by May Dawson
“We’ve got to trust each other,” I told him, “And we’ve got to trust him.”
Jensen pressed his forehead to mine. “I don’t know what I’d do without you, Maddie. I know you’ll always put the mission first but please, for my sake… try to see yourself as half as valuable as I do.”
He would never understand that it was his love in part that made me feel reckless with my life, fearless about living in service to something bigger than myself. He made me stronger, better, more powerful. I’d like to think we did that for each other.
But I just kissed him.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Silas
Once our shift was over, even as we made small talk with the other guards, even though he smiled and talked and pretended everything was fine, I knew that deep down, Rafe was vibrating with rage.
There might be a reason that Rafe and rage were only one letter off from each other n fact.
I couldn’t believe none of us ever noticed that when we were enraging him at the academy.
Rafe suggested, “Let’s go have a smoke before supper.”
I yawned. “I’m not sure I’m in the mood.”
I couldn’t even tell if I was fucking with him or if I really didn’t want to be alone with him.
It wasn’t Rafe I was scared of. I’d always found his bossy, brotherly act at the academy rather charming; his good intentions were always so obvious. And if he hated me now, well, that would be sad but I really didn’t have the bandwidth to care. Not with all the Rebels to save.
But I didn’t want to think about what I’d done to Maddie. Every time I remembered her face, the way she’d gone rigid with pain, her fingers flexing helplessly in the mud…
Well, I couldn’t afford to think about that. But if we made it out of here alive, if we completed our mission, Maddie would think it was worth it. I knew that about her. She’d chosen that, and she’d saved Isabelle from so much worse pain and possibly from death.
And if Maddie thought it was worth it, maybe I did too.
At least I would try to.
But holding onto that was a tenuous thing and I wasn’t sure it could survive close contact with Rafe and his protective fury.
“Let’s go hunting then,” Rafe said suddenly. “There must be something we can hunt at night.”
“Yes, of course,” I said. It was brilliant thinking; if we established what looked like t might become a routine now of going out at night and returning with a brace of rabbits, it would provide us with a lot of freedom to leave camp without arousing suspicion. We could meet our friends on the other side.
“Be careful out there,” Tobias warned us. “Lots of things out there now with the rips that might be hunting you while you think you’re hunting.”
I laughed. “Why don’t you come with us?”
“No thanks. There’s a warm fireplace and a cards game calling my name.”
I wondered what Maddie and Jensen were doing right now—there was probably no warm fire for them—but I pushed the thought aside. They were survivors, they’d be fine. They were going through far less than others who were trapped here and knew that it was unlikely they’d ever return to freedom.
Jensen and Maddie had all the hope in the world, and that was far better than a warm fire.
Or at least I was pretty sure that’s what Maddie would tell me. Hope doesn’t keep anyone from getting frostbite.
Rafe and I made our way deep into the woods before he whirled to face me. All the fury he’d contained was written across his face now.
“Calm down,” I said, before he could unleash. “It’s no worse than you did to her.”
I knew it would enrage him, and I said it anyway.
He stared at me in shock. Before he could gather himself, I added, “I’m not going to let you scold me for doing something I didn’t want to do. Maddie and I saw no other way out. She chose that.”
“I don’t care,” he enunciated carefully. “You don’t hurt her. You know she’ll do anything to protect other people—”
“Yes,” I said. “And I love that about her. I’m not trying to change her.”
Rafe glowered at me, as if my calm tone just annoyed him more. “Don’t you hate yourself for what you did to her?”
“Just because you hate yourself for whipping her when you had no choice, Rafe, don’t think I’ve got the same set of weaknesses.”
I wouldn’t waste my time regretting things that were unavoidable. That conviction solidified as I took in Rafe’s furious face, the way his hands knotted loosely into fists. He wanted to use those fists on me but he was struggling to keep control.
I should probably back off before that control broke entirely. Or should I? Perhaps it was better if he had his chance to vent his feelings now outside of camp. It must be difficult for him. Wolves ran hot.
“What is wrong with you, Silas?” Rafe demanded.
Probably being raised by a strategizing psychopath who saw us all as pieces on a chessboard, while we saw her as Mom.
Wasn’t that why Isabelle was so desperate to keep Keen alive longer, to watch over her? Keen was all the mother any of us had ever had, for all her imperfections. She’d knit us mittens and sent us out to die, and we’d loved her for it.
Orphans are easy.
“Perspective,” I said crisply. “I have perspective, and you have feelings. And that’s why the team needs me, because you would protect Maddie right into a grave.”
Rafe didn’t telegraph his punches—he moved into them so quickly he was a blur, that there was no time to react—but I still knew that one was coming.
Even before he cold-cocked me across the jaw
I stumbled back. He’d probably be better off if he had the chance to burn off some energy, and since we’d left the warded walls, I could heal us both. No one ever had to know.
So I took a certain amount of pleasure into feinting right, then burying my fist in his gut.
Rafe and I closed up, trying to beat the hell out of each other. It felt good to hurt someone, to release the energy.
