Allegiant (Divergent, #3)

by Veronica Roth

My Tris should look pale and small—she is pale and small, after all—but instead the room is full of her.

He smells like wind and sweat and soap, like Tobias and like safety.

I thought that when I received Christina’s forgiveness, the hard part of Will’s death would be over. But when you kill someone you love, the hard part is never over. It just gets easier to distract yourself from what you’ve done.

“Why is it,” I say, “that we always find ourselves surrounded by people?” “I don’t know,” he says. “Maybe because we’re stupid.” I laugh, and it’s laughter, not light, that casts out the darkness building within me, that reminds me I am still alive, even in this strange place where everything I’ve ever known is coming apart. I know some things—I know that I’m not alone, that I have friends, that I’m in love. I know where I came from. I know that I don’t want to die, and for me, that’s something—more than I could have said a few weeks ago.

That night we push our cots just a little closer together, and look into each other’s eyes in the moments before we fall asleep. When he finally drifts off, our fingers are twisted together in the space between the beds. I smile a little, and let myself go too.

It was agonizing. I relished every second of it.

I smile into my hand, lean my head against the window, and let the tears fall in silence. My parents did love each other. Enough to forsake plans and factions. Enough to defy “faction before blood.” Blood before faction—no, love before faction, always.

“Sometimes I feel like there is so much to be afraid of, and sometimes I feel like there is nothing left to fear.”

“Besides,” she says, “not every friendship turns into a romance. I haven’t tried to kiss you yet.” I laugh. “True.” “Where have you been lately?” Christina says. She wiggles her eyebrows. “With Four? Doing a little . . . addition? Multiplication?”

“You didn’t know how persuasive Jeanine was—” Something inside me snaps like a brittle rubber band. I punch him in the face.

If someone offers you an opportunity to get closer to your enemy, you always take it. I know that without having learned it from anyone.

My father knows what Evelyn knew: that the power to make people fear you is the only power you need. Weapons will do that for him.

“And?” he says, his voice and his eyes and his hands a little unsteady. “And,” I say, “I think you’re still the only person sharp enough to sharpen someone like me.” “I am,” he says roughly. And I kiss him. His arms slip around me and hold me tight, lifting me onto the tips of my toes. I bury my face in his shoulder and close my eyes, just breathing in the clean smell of him, the smell of wind.

I used to think that when people fell in love, they just landed where they landed, and they had no choice in the matter afterward. And maybe that’s true of beginnings, but it’s not true of this, now. I fell in love with him. But I don’t just stay with him by default as if there’s no one else available to me. I stay with him because I choose to, every day that I wake up, every day that we fight or lie to each other or disappoint each other. I choose him over and over again, and he chooses me.

“I love you, you know,” I say. “I know,” he replies.

I was so afraid that we would just keep colliding over and over again if we stayed together, and that eventually the impact would break me. But now I know I am like the blade and he is like the whetstone— I am too strong to break so easily, and I become better, sharper, every time I touch him.

Sometimes all I want is to be a few inches taller so the world does not look like a dense collection of torsos.

WHEN HER BODY first hit the net, all I registered was a gray blur. I pulled her across it and her hand was small, but warm, and then she stood before me, short and thin and plain and in all ways unremarkable—except that she had jumped first. The Stiff had jumped first. Even I didn’t jump first. Her eyes were so stern, so insistent. Beautiful.

I saw her, but I didn’t see her; no one saw her the way she truly was until she jumped. I suppose a fire that burns that bright is not meant to last.

I don’t know how long it takes for me to realize that isn’t going to happen, that she is gone. But when I do I feel all the strength go out of me, and I fall to my knees beside the table and I think I cry, then, or at least I want to, and everything inside me screams for just one more kiss, one more word, one more glance, one more.

“The person you became with her is worth being,” she says. “If you swallow that serum, you’ll never be able to find your way back to him.”