CHAPTER
TWENTY-FIVE TOBIASTRIS AND I meet Nita in the hotel lobby after midnight, among the potted plants with their unfurling flowers, a tame wilderness. When Nita sees Tris at my side, her face tightens like she just tasted something bitter.
“You promised you wouldn’t tell her,” she says, pointing at me. “What happened to protecting her?”
“I changed my mind,” I say.
Tris laughs, harshly. “That’s what you told him, that he would be protecting me? That’s a pretty skillful manipulation. Well done.”
I raise my eyebrows at her. I never thought of it as a manipulation, and that scares me a little. I can usually rely on myself to see a person’s ulterior motives, or to invent them in my mind, but I was so used to my desire to protect Tris, especially after almost losing her, that I didn’t e
