Chapter Eighteen #3
“It’s fine.” Julian was looking at Ezra. “He’s right. We had guidance, whether the intention was good or not.” He looked like he wanted to say more, but Ezra brushed by him, bumping his shoulder and continuing down the weed-strewn path.
Julian’s gaze shifted to mine. An apology seemed to linger at his mouth, but he said nothing.
“Come on,” I said, my feet feeling heavy. My heart heavier. “Let’s go.”
We walked in silence for hours. The rhythm of my steps became meditative. As the shape of the shadows changed, I felt lighter in increments. There was space out here for my hurt. For Ezra’s and Julian’s. Space to let it be.
Out here with the sky turning scarlet and clouds rippling like smears of paint across forever, I felt terribly foolish to have ever believed radiance was my birthright. That spreading Progress across this beautiful world had been a noble cause.
Though I could not articulate it, I was starting to understand some of what Ezra meant when he said that his gift was like being called. For the first time in my life, I felt beckoning whispers along my skin and in my bones.
Out here, far from any machines, far from conduction lines and coils, my radiance responded to the moonlight and the starlight and the sun. It rippled in me, sustaining in a way that didn’t demand to be released or used. It didn’t require a mandate from the Elders. It simply was. I was.
I’d never felt so whole.
Did Julian feel it too?
I caught up to him on the path that had narrowed through a dense patch of flowering bushes. “What about the rest of us?” I asked.
“The rest of us?” he asked, sounding briefly dazed, as if his thoughts had also stretched wide in the silence and the steadiness of our travels.
“At the House. The students. The Generators. Even the professors. Some of them must be reasonable.” I thought of my classmates—my friends, they’d been my friends. Gertrude was my friend. She deserved to know the Elders were manipulating her. Were manipulating everyone.
“Yes, some are reasonable,” Julian agreed absently.
“We can’t let this happen to them, too.”
“Can’t let what happen? Being attacked by well-meaning but misguided resistors or having an internal crisis over the realization that radiance is profoundly toxic when misused?”
I punched Julian’s arm. “I’m being serious.”
“He’s also being serious,” Ezra said, an amused voice behind us.
“You want to debut your synthetic radiance at the Continental Exposition next year and change the course of Progress. But what about the other Children of Industry? Don’t they deserve a chance to stand beside you?”
“What are you proposing?” Julian reached to move a skinny branch out of the way for me, but it bent on its own before he could touch it.
His shoulders stiffened as he continued.
“Visit the House of Industry and tell everyone that overuse of radiance is destroying the world? And then see if they’d like to become resistors—the same people they associate with murdering their classmates? ”
“Maybe we could,” I said stubbornly. “Maybe if they knew more about the wasting …”
“And what of the Elders? Will you destroy them if they refuse to acknowledge their crimes?”
It didn’t sound like a terrible idea to me.
But I had a feeling that thought was best kept to myself.
Ezra made an unpleasant sound. “You can’t rush science,” he said, clearly parroting something he’d been told and did not agree with.
He followed up with a disdainful snort. “Julian won’t do a damn thing until he’s certain of it.
That’s why they’re waiting for next year’s Continental Exposition, instead of debuting this year. ”
“You’ve got no ground to stand on,” I snapped at Ezra. “All resistors want to do is murder everyone associated with the House of Industry and tear down all the Progress we’ve brought to the world.”
“That’s not a particularly nuanced take,” Julian murmured.
Ezra’s voice became as cold as the angry river had been. “I never claimed allegiance to resistors and their violence.”
“That’s right,” Julian said with a bitter laugh. “You’ve got no allegiance to anyone but yourself.”
“Glad that’s finally sunk in,” Ezra muttered.
Anger spiked in me, and for the first time since we’d started walking and walking and walking, radiance heated my hands with the threat of violence.
I tucked my fingers into my pockets as if the fabric could stop the ugly manifestation of my impulsive emotions.
“If it wasn’t allegiance that led you to seduce me on behalf of resistors so you could break into my Mission and kill Julian, what was it?
Feel free to explain. We’ve got plenty of time to talk. ”
The sun had set, but even in the dim light, I could see the way Ezra’s cheeks took on a splotchy red color.
It was quite satisfying to behold. Then I looked closer and saw the tightness around his eyes, the unhappy line his mouth made, and I didn’t like that at all.
“As you can see, I did not kill Julian. And I was ordered to befriend you. The rest … the rest was …”
The rest had felt so real. His laughter. The smiles I wanted back. His hands on my waist, in my hair.
He’d saved my life when I’d fallen. Showed me his magic.
