Chapter 58
Sojourner is waiting at her private exit door. She tugs me in, grabs her cloak, and ushers me back to the main chapel, where Gryphon is pacing.
“Welcome back,” he says loudly. “I missed you.”
The Guardian monitoring the basement stairs has been joined by another. They’re engaged in a heated game of dice, all but ignoring us.
It’s good because I can’t play along, can’t act like we’re two kids in love, can’t pretend that anything is all right or ever will be again. Gryphon dips his chin to the Head Priest, then takes me in his charge, leading us outside.
“Are you okay?” he asks, his voice low and concerned.
Our whole world is a lie.
“I’m fine.” It’s all I can manage.
“What did you see in the vault?”
I shake my head once, abruptly. I can’t bring myself to tell him.
Rather than pressure me, he rubs my back in a surprisingly tender move before drawing himself upright.
The village is going about its regular business—deliveries being made, people working in their cottages—but it feels like everyone’s spying on us.
Narrowed gazes, whispering lips. Gryphon leans close and throws an arm around my waist, careful to keep it just below my stitches.
We’ll look affectionate to anyone watching.
They won’t know he’s holding me upright.
“I’m bringing you back to our cottage,” he says, pitching his voice low so only I can hear, “but I have to tell you something first. About my father.” Gryphon takes a deep breath before admitting, “Rose, he intends to go beyond the Wall.”
If I look surprised, it’s only because I’m still reeling from what I learned inside the Record Keeper vault. “Oh?”
“I know,” Gryphon soothes. Solemn, misinterpreting. I don’t correct him. “But there’s no need to worry. I know how to stop him without anyone else getting hurt.”
“By destroying the explosives, tablet, and Harvest basket before Jarek can use them?”
He falters mid-stride, mouth dropping open like a pitcher plant. I feel a sudden and unexpected loss, knowing I’ll never view my own carnivorous rootlings the same way again.
“Yeah, Rose.” Gryphon blinks several times. “That’s actually weirdly…”
I glance at my old friend sideways, feeling an unexpected burst of pleasure amidst all the traumas. Gryphon always seems so serious, so carefully in control. I’ve grieved these normal, human moments between us. “Thanks,” I say. “I just came up with it.”
I can practically hear his gears turning. I decide to put the Guardian out of his misery. “I’m pulling your leg,” I admit, touching his arm lightly. “I already knew about your dad. And Oscar and I discussed that plan earlier.”
To my surprise, he starts chuckling, and then so do I. For a precious moment, we’re kids again.
“I missed your laugh, Rosie.”
My mouth snaps closed, my heartbeat hammering. He hasn’t called me by the familiar version of my name since before the betrothal ceremony. I want to keep the connection going between us. I’m not ready to tell him about our ancestors, but I can share this: “I think David Seingalt’s on our side.”
Gryphon’s eyes flash, sharp again. “I don’t trust a man who is more interested in collecting cans of beans than he is in fulfilling duties, but I won’t get in his way if he wants to help.” His jaw tightens. “My father must be stopped. Removing his access to the outside world is the way.”
I feel another surge of tenderness toward Gryphon.
He’s in an untenable position. As much as he hates Jarek, he obviously still craves the man’s respect, if not his love.
In this way, our parents brand themselves on our skin, for good or ill.
We’ve almost reached the Tzu house. “I agree. And we put an end to Harvests.”
A boy from the Beekeeping House watches us from his cottage door. Is he eavesdropping? Looking for someone to turn in so he can claim his two tins of fish?
This is how Jarek continues to poison us.
Gryphon nods. “Agreed. The tablet will be easy enough for us to get to, and without it, the basket is useless. Our focus has to be destroying the explosives in the training barn.”
Something occurs to me. “We need the Record Keeper to testify to the other villagers that there were weapons in the first place.” I think back to David’s sad face in the basement, his shame at the choices he’s made.
I have to believe he’ll do the right thing when given the chance.
“But we can’t wait to destroy them. If we’re going to do it, we need to get to them tonight. I—”
My sentence is cut short by Jarek charging out of his house, his face purple with rage. Instantly, Gryphon steps in front of me.
“You KNOW you’re not allowed to guard her!
” Jarek grabs his son by the shirt and pins him against the cottage wall, his forearm pressed against Gryphon’s neck.
It’s the exact move Gryphon recently taught us all how to escape, yet he doesn’t execute the maneuver that would free him.
If Jarek had any trust left in his son, it’s gone, and still, Gryphon will not fight him.
Misia rushes out of the house at the commotion. She appears for a moment like she wants to pull Jarek off her son, but ultimately, she just stands by. Jarek has them both under his thumb, though Misia is no innocent.
“Practicing family togetherness, I see,” I say, channeling Salvatora. “Shall I go inside and make us lunch, or do none of you trust me with a knife?”
Jarek glances over, his expression making clear he wouldn’t mind trading out Gryphon for me against that wall.
Instead, he grinds his forearm into his son’s neck a little harder—enough that Gryphon’s face drains of blood—before he releases him.
Then he strides over to me, fury radiating.
I can’t believe he’s leaving his back open.
Then again, I suppose he knows his son poses no threat.
