The Beasts We Bury (The Broken Citadel #1)

20. Silver

20

S ILVER

|2 DAYS UNTIL THE ASSURANCE|

“Get the bag,” I tell the others. “Figure out what’s in there.” Mance might be willing to leave a stone unturned, but I’m not.

Without waiting to see how they respond, I stuff my feet into my boots and grab Mance’s off the mat before throwing myself down the tree and chasing after her.

“Mance, wait!” I call.

She’s running through the Outskirts barefoot, completely ignoring the bloody footprints she leaves behind as her feet get cut apart.

And she’s ignoring me.

“Come on!” I yell. “At least let me give you your shoes!”

She whirls, and I actually stumble back at the expression on her face. The ferocity . I’ve never seen her like this.

Then with a sinking feeling I realize that I have, of course I have. It’s just never been directed at me.

I was certain there was blue in her midnight eyes, but in this moment they are hard, black, and blazing, not a single flicker of candlelight to be found.

“My shoes?” she sneers. “You betray me, deceive me, shackle me”—she shakes the bracelet at me and I recoil—“deliver me to a man who wants to kill me and my entire family, and you’re concerned about my feet ?”

“I didn’t… I didn’t know.” In the face of her rage, I can’t figure out how to justify myself. Because I know I can’t, at least not completely. If this were purely a misunderstanding, I could clear it up. But the truth is that, at least in the beginning, I didn’t care how all this would affect her. I was willing to destroy her.

And then when I did care, I was too cowardly to come clean about it, thinking that I could fix things before she found out the truth. I realize now I was trying to force her forgiveness by managing the situation myself until she no longer had a reason to be upset. For all the trust she put in me, I didn’t give her any back.

How do you explain that?

How do you account for not doing the right thing to someone who would’ve ?

She doesn’t wait for me to figure it out. She stalks toward me and talks right over my stuttered rationalizations, a completely different creature from the girl who listened patiently on the boat. Who told me I was deserving of her thanks.

“You used me,” she says. “But I’m accustomed to that. Everybody uses me and everybody lies, apparently more people than I even realized. So that isn’t the part that hurts. What hurts is that you saw me first. You took the time to listen to me. To know me. You made me feel like the things I wanted weren’t silly or irrational, but that they were noble. Worse, that they were possible .” Her voice cracks on that word, and I feel like my heart cracks with it. “But you never meant to help me at all. You took every piece of vulnerability I gave you and you folded it into your plans so that you could use me better. I thought you were different, but you’re not. In fact, you’re worse. More willing to hurt me than even my father is, because at least he’s straight with me about it when he rips me apart. You once called me a monster, and I can’t tell you the pain that it caused me. But it shouldn’t have. Because if there’s a monster here, Silver… it’s you.”

“No,” I whisper. “It’s not like that.”

For a second she looks like she wants to keep arguing, keep listing every way I’ve wronged her. And I wish she would, even though I know the list is lengthy. But then her expression shutters and she snatches the boots out of my hands.

“I don’t have time to hear what you think it’s like,” she says. “And I’m not interested anyway.”

She turns away and I grab her elbow. “Mance—” I start.

But she wrenches her arm free and shoves me back. “Don’t touch me!” she screams.

I hold both hands up to show that I won’t, even as my heart sinks.

“Hate me if you want,” I say desperately. “Never talk to me again, but just don’t go to the castle right now. Please .”

She shakes her head, disgusted, like this is just one more way that I’ve let her down. “Do you hear yourself?” she asks. “How could I possibly not go? My family is going to be killed! You want me to just wait it out?”

“If you go, you’ll be killed, too!” I remind her. “You’ll walk right into whatever trap he set for them and you’ll be just as caught. Is that what you want?”

She gives me a look so cold that for the first time I see the resemblance between her eyes and Guerre’s. Hers may be several shades darker, but right now they hold the same ice. The black ice of deepest winter, in the darkest part of the night.

“There are more important things than looking out for myself,” she says, voice steel. “Maybe one day you’ll figure that out. I told you once that I judge a person by their actions. Well, yours have been crystal clear. Allow me to be equally clear with mine.”

She bends to scoop up a sharp section of branch by her foot and then flies at me. I expect her to plunge the glass into my chest—and I don’t even try to stop her—but instead she slides it into my shirt and slices outward, ripping off the realm insignia that gives me admittance to the castle. It flutters brokenly to the ground between us.

She might as well have cut out my heart.

“You are not welcome in my home anymore,” she says flatly, letting the shard fall from her hand. “And you are not welcome in my life. Goodbye.”

I didn’t flinch when she lunged at me, but that word makes me stumble back, slicing deeper than the glass ever could’ve.

Before I have a chance to recover, she summons her stallion and is already clambering onto his back and wheeling away.

It’s obvious she doesn’t want me to follow, but if I don’t… she’ll die. They’ll kill her.

“Mance!” I cry out, my voice strangled. As she takes off, I break into a run, determined to chase her, determined to save her however I have to, even as the distance between us rapidly grows.

But before I make it three steps, something behind me explodes.

Debris shoots everywhere. Glass pelts me, and I fall to the ground, crying out as the air and the earth both conspire to pepper me with cuts.

Careful where I place my hands and my body, I turn over, trying to figure out what happened.

And there’s my tree, the gnarly oak that supported our little guard post, the one I climbed daily.

Absolutely destroyed.

Almost half of it is gone completely, shredded to bits. The house, my house, looks like someone took a giant bite out of it. Strange, spectral black flames lick at the splintered edges of the branches, caressing the broken outline of what used to be our front porch. The way the fire moves is unnatural, like it’s halfway between liquid and smoke.

Before the shock even has a chance to sink in, I’m back on my feet and running again, but this time in the opposite direction.

Because the last time I saw Vie and Rooftop… they were still in the house.

Right where that gaping hole is now.