Chapter 26
With his father out of sight, the most terrible shadow of loneliness crosses Gryphon’s face.
I look away, sensing that any words of comfort would only make him feel worse, which I suddenly have no interest in doing.
In any case, I have my own reeling emotions to contend with.
Was I wrong about Jarek going Beyond? From the interaction I just witnessed, it seems he was wounded using a weapon the Engineer House created, not one from outside the Wall.
Perhaps hope and desperation have clouded my judgment, forming connections where there are none.
“What’s in the blanket?” I ask, getting to my feet. I make a show of turning away to retie my buns so Gryphon has a chance to collect himself.
“A weapon,” he says.
“What kind?”
Gryphon is quiet long enough that I turn. He’s standing exactly where his father left him, eyes on the blanket he holds.
“Gryphon?”
He blinks as if waking up. His eyebrows gather in annoyance as he recalls, I assume, how much he despises me. “It’s new. For protection.”
He hasn’t answered my question, but he has raised a new one. “From what, exactly?”
“You don’t want to know,” he says, striding toward the rear of the house. He bumps me as he passes. I think it’s an accident, but it ignites a fire in me. I’m fed up with his attitude. I’m fed up with everything. I storm after him.
“Oh, but I do want to know,” I say archly. “What sort of animal are you hunting?”
Gryphon opens the back door and steps into the brittle fall air.
The bleating of sheep carries from the barnyard on the other side of the village as I follow him out.
He tucks the bundle under his arm, steps onto a ladder nailed to the rear of the cottage, and begins to climb.
“We must be prepared for any danger inside the Wall, and for any threats trying to get in,” he calls over his shoulder.
He’s not getting off that easily. “Okay, and what exactly is outside the Wall?” Gryphon’s already halfway up and doesn’t answer. “I have a right to the information,” I call out, hoisting myself up behind him.
He reaches the top of the ladder and hops onto the roof and out of sight. I race to follow. When I’m on firm footing again, I continue. “You said there’s a chance Jonas is alive. I deserve to know what he’s up against!”
“Jonas is dead, and you’re a fool to think otherwise.”
The pressure inside me snaps. One second I’m upright, the next I’m lunging, every cell screaming to make him hurt the way he’s hurt me.
I slam into him low, driving my shoulder into his knees.
He staggers with a grunt, the bundle cradled tight in one arm as he pitches forward.
His free hand snaps back, catches the collar of my shirt.
We spin, a chaotic blur of limbs and momentum, until he hits the roof hard on his back.
I land sprawled across his chest, breath knocked from both of us, his grip still tangled in my collar, the weapon clenched in his other hand.
“Careful!” he barks.
“No!” I shout, “Not until you explain yourself!” I can hear years’ worth of rejection and hurt in my tone, but I don’t care how pathetic I sound. I’m tired of not knowing. “Why do you hate me, Gryphon? What did I ever do to make you loathe me this much?”
He rolls me off him and stands, setting his bundle on a ledge. “I don’t hate you,” he mutters.
I jump to my feet and grab his arm, forcing him to face me.
“You sure act like it! You basically ignore me, even when it’s just the two of us, and on the rare occasions that you deign to acknowledge me, you treat me like my existence is a personal attack.
Not to mention how you’re so disgusted by the prospect of our marriage that you humiliated me in front of the entire village!
” I’m practically yelling now and have to force my voice back down, lest our neighbors overhear our first premarital spat.
“The idea of spending the rest of my life with someone who doesn’t even want to share a bed with me isn’t my dream, either, Gryphon.
” I realize that’s not entirely fair to say—in fact, I appreciate that he hasn’t pushed for that intimacy, bare minimum as that ought to be—but hurt isn’t always logical.
I take a calming breath, but my grip on his arm remains firm.
“It’s clear how you feel about me. You’ve felt it for years, and I’m tired of not knowing why.
So can you please just explain it to me? ”
He’s studying me now, really staring at my face.
Still, he doesn’t speak.
I sigh and drop his arm. “You don’t have to lie about it. I’ve known for years that you’re in love with Marina. She told me the truth after the betrothal ceremony. I was just giving you the chance to confirm it.”