I hated that I still wanted it to be real.
My breath sucked in with a shudder.
“It was under duress. I told him to do it,” Julian said. “I told him to get close to you so I’d have a reason to send you away safely, and a way for him to get into the Mission. Ainsley wanted him to kill us both. I told him to fake my death. I saw a way out of Frostbrook, and I took it.”
Ezra ducked his head, looking miserably ashamed. “I didn’t argue with him. I wanted him to leave. I wanted to live in peace.”
My thoughts spun like dead leaves caught in a whirling wind. “You both should have given me a chance. I deserved a chance,” I said, my voice hoarse. I didn’t want to cry. Not over their asinine plan.
Not over being left out of it.
Not over being made a fool by both of them.
Trying to stomp away, I stumbled over a root in the growing darkness and swore.
Julian let out a theatrical sigh and held his hand up, creating a blue-white torch of radiance that I couldn’t help but feel was a warning—though to who, I wasn’t sure. “Perhaps we should stop for the night.”
We could have pressed on for another hour. But my toe smarted, and my pride smarted more.
“Fine,” I snapped, weaving through the shrubs to a patch of soft grass. I sat down in a huff, not caring how I looked. They lingered on the trail, as if considering whether I’d kill them both if they approached.
Eventually, Julian made his way to me and set his pack down, offering it as a pillow for me as he had the past nights.
“Thank you,” I mumbled.
He hummed wordless acknowledgment and made his way into the thicker grass. Being together like this was starting to erode all the sense of decency I’d had before. It was impossible not to notice when your traveling companion needed to relieve himself.
Now that I wasn’t moving, a chill seeped into my sweaty clothes. The nights were cold and windy, and the shrubs did little to shelter us.
Nearby, Ezra stood like a statue, gaze distant and troubled. “Who told you that I seduced you?”
He didn’t deserve to sound so hurt.
I didn’t want to feel the echo of it. “I heard people in the woods talking,” I admitted, busying myself with untying my boots. “Bragging.”
His jaw tightened. “I did not intend for you to hear things like that. I never—That was not my intention.”
“It doesn’t change what you did,” I said, standing without meaning to. “You gained my trust through deception. You made a fool of me!”
Wind whipped his shaggy hair into his eyes as he whirled on me. “I did not tell you the truth of my motives. That’s not the same.”
I squared my shoulders, too angry to care about the waver in my voice. “And what of my heart?”
“Josephine.” Trembling, he stepped into the distance between us, hands finding my face, pushing carefully into my hair. His fingers were warm. He bent to touch his forehead to mine and spoke my name again, a careful plea.
A sob caught in my throat.
“Your wildness,” he whispered. “It stirs me up.”
After everything he’d done, I shouldn’t have believed him. But I did. And I didn’t want him to stop touching me. “Please,” I whispered.
There was nothing careful about the way he kissed me.
His mouth seared against mine, and I reached for him, no longer hot with radiance, but set aflame with something I had far less ability to contain.
I gripped his shirt, held him close, and showed him that despite every reason to shove him away, I wanted him close like this, wanted to know more of him, all of him.
Abruptly, he broke away, and it took me a dizzy moment to see why.
Julian was watching us, whatever reaction he’d initially had already steeled to careful boredom.
Finally, he said, “That doesn’t look restful.”
“We didn’t mean—” I began weakly, feeling every bit the apprentice caught breaking rules. I took another step back to further distance myself from Ezra.
“I meant to,” Ezra interrupted. He exhaled shakily, as if collecting his thoughts. Though he wasn’t looking at me, I felt his soft words like a lingering touch. “I meant that.”
This time, Julian’s sigh held weary sincerity. His expression gentled, and he pointed to the place where he’d set his pack down for us to rest. “We won’t survive if we don’t keep close. But perhaps not overly close if I’m meant to get any sleep.”
“Don’t mock her,” Ezra snapped.
Julian let out an incredulous huff. “Truly baffling that you continue to think I’m the one wronging her.”
I glared at both of them. “I’m right here. Stop it.”
At least this time, I didn’t need to take drastic measures to get their attention.
They looked away from each other like chastised little boys. There was so much more I could say, but I was so tired.
My heart beat a painful rhythm in my rib cage, rattling around like someone was shaking it.
My body, however, wanted nothing more than to sleep, and it was surprisingly easy to sink to the ground and rest my head against the leather pack.
The ground beneath me swallowed up my anger and soaked up my lingering tears.
A hand came to rest against my back, protective and warm, and as I fell asleep, I wasn’t sure whose it was.