Chapter 62
“Naturally curly, just as I suspected,” Misia says.
This morning—Friday—broke liquid with sunshine, just as the Astronomer House predicted, and it stayed golden all day.
Misia confined me to my room through all of it.
When the afternoon came, she half-carried, half-dragged me downstairs to wash my hair at the kitchen sink, my hands and feet still shackled.
Next, she cut away my clothes and sponge bathed me after joining me in the bathroom to watch while I peed.
She brought in two female Guardians, one to stand sentry at the door and the other to hold a blade at my neck, as she removed the wrist shackles to drag on my wedding dress.
The skin beneath the restraints was tender, bright red braceleting both wrists.
None of the precautions are necessary.
I’ve lost my anger. My fight. Jarek has the weapons and the explosives.
I don’t care that I’m bathed like an infant, that these Guardians have seen me naked.
My brother is lost forever. Soon the Wall that has protected us for over a century will be breached, allowing unknown horrors to enter while we’re left to battle the Verdant Beast. The best I can hope for is that Jarek manages to kill it when he blows open the Wall.
“I’m glad I started with your hair,” Misia says. “So it had time to dry.”
I’m seated in a chair in front of the ornate mirror inside the Tzu kitchen, wearing a red wedding gown, exactly as I was seven days ago.
But I’m not the same person I was then.
I know the mirror I’m looking at came from original prison warden Helen Hayes’s secret stash.
I know Jarek has stockpiled her weapons, has hidden the Verdant Beast from us, has used fear and greed to turn the villagers against one another.
I know that my mother was killed because she uncovered Jarek’s plans, and my brother was illegally Harvested because Marina didn’t want to marry him and they needed someone to pin with Mom’s murder. I know that I’m powerless.
I’m only a girl in a blood-red wedding dress.
“Stop fidgeting,” Misia says, tugging so hard at my hair that my neck jerks back.
I’ve been motionless, but she’s claimed every opportunity to hurt me since my capture.
Cracking my skull with a mug as she washed my hair.
Pinching my skin between two buttons as she yanked on my dress.
I drugged her and left her husband to find her unconscious at her post, so none of it surprises me.
“There,” she says, setting down a wide-toothed comb. “Look at how striking you are.”
Everything I care about has or will be stolen from me.
My mother and father. Jonas. Gran, Aunt Florence, and Uncle Richard, who will certainly be punished until I agree to help Albert craft the herbicide that will kill us if monsters Beyond don’t first. Meryl, Oscar, Eero, and Sal, if they’re even still alive.
It feels as though my very soul is draining into the earth.
A single question—a single unexplained fact—is scratching at me, but I brush it away.
“I said look.” Misia jerks my chin and forces me to stare at my reflection. “Even more arresting than your mother. Neither of you was ever beautiful, but there’s something interesting there.”
I don’t recognize the girl staring back at me.
Her dark brown hair cascades in curls threaded with currant-colored ribbons and tiny, polished stones that glitter like captured stars.
Her eyes have been lined with a pencil, her lids dusted with pink.
The colors make them appear impossibly large, her lashes lush.
The artificial rosiness of her cheeks complements her broad nose and strong chin.
Her lips are plump and cherry kissed. She wears the most beautiful crimson gown, a delicate pattern of beads accenting her chest and waist, leading to a full skirt.
Only her shackled hands disturb the picture.
“Do you like it?” Misia asks.
The creature in the mirror nods. What does it matter? This isn’t matrimony; it’s propaganda. I wonder how many people will recognize that. I wonder how many more will hate me for violating everything our collective is supposed to be, once they hear Jarek’s accusations against me.
That irritating question tries knocking at my consciousness again. It’s related to last night, to the weapons barn.
Again, I push it away.
“We’re ready,” Misia calls to the Guardians who’ve been waiting outside the door.
I’m helped to my feet and led into the dying lavender light of late afternoon.