I thought Rafe and I would make up when it was over, when the two of us were both spent and bloodied. We staggered in a circle around each other. Blood was streaming from both our knuckles. I’d built up callouses and I knew he had too, but we’d broken those callouses open anyway on each other’s faces.
“Feeling better?” I asked him.
“I didn’t have a choice when I hurt Maddie,” he said, as if he’d been obsessing over that memory even as he tried to bust my face.
Maybe Rafe was always obsessing over that memory.
“You always have a choice. You knew hurting her was the best option. Just like me.”
He shook his head. “The difference if, you know I didn’t want to. Because I hated myself after.”
“I’m not wasting my hate on myself when there’s a perfectly good Establishment for me to hate instead,” I told him. “The thing is, Rafe, you always try to protect her. And I always trust her. Which do you think means more to her?”
He stared at me with his eyes glittering, and I knew that arrow had struck deep. We both loved Maddie, but we loved her differently. Saw her differently.
Maybe she needed Rafe’s protectiveness sometimes. She needed my respect and confidence just as much, even if it hurt him to know it.
He dove at me, and the two of us closed up again. He managed to throw me over his shoulder, but when he tried to pin me, I rolled out of the way. I swept his legs and the two of us continued to roll around on the soft pine needle forest floor, searching for a way to pin each other.
The two of us finally stilled, both of us breathing hard, locked together. Above us, the pines swayed, their tips pointing into a sky far brighter with stars than any I’d seen Earthside. I shifted, trying to see if I could find a new weakness of Rafe to pin him.
“You know Maddie is terrified that you won’t come home with us,” Rafe began, his voice cold.
I didn’t want to lie to
her about the future, but I hated the thought that my uncertainty hurt her. I shifted, then managed to explode out of Rafe’s grip, rolling up onto my knees, ready to grapple again.
Rafe didn’t move.
“But it’s the best thing you could do for her and for all of us,” Rafe finished.
That wasn’t what I’d expected him to say. I pinned him, but he just stared at me without fighting anymore. His dark eyes weren’t flashing with anger like I’d seen so many times; they’d gone cold.
We were done fighting.
Maybe we were just done.
I got to my feet. He rose to his feet, brushing himself off with a few elegant strokes, as if the pine needles—and myself—weren’t worth his time.
“I have to heal us both before we go back so no one knows,” I said.
“I can heal myself,” he promised. The two of us were quiet, the only sound in the forest the faint noise of our ragged breathing as it slowed and returned to normal. The space between trees was bright with magic from our hands as we healed ourselves, and then the magic died and it was just the two of us, out in the deep cold night together.
“We’ll save your family,” Rafe told me.
I cocked my head to one side, feeling relief unfurl in my chest. For a second, the way he’d spoken earlier, I’d thought he was done with me. With us. The brotherhood, the family, that had grown around Maddie were as important to me as my friends from childhood, the people that had formed a family with me in the orphanage when there was no one else to love us.
They were all my family now.
Then he added, “Then we’ll save mine.”
I nodded as if it didn’t matter, although something cold spread through my gut.
Rafe didn’t have to say again that he hoped I wouldn’t try to come home with them, that he didn’t want me. It was written in the disgust he couldn’t hide as he straightened his ripped jacket, noticed the tear, mended it with magic.
Some things can’t be mended quite so easily.
That was all right though. He didn’t owe me anything, and if that meant I didn’t owe him anything, everything I needed to do next became much easier.
Because we’d come here to get a few prisoners and get out again, without being caught or drawing attention to the fact there were Otherworlders moving through the Greyworld on a mission.
But I was in the mood for the kind of thing the Rebels did—big, chaotic, embarrassing for the Establishment.
It was the kind of thing that Silas Zip, Rebel Magician, used to specialize in.
And maybe it was time to go back to my roots.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Maddie
I was lying on my stomach on one of the transient bunks with Jensen sitting cross-legged beside me, playing with my hair as the two of us talked about the kind of stupid little things lovers talk about when they’ve run out of other conversational material, like when they’re in prison and it’s been a bleak day.
We were discussing what we were going to name our kids one day.
“Okay, I’ve got a good one,” Jensen said, and I eyed him skeptically. Jensen and I apparently had very different parameters about what constituted a good baby name.
He spread his hands out, setting the stage. “Blaze. It’s gender neutral—for a boy or a girl.”
“It’s not for a boy or a girl who’s coming out of my uterus,” I said.
We were arguing, of course. That was what Jensen and I did.
And it made me happy.
“What about Axel?” he asked.
“No.”
“For a boy, obviously.”
“Not for anyone!”
“Roc?”
“Are you just testing me?” I demanded. “Because the names keep getting worse.”
“Does that mean Blaze is starting to grow on you?”
Then the door creaked open, and he was out of bed in an instant, standing protectively in front of me.
I didn’t mind that view one bit—broad shoulders, amazing ass—but I still peeked out from behind him to see Isabelle.
“I need a favor,” Isabelle told me. She breezed right past me.
“That’s quite the way to ask.”
Our friends had all moved out into other housing. I didn’t mind that now Jensen and I had the place to ourselves.
