Chapter 50
Guardians descend on me before I can react.
Blood trickles from my shoulder, and at least one of my stitches has ripped.
My only relief is that Eero is hauled past me, unharmed except for whatever bruises spiteful Leonidas gave him.
No one speaks out—not that I can hear—as Eero, Sal, Meryl, and Oscar are cinched to the whipping posts rather than brought to the chapel undercroft.
Eero’s escape attempt must be the reason.
I’m led toward them, the snap crack of fresh leather ringing out across the square.
Did the Leatherworkers craft new ones alongside the sashes and suspenders they lovingly make for every villager who turns sixteen?
My friends cry out in pain, and I fall down a well of shock, disconnecting from the outside world.
It barely registers as I’m suddenly led away from the posts, to what fate I do not know.
Throughout, I have only one thought: Gryphon betrayed me.
Twice.
What have I done, tipping my hand to him?
He is and always has been loyal to Jarek, even while hating the man.
A Guardian to the bone, not to mention madly in love with my childhood bully.
I’ve been an idiot. He must have planted those sketches to soften me, kissed me to amplify the devastation when I realized who really owned his heart.
All his kindness has been a ruse. And it’s worked, hasn’t it?
I was starting to trust him, opening up so he had a chance to… what? Humiliate me?
He and Marina are probably laughing about it now. Amazed someone can be as gullible—as desperate for companionship—as Rose Allgood.
A part of me tries to argue that Gryphon is neither so callous nor does he have the free time to waste rehashing tired, schoolyard bullying at our age.
I desperately want to believe this was all some gut-wrenching but ultimately benign misunderstanding.
But the only information I can count on is what I see with my own eyes.
My chest tightens. On top of everything else, my existence has gotten my friends in trouble. They’d been training without incident until I joined.
But why had Gryphon started training them at all, if he was only interested in serving his parents?
I chew at the inside of my cheek as the Guardians drag me into the chapel undercroft.
Nothing makes sense. Everything feels slippery, the complete picture just out of reach.
I don’t know what to do with the anger and confusion flowing like glass shards in my bloodstream.
I’m dumped on the cellar floor. The usual tables and chairs are stacked to the side, the space looking vast without them. Then the door scrapes closed—I didn’t even know it could close—and the room falls to darkness.
All alone, I begin to weep.
.
A half an hour or so later, the door reopens, and my four bloody friends are shoved inside.
Meryl sees me in a corner and immediately hobbles over. “How’s the shoulder?” she asks. She was just whipped, but it’s my dagger wound she’s worried about.
I try to scramble backward, but the wall is right behind me. Tender, true Meryl doesn’t understand yet that I’m the reason they’re all in trouble. That I’m the one Leonidas caught. I can’t bear witnessing the birth of her hatred toward me.
“Let us look at you,” Sal says, shuffling to stand beside her. Oscar and Eero follow. All four of them are hunched in pain, dried tear tracks muddying their faces, blood dripping down their backs.
“No!” Panic squats on my throat. “This is all my fault!”
Meryl shakes her head, the movement slow and wretched. “No, it’s not. It’s Jarek’s.”
My chest is heaving with a familiar guilt, one I inherited from my mother. “None of us would be in trouble if I hadn’t started training with you! You were fine until then.” I’m beginning to hyperventilate, my breath coming in great whoops.
Sal bends at the knees and slaps me, hard, across the cheek.
Then she stands, wincing. “Been waiting years to do that,” she says.
“Didn’t think I could get away with it in front of your betrothed, though.
” Smiling darkly, she continues, “We were never fine. We were always taking a risk by training. Don’t borrow blame that’s not yours. It’ll only slow us down.”
My cheek stings, but I’m no longer at risk of passing out. “Gryphon. He threw a knife at me.”
“And it’s a good thing he did,” Oscar says. “Or the other Guardians would’ve killed you a hundred times over. They’d be justified, too. The whole village saw you about to stick Leonidas like a bug.”
Meryl’s voice is softer. “He couldn’t just let you stab his friend, Rose. No matter how he feels about you.”
“He did keep you from being whipped,” Eero says, something like admiration in his voice. “Took four Guardians to hold him back when he saw you being dragged toward the posts. His dad musta thought whipping you would be more trouble than it was worth, and he waved you on to chapel.”
“Gryphon’s dead to me,” I spit out. “I saw him kissing Marina right before I came to the square.”
No one responds to that, though a look of pity crosses Salvatora’s face. It stings, coming from her. “Never mind,” I say, wishing the floor would open up and swallow me.
There’s a commotion outside the basement door. We all tense. What’s coming for us next? A few moments later, the door opens and Uncle Richard steps inside, agitated, his ginger hair floating like spun sugar around his head. Leo follows, pawing through my uncle’s medical pack.
“You can have this,” Leo says, pulling out a suture kit. “Nothing else.”
“No painkillers?” Uncle Richard protests. “No ointment for their lashes?”
Leo glares at me. “She wasn’t going to offer me a painkiller before plunging my knife into my chest, was she?” he barks. “You have ten minutes.”
He slams the door closed behind himself.
Sweet, always-flustered Uncle Richard takes stock of the scene—me crouched in a corner, Sal, Oscar, Eero, and Meryl standing nearby, the backs of their tunics shredded and bloody—and rushes over.
He comes to me first to examine my throbbing shoulder, or so I think. Instead he whispers, “We’ve waited too long. We must get you all out of here.”