Claire actually smiled, a little wicked, and laughed at the man. “And he loves her. Your point is invalid.”

“The future is what matters, and your ignorant opinion matters little.”

“A fact of which I am well aware.”

At the door, he spoke over his shoulder. “Do not measure your worth by one minor success, Miss O’Donnell.”

“I agree. I measure it by my countless failures instead.”

“You fight for what you believe in, yet when you grew fragile, your answer was to seek out a meaningless death. Mine is to spend what years I have left working for a greater purpose. I will see the world altered, improved. You and I are not that different. I simply chose to be stronger and was willing to pay the price to enact change.”

She had no idea where the words were coming from or why they seemed so important. “Your logic is corrupted. I chose to die before I became like you. That makes me stronger than you are.”

The man faced her one last time, those striking eyes unsettling. “It does not make you stronger. It makes you a coward.”

Claire felt as if he had struck her, the storm in her words unleashing nothing more than a pointless whispering breeze… because there was an undeniable fragment of truth in his words.

There was nothing else to be said between them, the man dismissing her as if she were nothing. The door closed with a thud. She must have stood there for ages, staring at the metal, half numb. Eventually, she moved towards the food, chewed and swallowed with no idea of what she ate, nor did she notice that she did not get sick.

Thinking of that stupid book, The Art of War, of Sun Tzu and all he seemed to have accomplished, Claire remembered: Thus the expert in battle moves the enemy, and is not moved by him.

Jules had just done that to her.

So, how does one move a mountain? Her words were nothing to Shepherd, arguments ended in sex, but her actions had affected him more than once. On occasion she must have caused distraction in his pursuit. The monster even said he loved her, in his own twisted fashion. That gave her influence of a sort, now she just needed to learn how to wield it.

Her green eyes went to the watercolor of poppies still resting against the wall—a mindless project that had once made her cell a little more bearable. The unwelcome cord in her chest pulsed. She needed a reaction, something small, a place to begin.

Absently, she prepared her paints, her mind full of one image, one hard truth. There was no need for much color, the world was nothing but shades of grey under a bruised sky.

9