His eyes flash. “What?”
I hold myself against the cold. “That’s why you hate me, isn’t it?
You loved her, and I guess I—” I swallow, surprised by my own candor.
“I guess I was too attached to you, and it was obvious, so you abandoned our friendship. And now that Jonas is dead and I’m the only thing keeping you from marrying her, you hate me even more…
” I let my voice trail off, processing the admission I just made not only to him, but myself.
“You got too attached?” He sounds dangerous.
“I didn’t mean to,” I admit, willing my voice to remain steady, “and I’m sorry for putting that on you. You were my best friend, and you wanted Marina.” My voice catches in my throat. Why am I telling him this? I guess with all the recent tragedy, I’m no longer willing to bottle up old wounds.
“You wish I’d wanted you instead?” His expression is inscrutable.
“Yeah,” I say, shocked into honesty. “I guess I did.”
“Allow me to make up for it,” he says, his voice husky.
His jaw muscle twitches. I think he’s going to say something cruel, but instead he wraps a strong arm around my waist, pulls me close, and presses his lips to mine.
My body reacts instinctively, curving to his shape.
Already on my tiptoes, I think he might lift me off the ground, but for how he’s kissing me, I might as well be floating.
For all the many times I’ve seen Gryphon’s frown—the expression he seems to reserve especially for me—I never imagined his mouth could be so soft… and so electric.
His kiss carries the weight of all the words we’ve left unspoken. I’ve been choking on them for years, but now I taste their honey sweetness, their languid heat.
Then he releases me.
I stumble back. He’s watching my mouth, breath heavy.
Then he steps away, toward a waist-high glass cube at the center of the rooftop. What is it, and how long has it been up here? Is there one on top of every Guardian cottage? And more importantly, did Gryphon Tzu just kiss me?
“Come here,” he says, having already recovered from the moment.
I shake my head. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to move again.
“Please.” There’s something tender in his voice.
It’s enough to get my legs moving. I walk over, gently touching my swollen lips. A bundle of emotions throbs in my chest, and now isn’t the time to detangle them.
“Look,” he says, unlocking and then opening the top of the cube. The Harvest tablet is resting inside. He touches its screen with his finger, and it flashes to life before going black again.
“It needs to charge after Peter’s funeral,” he says. “A couple of days of sun, and a person could use it to ascend the Wall.” He avoids looking at me.
“But you said I’m a fool if I think Jonas—”
“I’m just saying it’s possible,” Gryphon interrupts, his voice gruff.
“The Guardians have been taking the Harvest basket Beyond?”
He shakes his head. “We have not.” A dark cloud crosses his face. “At least not that I’ve been told. But my father is getting strange items from…somewhere.”
Gryphon stares into the distance, his profile carved by the moon’s own hand. Understanding dawns on me. “You whispered to Jonas before you pushed him out,” I say, forcing myself to remember that awful scene. “What did you tell him?”
Gryphon rubs his hand across his eyes. He doesn’t answer.
“Did you tell him how to survive?” I’m shaking.
Gryphon nods once, the motion tight. “I told him to look for a way down the other side and water and shelter if he reached it. That’s all.”
We’re told that those honored with a Harvest leave the basket and ascend directly to the Heavens. What does it mean for them if survival is possible? Could a human hope to crawl down the other side of the Wall? My voice wobbles. “Are there dangers? Atop the Wall, and in the Beyond?”
“Almost certainly. The exact nature of the ills that sent our holy Founders behind this Wall have been lost to time, but the ongoing threats from Beyond are thoroughly imparted on the children of my House.” He turns to face me, eyes black in the shadows.
“That’s why I think Jonas can’t be alive.
I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have given either of you false hope. ”
My brain’s buzzing. “Then why are you telling me any of this now?”
His face hardens. “I tell it to everyone who’s training. If we’re caught, we’ll be Harvested. We need to know the basics of survival Beyond, at least as best as we can guess.”
“You’re training us for death, then?”
His frown deepens. “My father has plans he’s keeping from me.
