Chapter 19
NINETEEN
JAMES
Three months ago
I knew he would be there; I simply knew. He was always nearby, never letting her out of his sight. It was creepy and completely unnecessary, as if he could help her in a way I couldn't.
Entering the room, I found her laying on the bed, beautiful but unnaturally still. If not for her heartbeat, one might mistake her for dead. The magically induced coma should’ve worn off already. Why the hell wasn’t she waking up?
And as expected, there he stood, watching over her like always. He turned around, smiling. That smirking son of a—
Without realizing what I was doing, I lunged and punched him in the face. Hard. He staggered slightly, stunned by the hit. Asshole.
"This is all your fault," I heard myself shout when I struck him again. He blocked my arm with his, than grabbed it with his other one, and yanked me down. We crashed to the floor, a tangle of limbs, exchanging kicks and guttural grunts like wild animals scrapping over the last scrap of food.
“If you hadn’t cowered your way out when the attack happened, you could’ve stopped the fucking Radicals! Emma wouldn’t be fighting for her life right now!” I roared, the fury and frustration boiling over as I straddled him. I pinned him down, fists hammering wherever I could reach.
"James, stop!" he yelled, his voice cracking with a mix of anger and desperation, but it only fueled the fire in me. His arms came up defensively, but I didn’t care. The blinding rage inside me refused to relent, every strike echoing the helplessness clawing at my chest.
"I…figured…out…a way…to help her!" he wheezed, each word forced out between the blows.
I instantly froze; my fist suspended midair. His breath came in ragged bursts, but mine wasn’t much better. After a beat, I rolled off him, and we both lay there on the floor, chests heaving, trying to catch our breath.
"We need to talk, " he said.
"Okay," I responded dryly, "So talk."
He shook his head. “Not here,” he said steadily, despite the fresh bruises darkening his face. He stood abruptly and extended a hand toward me—a gesture completely at odds with the fact I’d just beat the shit out of him.
I glared at him and declined, pushing myself to my feet. My knuckles ached, and my breathing was ragged, but none of it mattered. Emma mattered. She was all that mattered.
“Fine,” I said curtly. “Let’s find somewhere more private.”
Without another word, we left the room and stepped through a portal of Julian’s making, emerging at the edge of the forest.
The sun had dipped behind the tree line, its last light casting long, jagged shadows. A cold wind whipped through the clearing, cutting through my shirt, but I barely felt it. My thoughts were too consumed, too frantic, to care about anything else.
Impatient for what was to come, I snapped, “This should be far enough. Now, what’s your solution for Emma?”
He stood a few feet from me, head bowed, refusing to meet my eyes. Frustrated, I punched his arm, harder than necessary.
"Fine!" he burst out, throwing his hands up in exasperation. "This isn’t easy for me to say, but I’ve replayed it a thousand times these past two weeks, and it’s the only way. But before I tell you, you have to promise—promise—never to reveal what I’m about to say. Not to anyone. Ever!"
I raised an eyebrow, unimpressed. “Sure,” I said flatly, not bothering to hide my skepticism. Why should I care about his secrets?
“James, listen to me.” His voice dropped. “What I’m about to tell you will shatter everything you think you know. If this gets out, the consequences will be catastrophic. You have to keep this a secret.”
Something about the way he looked at me twisted like a knife. My jaw clenched, and I forced a nod. “Fine. I promise.”
“Not even Emma,” he reiterated firmly. “Especially not her.”
Fuck. Not again with this shit.
"I can't stress this enough," he warned, "I won't tell you anything if you disclose any of this to anyone, including Emma."
Gods fucking damn. I hated him for putting me in this position. Again. But Emma's life hung in the balance. Nothing mattered more to me than saving her life.
So, begrudgingly, I muttered, "Fine. If this somehow saves her life, I promise, I'll do anything—even keep my mouth shut."
He sighed and began pacing, then after a moment crossed to a bench overlooking the lake, sat down, and stared up at the sky—carefully avoiding my eyes. Clasping his hands together, he finally spoke. “How much do you know about the Great Exposure?”
I blinked. What the hell did the exposure have to do with Emma? Unsure of where his story was headed, I decided to go with it for the time being. "Uhm, I know we're getting pretty close now. We've mapped out the countries where we have a consensus—"
"Do you know when we started to plan it and why?" he cut me off.
