Chapter 43 - Game of Secrets
July
Biting someone with rage is undoubtedly painful for the person you want to hurt. But an arm full of muscles and tendons is not like attacking the tender meat of some grilled chicken.
Galen groans in pain when I lock my jaw, and my teeth lacerate his flesh. But my gums also scream in agony, as if my teeth were pushed back inside my skull.
Blood spurts in my mouth, and I retch, letting go of his arm as my eyes tear up, concealing for a second the chaos happening all around me.
I slump on the floor, hitting my knees on the hard tiles and spitting red saliva. My ears ring with the sound of Galen’s pain like the aftermath of an explosion.
“She’s bleeding—”
“She’s alive and, clearly, capable of defending herself. Don’t overreact. Mack? Shut that door, and—you—stop blinking like a fool in love and drop that ridiculous knife. July managed to break the connection with Roden, but we don’t know for how long.”
“Fuck!” Looking at the knife as if holding a ball of fire, Galen drops it and scrambles away from it - and from me - shaking his head. “You don’t know the half of it. Roden was in my head…But I was in his as well.” He winces, his voice weakening with every word.
“We don’t need to,” Kris laughs bitterly but with a hint of worry. “If half of his plan was to threaten the life of his own daughter, I don’t even want to hear the rest of it. Besides, nothing simmering inside Roden’s mind will ever make any sense.”
For a moment, the only noise in the room is that of nervous breaths, like wind rolling over a soon-to-be battleground.
I try to push myself up slowly, but fall back down when Galen swears in pain, ignoring Sable’s presence.
“What the fuck have you done?” he yells, staring at someone behind me before throwing his head back, hissing in pain as his hands stretch for his right leg, a pool of blood quickly spreading from under it. “I would have never allowed him to hurt her…I cannot…This fucking hurts, Merya!”
I jerk my head to the right, wincing when the thin cut on my neck reopens, and look up at Merya, still holding a smoking gun in her hand.
A sudden wind bursts from the window over the kitchen sink, carrying the scent of distant rain and surprising everyone, including Tabitha, who must have flattened herself against the wall when Merya fired to protect Sable, now howling in her mum’s arms.
“For soul’s sake, Merya, two inches to the left, and that would’ve been me,” she shouts, her naturally rosy cheeks flushing with a darker shade of panic.
“But it wasn’t…Hey! You stay down, or I swear, next time, I’ll put a hole in your chest. Roden is clever, and I still need to decide if you’re you again.”
I struggle to tear my eyes away from Merya when a hand gently cups one side of my face.
“You’re okay,” Kris’ voice soothes my senses, his gaze as soft as his touch.
... falling in love every time I sent you back to him.
Roden’s words come back to me, and for a moment, I let myself dive into Kris’ eyes, setting aside the image of Galen bleeding.
But it’s hard to ignore Merya and Tabs bickering over Merya’s reckless decision to use a gun in such a small space, Galen’s increasing demand for help and Sable crying her eyes out.
I gently take Kris’ hand and lower it before getting back on my feet and filling my lungs with air. “Enough!” I shout with all the despair I’ve so far nested inside.
Everyone stops talking, even Sable, who hides her face against Tabs’ neck, whimpering. I feel a bit guilty, but if she’s half as strong as her mother, she will get over it.
“Do you want to keep talking about something we can’t go back to and stop and let Galen bleed to death? Or would you like to hear what I felt while Roden was acting like a megalomaniac father of the year?”
“Wow, I like this new July even more.” Mack sits on the floor cross-legged and elbows Kris in the ribs.
I cautiously approach Galen, who’s managed to rest his back against the wall but whose face is increasingly turning pale and tired. Our eyes find each other, and his gaze drops to the thin red line on my neck, darkening with sorrow.
“I’d like a few minutes alone with Galen,” I ask, trying to keep at bay the memory of Roden spitting hate from Galen’s mouth. Trying to ignore the thin, milky veil slowly disappearing from my best friend’s eyes.
I’m glad nobody can hear my heart, or they will know how stupidly scared I am to be left alone with him.
“Are you sure?” Tabitha asks, moving away from the wall but keeping a hand on Sable’s head. The little girl is now breathing slowly, relaxed, and probably asleep after all the turmoil she had to go through.
I nod, feeling Kris’ presence behind me, not invasive, but surely worried. “I’ll be fine, and I don’t think Roden will be back soon if what I saw is true. I promise I’ll give you all the details, but there is something I need to discuss with Galen.”
Merya walks past me, stopping next to Tabitha. She silently scrutinises me, then Galen, before offering me her gun. “If he tries anything—”
“That won’t be necessary,” I interrupt her, mainly to rush everyone out of the kitchen, conscious of the blood Galen has already lost.
“ I—I’ll go check on Jyn. Who knows what that cuddly bear was thinking of doing when he left?!” Mack begins to ease the tension pressing heavily on us with his relentless, friendly ways.
