Chapter 27 #2
“Leith and I were always part of the Hawks. That part’s true.
But we weren’t capturing Morphics to put them behind bars, when we could help it.
” His eyes drop to the fire as the words come faster.
“We were trying to help them escape. Jasper, Leith, and I—there were others too—we knew most of the Morphics taken to Malachite weren’t dangerous.
Some were. Some always will be, but most were like the three of you. ”
My stomach rolls, and I struggle not to pitch forward. “Did my father know what you were doing?”
Gray shakes his head. He snaps a branch in half.
“Leith tried to talk to him about the Hawks. How he felt like it was hurting people more than helping them. We even told him Ruefold, the prison for non-Morphics”—he adds this for Alana and Ivander’s benefit—“is much less crowded than Malachite. It never seemed like people came out of Malachite. They won’t even let Hawks inside. No one knows how bad it is in there.”
Although my tongue feels like cotton, I force myself to speak. “What did he say?”
“You have to understand, Roe. Your father’s place on the council is precarious.
If the council had a unanimous vote, they could oust him.
He doesn’t speak against the way things are done unless it’s absolutely necessary.
I imagine it’s why he’s tried to keep you in the dark for so long.
The Damarcus name and his family’s legacy keep him afloat.
He wouldn’t do or say anything to jeopardize that just because Leith and I told him to. ”
Ivander sits up straighter, brows lifting as he takes in Gray with new eyes. “But you and Roe’s brother helped Morphics escape anyway. How did you hide it?”
The corner of Gray’s mouth lifts. “We’d swayed enough Hawks to join us. We could make it look like they got away during hunts. Or like they slipped the cuffs on the way to prison. Leith was good at distracting the captain. It didn’t always work, but we got enough away to keep trying.”
My head spins, and my vision blurs. I might be physically sick. All my life I’ve been proud of my brother for being part of the Hawks. I wanted to join because he believed in their cause. The real cause.
It’s all a lie. “What happened to Leith? Did you lie about that too?”
Gray’s shoulders dip as he runs a hand through his hair.
It’s gotten longer, falling into his eyes.
He’s stopped cutting it to fit Hawk protocol.
“I haven’t told you everything about the day he disappeared.
I still remember the light snow on the ground and the gray sky in the morning.
I don’t know how to describe it, but the day felt off.
Like my body knew something was wrong before my mind did. ”
Whenever people talk about Leith—those who loved him and still do—it feels like he’s here for a moment.
When people talk about the dead, those who’ve passed live again in the space of a few words.
But this, with Gray, is different somehow.
Instead, it feels like I’m watching Leith die all over again.
Like the illusion the bosses punished me with back on board.
“We were helping a Morphic escape that day. A crafter. She’d made a sign that would attach to the inside of a front door.
It could tell a family who was waiting on the other side.
Vendors, family members, thieves. The family who bought it accused her of lying to them when it didn’t reveal the thief coming to rob their home. ”
“But crafter-made objects don’t always work. It’s not easy to craft. Crafters make mistakes just like any non-Morphic inventor would,” Alana says, frustration in her voice. “Non-Morphics gamble on our magic but get mad when it doesn’t work.”
Gray holds up his finger. “The sign was working. Halfway. The problem was, the thief was a family member. The sign couldn’t list both associations.
Not that it mattered. The Hawks had to hunt her anyway.
But we were going to save her, and our efforts were going well.
At first. I was distracting the captain, and Leith was helping the girl escape …
But then Jasper and I couldn’t find him.
We looked everywhere. All night. Into the next morning. He just disappeared.”
I know the rest of the story. The part Gray doesn’t have to say aloud but does anyway.
He tells Ivander and Alana how he and the rest of the Hawks returned the next morning to give my father the news.
Father fell to his knees. Mother screamed.
Eliza and I hardly understood. Even Eliza, being older, still expected him to walk through the door.
Father ordered the Hawks to search again for the crafter girl and for Leith. He went with them, hunting everywhere. After they couldn’t find him on the second day, he sent a report to the council, explaining the situation. He left out the part about any Morphic being involved.
I understand that detail now. There was no proof the crafter girl harmed Leith, so Father hadn’t wanted public perception to turn on Morphics. But I know Mother did. Especially when they eventually found blood in the woods and a mender identified it as Leith’s.
We knew then he hadn’t disappeared. He was dead.
Still, even with the blood, it took another year for me to accept he was dead and not missing. Another year of the Hawks searching. A year of sending troops to search Carodmoor Forest. A year of the mender telling me the amount of blood he found was too much to be a good sign.
Gray looks right at me when he says the words I haven’t allowed myself to think for all these years.
“But we never found his body, Roe. A year of the most highly trained hunters searching, and we never found anything more than blood.” He grits his teeth.
“All I know is no one’s allowed in Malachite Prison, and I’m not obeying any more orders until I have answers. ”
The gravity of his words pulls at my own whisper of suspicion.
I haven’t dared to wonder—couldn’t let myself.
When I was younger, anytime I said it aloud, Lysandra begged me to stop.
Mother told me not to pursue it. But sitting here with Alana and Ivander, on the run from the Celestial—the legend my own family helped build—Gray’s words puncture me like one of my arrows.
My brother’s been dead for seven years. I’ve known this truth for almost half my life.
But I’m unlearning a lot of truths lately.
What if the reason I can’t summon my brother is because he’s not really dead?