I hesitated, careful not to spill any secrets of my own. "About fifteen years ago."
Julian bit the inside of his cheek, then continued in a softer voice. “We've been around as long as non-magical creatures have. There's no reason why NMC’s can live without any restrictions while we must keep ourselves in hiding.”
I exhaled impatiently. "I know all this; that's why we're working toward exposure."
"Yes, but what you don't know is that over time, the buildup of such frustration, such angst…it can make you do things—things you're not proud of, things you regret, and bigger and worse things than you ever imagined yourself capable of.”
He rose to his feet again and started pacing. “You've been on this earth not even half a cycle. I can't even count how much time I've been around without becoming depressed. And yes, I could go see a Healer and end it all if I weren't such a coward. Which I am, undoubtedly."
He then turned to me, and I saw what seemed like tears brimming in his eyes.
"What do you know about the Battle of '59?" he asked quietly.
My brows lifted. "Not much. I know magi fought other magi—the only time in history.
Both sides lost thousands, and those who survived had their memories wiped—like Stephen.
No one really remembers what the war was about to begin with, aside from some magi wanting to expose us to humans and others fighting them. "
Julian nodded, sadness in his expression. "That's what most people would answer, I gather."
My patience started thinning. What did the Battle of '59 have to do with saving Emma’s life?
Julian noticed my annoyance and quickly moved on. "During World War II, magi fought among the Allied forces. We helped liberate Europe, and we felt we had never been so close to humans as during and after that war."
I nodded half-heartedly, having no real interest in a history lesson.
"Our closeness with them in the late forties is actually what led to the Battle of '59," he continued, speaking too slowly.
"You have to understand, humans were at a point of tolerance they had never been before. They had endured a form of discrimination that had been horrific, and they wanted nothing to do with anything that remotely suggested discrimination.”
“Even segregation in other parts of the world was starting to mellow, and by 1955, they had formed universal treaties and declarations about human rights, to make sure such an event would never happen again. So, we as a community thought maybe, that was the time to…expose ourselves to them."
I motioned my hand for him to hurry up.
"We orchestrated an Exposure," he explained.
"Though not as great as the one you're all trying to achieve right now. We localized it to Europe, which we thought to be the center of tolerance. The Leader of Coastal took it upon himself to persuade his Council and the rest is fairly the same as it has been going now, except of course, there was no consensus.”
The Leader of Coastal. Back then, that was George. Who was now leading its Resistants. I still had no idea where Julian was going with this.
“But we overestimated the human capacity for understanding translation. As much as we had hoped to be accepted, to live in coexistence, it did not happen. Not even fourteen years after WWII, nemecis turned on us. Every maga and magus they could find—persecuted. By 1959, we were fully at war with European humans.”
Julian stared lifelessly in front of him, visibly haunted by the memories.
I stared, the scale of his revelation sinking in. “So there was a war—but not magi against magi?”
He shook his head. “It was magi versus humans.”
I reeled. “Why the fuck would anyone lie about that?”
Julian simply shrugged, as if the answer were obvious. "To preserve tolerance and peace. To avoid retaliation.”
He translated a small flame with a flick of his fingers, letting it dance between his knuckles before extinguishing it. Then he spoke.
“We erased everything—human memories, magi memories. I wiped Stephen’s mind myself. He asked me to—pleaded, even. He didn’t want to live with the knowledge of what humans were capable of. Ironically, he's now more committed than ever to achieving global exposure.”
Julian snorted. “Didn’t see that one coming.”
I kept my mouth shut on that last comment. No need to tell Julian Stephen was actually a Resistant himself.
Julian dragged in a slow breath, his eyes distant. Then, with a flick of his fingers, he translated a little mooshy ball into his hand—plain, black, and worn around the edges. He began squeezing it slowly, rhythmically, like it was the only thing keeping his thoughts from unraveling.
“We rewrote history,” he said quietly. “Allowed only a handful—myself included—to remember, just to ensure exposure would never be attempted again.” He gave the object another hard squeeze. “But I kept believing in it. I want to coexist. Always have, always will.”
I nodded, still completely in the dark about what any of this had to do with Emma. But I was starting to sense she was part of something far bigger than I’d ever imagined.