“I’ve got gifts.” Isabelle lifted her hands from behind her back to reveal a napkin tied up at the corners; the scent of fresh bread filled the air. “I noticed you two weren’t at dinner.”
“Keeping an eye on us?” Jensen asked. We didn’t want people to notice what we were doing.
“You’re the most interesting thing to happen around here since that barracks got burned down,” she said, “and I’d rather not have a repeat of that.”
“What happened?”
“The guards can fry any of the barracks at any time, while we’re all locked inside, they don’t care, and I don’t want it to happen to mine.”
“You don’t want it to happen to any of them.”
She hesitated, then admitted, “Fine, I don’t. But I care the most about mine.”
Isabelle wasn’t as hard as she’d seemed at first glance. She threw the napkin to Jensen, and he caught it, unwrapping the knots to reveal a pair of cheese-and-sausage sandwiches.
He looked up at her. “What’s the price?”
“Smart boy,” she said.
“I don’t go for the dumb ones.”
“Then how do you explain Silas, my beautiful, brilliant but emotionally inept brother?” she asked lightly. Without waiting for an answer, she said, “Keen needs someone to sit with her at night for a while. She’s dying and lonely and I feel for her, but I cannot listen to that woman critique everything about me, from my sloppy knitting to my sloppy swordsmanship, one more night. So I’m nominating you. She should find you very interesting.”
“That’s it?” I asked, reaching out my hand for a sandwich. I’d sit with Keen for free, but I wasn’t going to turn down supper.
“That’s it,” she muttered. “I guess maybe Silas didn’t tell you all that much about Keen.”
Then she gave me a sympathetic look. “How are you doing? It looked like you caught quite a beating earlier today.”
“Fine,” I promised her.
“Mm.” She looked at me as if she looked right through me. “People think you went nuts. It happens sometimes. You wouldn’t be the first person to throw themselves into the moat. It’s a good thing Silas stopped you where he did—the moat’s toxic. It’s hard to tell if people realize they’re killing themselves or not when they throw themselves at it.”
“I see.” I was suddenly horrified by how close I’d come.
She hesitated. “Thank you, Maddie.”
“You’re welcome.” Perhaps she’d made sense of my actions and understood what I tried to do for her. “Does that mean the sandwich is free?”
She huffed a laugh. “Nope. Nothing is free in Elegiah. Come on—once you’ve eaten, I’ll take you to Keen.”
I said goodbye to Jensen a few minutes later, and followed Isabelle.
She led me into barracks seventeen, past the dark empty beds and the shadows they threw. Apparently Isabelle didn’t have a roommate. She pushed aside the blankets that hung like a curtain, then followed me once I stepped inside.
Keen lay in the bed. Before I could greet her, a flicker of motion caught us both off guard as someone stood from beside the bed.
“Sebastian,” Isabelle managed, pressing her hand over her chest. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”
Keen didn’t look up. She was still knitting, just like she was in Silas’s memories, although her gnarled fingers moved slowly. I wondered if Isabelle smuggled in that yarn for her, a final mercy for a dying woman.
“Isabelle,” he said, his voice taut. “I guess I’ll go.”
He looked so familiar, and I frowned, staring at him. Of course it felt like I already knew all of them from Silas’s memories, but this w
as something different.
“Stay,” Keen ordered him, and he pulled a face.
A familiar face. Right; he had some of the same mannerisms Silas did. Silas had told me he’d based parts of his dreamy werewolf persona on Sebastian. Pretending that he was perpetually a little bit lost and foolish had given Silas the space he needed to work.
“You two are exhausting,” Keen told them both.
“He’s the one who—” Isabelle began, and Sebastian cut her off, the two of them beginning to argue.
“Come here, child,” Keen told me. “Ignore them. Come sit and tell me about Silas.”
“He’s incredible,” I said simply. It was true.
“Yes, he’s always tried to be.” Keen didn’t sound impressed. “Is he happy? In your world?”
“I thought you didn’t care about their happiness.” My tone came out hotter than I would have expected. I couldn’t help but think about what I’d seen in Silas’s memories. The training that Keen put them through at the academy had been far better than what Silas experienced at the orphanage, but it had still been brutal, focused on turning powerful children into tools for the rebellion. “I thought you only cared about the mission.”
And Silas had deserved better.
“Mission first,” she said. Wow, my least-favorite phrase in the universe continued to haunt me. Then she said, “But happiness is important too. Later.”
“He hasn’t had time to be happy.” We’d been fighting for the fate of the world for a year.
We all needed a vacation, come to think about it.
But when I’d said that Silas never had time to be happy, then I wondered if I was lying. Because I remembered all the times he’d smiled or laughed, not just when he and I were close, but also when Penn was wisecracking or Jensen delivered some joke in his deadpan voice or we were all play-fighting with each other. That handsome face with his sharp cheekbones, swelling even more dramatically when he grinned, his tousled blond hair over those green eyes… the memory of his face made my heart lurch.
I thought maybe he’d been happy sometimes. With us. With me.