I wonder what it will take for Gryphon to finally stand up to his father.
“Misia will be watching you,” Jarek snarls into my face, so near that flecks of spittle land on my cheeks. When I make no response, he spins on his heel. “Gryphon, you and Leonidas are on perimeter patrol. We have traitors in our midst. We must flush them out.”
Another snipe hunt for Gryphon. I’m almost impressed at how completely his father is committing to the traitor story, keeping it up behind the scenes when he knows we know the lie of it.
I suppose, in a way, Jarek truly believes what he’s saying.
Not that anyone besides him is hoarding food and weapons, but I bet anyone who doesn’t enthusiastically follow him looks like a traitor from where he’s sitting.
To those who choose darkness, light is the enemy.
“See you later,” I tell Gryphon. I suddenly feel drunk with terrible knowledge, high on hopelessness.
“You will not,” Misia says, bristling. “You’ll be confined to your room, alone. It’s only proper the night before your wedding.”
“Little late for that,” I snort.
I don’t know where my impudence is coming from, but I don’t hate it, either.
They’ve already lied to me and imprisoned me.
Whipped my friends and killed my mother and Harvested my brother.
The least I deserve is a bit of rebellion.
My boldness seems to alarm Gryphon, though.
He glides around his father and steps up to me, his hand soft on my cheek.
He leans toward my ear, breath sweet and sizzling.
“Trust,” he says, “and don’t do anything reckless.” He lingers a moment longer than etiquette allows, breathing in the scent of me. Then he walks away with his father, leaving me weak-kneed. I’m not sure who or what I’m meant to trust, but I’ll give him this: his delivery is excellent.
“Inside,” Misia orders.
“I need to use the bathroom.” It’s the truth. I can’t remember the last time I went.
Misia appears ready to argue but instead leads us both to the rear of the cottage, electing to wait outside the door like she’s worried I’ll bolt.
Two Guardians are stationed at the base of the ladder leading to the rooftop charging station.
Are they protecting it from my friends, locked up in the chapel basement?
Seems unlikely. I recall what Gran said about more people being on the side of right than I know, think of Uncle Richard’s “we” breaking us out of jail.
Well, I wish those folks would show themselves.
I use the toilet, then wash my face and hands.
I also strip the dirty bandages off my stitches and the cut on my shoulder and gently wash the tender flesh.
They’re both still free of the heat of infection.
I dig through the assortment of shampoos, soaps, and scents I’d prepared just days earlier—though it feels like a lifetime—until I find the little pot of balm I’d tucked away.
Past Rose gets a star for her foresight, though at the time I assumed I’d need it for Gryphon’s injuries, not my own.
I slather my wounds with fresh salve and manage to apply clean bandages before Misia starts pounding on the door and telling me that either I’m coming out or she’s coming in.
I choose the former.
Back inside the cottage, I’m allowed a quick meal of cold porridge and then it’s straight to the bedroom, where I’m left alone with my thoughts.
They all lead to the same place: Jonas might be alive, waiting for me, and I must get to him.
He might be dead, prey to our supposed protector, and still I must get to him.
We also have to find a way to stop Jarek and the Verdant Beast. Maybe now that I finally know everything we’re up against, Mom’s journal will reveal clues I couldn’t have seen before.
I reach under the mattress for it, but my fingertips brush empty air. My heart plummets. I check again.
It’s gone.
Heart thudding, I walk to the wardrobe.
Gryphon’s sketches are also no longer here.
They’ve stripped us of what gives us hope.
.
After I change into clean clothes and rebind my hair into its buns, all that’s left to do is pace the room: door, cupboard, bed, desk.
Door, cupboard, bed, desk. My thoughts are black.
Occasionally, noises draw me to the window.
Guardians hassling someone to get back to their duties.
Carpenters putting the final touches on an enormous construction just beyond my line of sight.
Popping sounds that remind me of the flash bangs—more training for blowing up the Wall?
Jarek will doom us all.
Forty some-odd Guardians against the unknowable force that brought down our Founders’ world?
It’ll be carnage. How time has flipped our roles—it’s us inside who now need protection from what’s out there, rather than the other way around.
In that way, we aren’t too different than I always thought… and I guess that’s what Gran meant.
Door, cupboard, bed, desk. Door, cupboard, bed, desk.
The confinement is making my skin crawl. I wonder who has my mother’s journal. I refuse to believe it’s Jarek, because Mom would hate that. Perhaps one of his lackeys, then. Maybe even the one who searched our greenhouse the day I found it. Good luck decoding it, I huff.
Hours of pacing crescendos into something like a hypnotic trance. With it come memories of my father braiding my hair, images so clear that I reach out for him. Jonas trying to tell me a joke, pealing with laughter before he ever reaches the punchline. My mother singing, her voice lavender honey.
Eventually, I collapse on the bed. I think I don’t sleep, but when I startle awake, it’s pitch-black out. I blink, my wounds throbbing and my legs tight. I massage my calves, oddly furious with myself. I’ve been waiting for a sign to spur my destiny.
There has only ever been me.
Steal Jarek’s explosives. Ascend the Wall. Find my brother.
Destroy the Verdant Beast.
It starts now.