Tabitha nods, directing her words more to Galen than to anyone else. “I need to find somewhere safe to leave Sable, but I’ll be back, and Merya will be waiting just outside…”
Having holstered her gun, Merya crosses her arms, scrubbing the floor with the point of her boot and chewing on her cheek. “I meant what I said; if I have the slightest doubt that Roden is still in there, lurking - friends or not—”
“Okay, okay, we get it. You wipe me off the face of Horigos. Got the message; please come back to stitch me up, though.” Galen waves a hand before wiping the sweat off his forehead with his sleeve.
His chest rises and falls with a rhythm that speaks more than his eyelids, heavier with every second that passes.
I turn to Kris, fighting the urge to take his hands in mine because if I do, I will never find the strength to let him go. “Ten minutes. Then Merya can fix his leg…Then we will talk.”
Understanding beats behind his green, crystalline eyes, and a hint of gold starts spreading from his pupils.
He bends over, his brow nearly touching mine as he whispers, “Waiting for you is the most exciting part of my life. Until we meet again…” Gentle, shy lips brush my brow, firing the spot on my skin and stealing one of my heartbeats.
I close my eyes to capture that feeling, but when I reopen them, Kris is already by the door, guiding Merya out as she turns her head to give Galen a final threatening look.
Only silence remains once everyone’s gone, pressing on me like one of the falling boulders that Galen and I miraculously escaped during our last night in Libera.
“I am sorry,” Galen mutters weakly, resting his head against the wall. He tries to stretch a hand towards me, but only lifts it halfway before dropping it with a grunt.
“That wasn’t you,” I snap, still trying to erase Roden’s shadow off Galen’s face. “But Merya was right. I saw him, Galen. He’s moments from Brenath. And he’s bringing an army.”
His wounded leg twitches, and he bashes his fist on the floor, biting his lip to suffocate the pain.
“Don’t move.” I dash for the kitchen counter, opening all the drawers and checking all the cupboards. “These will do for now.”
I kneel before him, gingerly sliding a clean kitchen cloth under his leg.
When he tries to speak again, I wave a wooden spatula in his face.
“I can talk and save your leg at the same time. So, shut up and listen. I know where Roden stashed all the empty Nistarei and Rogues he sent me to harvest all these years. I often wondered how he could dispose of so many bodies, and now I have my answers. Caves! Thousands of them, underground, hidden between The Mother and Corlea.”
Galen’s throat bobs, either because of my words or the pain as I start tightening the cloth around his leg using the spatula as a home-made tourniquet.
“Yeah, that makes sense—and that’s Merya’s favourite baking spoon,” he hisses, biting his lip.
“You can buy her a whole new set, once we’ve finished with Roden. In the meantime, tell me what you know of these caves.” I lift my hands from the spatula, contemplating for a second the wood slowly turning red with the blood soaking through the cloth.
Galen reaches for my hand, and I let him.
“I’ve only been there once, years ago. There were other Deleteri with me, but after a few months of visiting the caves, they disappeared from Libera.
I assume that was a test because that’s when Roden gave me a seat in the Chapter.
But he’d stopped even mentioning that place years ago.
This is why Tabitha decided to station some of her people there; close to the Caves, but not enough to spark Roden’s suspicions, in case he was still using them. ”
I sigh and sit beside him, mirroring his pose and leaning against the wall. “The irony of this fucking shitshow! I was helping Roden create his army while he let me think I was doing something good…” I drag my nails on the terracotta floor to soothe the increasing guilt boiling inside me.
Something rattles inside Galen’s chest when he tries to speak, but when I snap my head towards him, he lifts a shaky hand, silently asking me to listen. “This is why I hoped you wouldn’t ask for your memories back this time.”
“I knew…” I state flatly.
“How?”
“Roden’s primary desire wasn’t to find this location.
Surely, being inside your mind helped him, but he was here for me.
He wanted to show me the real me, at least the version of me he wants me to become, because he knows I hid something in those caves and he wants it back.
This is why he’s acting so erratically. If he loses me, he loses the war for good.
I’m not his weapon, I’m his last chance at survival. ”
Galen’s genuine look of surprise melts my heart.
I caress his cheek, softly, scared of hurting him by only breathing near him.
“You’re not the only one who’s good at keeping secrets.
I need to speak with Kris and Tabitha urgently.
Before Roden reaches Brenath. I’ll get Merya. You - well - stay here.”
I get on my feet, feeling light as if I’ve just discarded a bunch of stones rattling inside my heart, slowly grinding it into dust.
I’m not surprised when, popping my head outside the door, I notice Merya waiting at the end of the long corridor, leaning against the wall with her arms crossed.
“Did you hear enough, or do you need me to repeat everything?”
She pushes away from the wall, flipping her copper hair over one shoulder. “Enough to know that my favourite baking spoon has served a higher purpose. And that, you, Crimson, have a lot of talking to do.”