blind obedience is not the same as doing the right thing," he said. "I guess not. But that means you, of all people, cannot talk to me about loyalty."
Jack flew at him, and slammed him into the wall hard enough that his head bounced.
I sucked in a quick breath, but another sound drowned it out.
A loud crack sounded through the tunnel, and Stellan's arms pinwheeled-then he fell backward through the wall, pulling Jack with him.
CHAPTER 11
I rushed to the destroyed wall to find Jack scrambling off Stellan, who lay on his back in a pile of bricks, blood trickling down his temple. They had knocked a person-sized hole into what appeared to be an older, mustier tunnel.
Elodie peered over my shoulder as I climbed through the hole. The air was damper in here, and sour. I coughed, and pulled my shirt up over my mouth and nose as Stellan stood and brushed dirt off his palms.
"If we're supposed to go in there, wouldn't there be some kind of sign?" Elodie said suspiciously. "There's nothing to indicate we should knock through a piece of the wall and traipse inside."
Stellan picked up his flashlight and peered into the darkness.
I picked up one of the bricks. They were about the size of modern red bricks, but a good deal thinner, and rough hewn. They could have been two thousand years old. I scratched at the mortar on the edge of the brick with my fingernail, then smacked it against the nearest wall. It shattered easily.
"Why would anyone make a wall of an underground tunnel out of something that'd break so easily?" I wondered out loud. "Unless . . ."
Elodie reached through the hole and plucked a piece of the brick from my hand. "Unless it was meant to be broken." She thought for a second, then said, "Come here."
She shined her flashlight on me, picking up my necklace, with its thirteen loops, and studying it. "It's a Gordian knot," she said. "I hadn't realized it before." Down the tunnel, Stellan's footsteps stopped.
I picked the necklace up off my chest and held it out. "What's a Gordian knot?"
"It was one of Alexander's tests."