All I know for sure is that he thinks this new weapon will make the Guardians invincible.
That it can stop whatever’s picking us off inside the Wall.
” He glances at me, his expression fierce.
“I disagree. So I train anyone brave enough to ask. We must be able to protect each other.”
My head’s spinning. There are too many threads to track. “You know Jonas didn’t kill my mother, that he’s no murderer. Peter’s death after Jonas’s Harvest proves it.”
Gryphon’s face shutters. “All I know is that there’s a danger inside the Wall. That doesn’t mean your brother was innocent.”
Just like that, I remember why I dislike Gryphon. I’m a traitor for kissing him.
His next words, spoken so softly I can barely hear them, catch me off guard. “But my father is right about one thing. He knows what you’re capable of. You’re the best Apothecary the Valley has seen. He wants you in our House for whatever it is he’s planning.”
He states this as fact, not praise. I can’t unpack it, though, as a new horror has dawned. “Is that why Nikola was Harvested? So I’d be made a Guardian?”
“I don’t know.” Gryphon’s jaw is rigid.
I’m stunned, without words. And my heart aches for the boy possibly put to death for the crime of being betrothed to me, childhood paste-eater though he was.
Gryphon studies me for a moment and then makes an impatient sound.
He returns his attention to the bundle he brought up, removing the object it holds.
I finally see the tool that cut a hole through Jarek’s muscle.
Like the wound it made, the weapon is completely unfamiliar.
Its handle is four inches long and constructed of smooth, silver-colored metal.
A longer glass tube is fused to the silver.
A small loop is connected to the vee where glass meets metal; a switch rests inside. The end of the tube is scorched.
The revulsion I feel for it is primal.
“My father believes this will be key to our defense,” he says. “He let me fire it today.”
I’m still staggering from everything I’ve learned. Yet my curiosity gets the best of me. “What does it do?”
“I think you know firsthand,” he says. “It shoots projectiles that tear through any surface.” A dark satisfaction lights his eyes. “I saw my father’s bandage, and the blood on it. Remarkable amount, given that the bleeding had nearly stopped the last I’d seen him.”
I feel a surge of shame—I’m a trained healer, after all, and I’d deliberately hurt Jarek—but I extinguish it quickly. No explanation or apology is required when it’s self-defense. “He said you were the one who gave him the original injury.”
Some light leaves Gryphon’s eyes. “It was an accident. My fault entirely.”
“Are there more of these, or only one?”
His expression closes. “More. They’re stored in the weapons barn over by our training grounds.”
I consider this. “How loud is it?” I ask.
“What?”
“When you use it. How loud is it?”
He sucks on his teeth. “Really loud. And it recoils when you fire it.”
The drums of the wedding march were cacophonous, but hadn’t I heard those three strange beats before the screaming began?
The music could have disguised the sound of Jarek’s new weapon.
But had it killed the Potters’ son? No, Jarek could have bled from his wound for hours and never reached the shriveled state in which the young boy’s corpse was discovered.
I’m racing through the implications of everything I’ve learned. “You’ll still train me?”
Gryphon stares at the moon, all sharp lines and golden skin, Apollo in shadow. “That’s what you’d choose?” he asks.
I don’t hesitate. “It is.”
He sighs deeply, eyes finding mine. “Then it’s lucky you’ve been assigned to the census. If that’s not enough cover, my parents will be working double shifts for the foreseeable future. You should be free in the evenings.”
I nod. Given what I’ve just learned, it’s more important than ever that I learn to fight.
The first time I heard there might be survival atop the Wall—when Marina whispered it, and later when Gryphon confirmed—I dismissed it.
Marina lies as easily as breathing, and Gryphon had sounded like he was repeating stories he barely understood.
But if he’s telling his trainees, if he told Jonas… then it must be real.
And if it’s real, then Jonas isn’t gone. He’s waiting. He’s fighting. I cannot let him face that alone. The moment Gryphon confessed that he gave Jonas hope, I knew what I had to do. I’m going up the Wall as soon as the tablet has the power to take me.
That means there isn’t much time to find the murderer.