The tablet must be fully charged, not that it’ll be needed any longer, not once there’s an enormous hole in the Wall.
What lie will Jarek spin for the villagers to allow him to destroy our protection and send my friends out as bait?
The Guardians guide me to the square. In front of Eden’s Gate sits the structure Eero and the other Carpenters have been building. It’s nearly fifty feet tall and twice as wide. It does indeed look like a mix between a wall and a cage.
It won’t keep out whatever lies in wait Beyond.
The trills and drums of the wedding march begin as soon as I step into view of the Minstrels. Every villager is in attendance and wearing red, as required.
I’m not nervous. I’m not scared.
I’m numb.
The crowd parts for me, a few glancing at my shackles.
Most keep their eyes trained on my face.
The marriage lane ends at the stage. Gryphon is positioned on it, wearing his matrimonial reds.
He’s breathtaking, just as he was at our first ceremony.
He’s a Guardian carved of stone, caught between his family and his conscience, unable to fully serve either.
Maybe today he’ll finally commit to the winning team.
Jarek’s.
I want to follow Gran’s advice to trust, but it’s impossible after everything I’ve experienced. Sojourner also stands on the stage, keeping separate from Jarek. Misia hurries to join her husband, inserting herself between him and Gryphon.
I continue my shuffling walk down the path, shackles biting at my skin.
If I close my eyes, their metal clang almost sounds like the bells I wore last time I made this march.
As I near the stage, I can see Meryl, Eero, and Oscar tied to the whipping posts beside it, facing away from the crowd.
I suck air through my teeth. The backs of their shirts are shredded, the exposed skin swollen, black with blood and gore.
Lozen guards them. Her face is puffy, her eyes shiny, like she’s been crying.
I’m surprised they allow her this expression of emotion.
Albert sits in his wheelchair on the opposite side of the stage, a sullen Marina standing beside him.
Sal’s nowhere to be seen. That, at least, is something.
My eyes rip back to Lozen, the question that’s been nagging at me suddenly at the forefront, impossible to avoid: who told Albert to shoot my mother?
Because it wasn’t Jarek. He may have killed my father, but he loved my mother too much to hurt her.
And murder isn’t something Albert would have done on his own.
He was born a follower, his worship of Marina proof of that.
Was it Marina who commanded him? Possibly.
She said she orchestrated my brother’s Harvest, after all.
But I still feel something just out of reach, a trail I can’t muster the energy to follow.
I stumble climbing the stairs. Jarek rushes forward to help, acting the solicitous father-in-law.
I let him. What does it matter anymore? He guides me to stand next to Gryphon.
Gryphon slips his arm around my waist—one of the few places I’m not cut, bruised, or stitched—but the touch barely registers.
“Thank you all for gathering to celebrate the union of my son, Gryphon Tzu of the Guardian House, and Rose Allgood, formerly of the Apothecaries,” Jarek intones. “Before we begin, I have some disturbing news to share. Nero Carter of the Farmer House?”
Nero strides onto the stage. He turns to address the villagers.
He lacks Jarek’s ability to charm a crowd and launches clumsily into his message.
“Rose Allgood is the traitor we’ve been searching for.
We caught the girl last night with a massive cache of weapons that she must have discovered while trespassing after curfew.
We believe our ancestors left them here for us to protect ourselves, and she was hoarding ’em. ”
Ah, so that’s why they brought Nero to the ambush last night.
Someone outside of the Guardian House to testify against me, and a Council Elder to boot.
I don’t think they’ll need it. No one in the crowd moves, except a few whose eyes flash with something like venom.
They’ve let themselves be led by a madman, allowed him to manufacture a tool out of their fear, one he uses against them right now, right under their noses. They’re in deep.
One by one, I hold their gazes until they look away.
I’ll be damned if I’ll let them forget that they know better.
“It was a disappointment,” Jarek says, reclaiming the stage from Nero. “But not a surprise. It’s in her blood.” He pauses long enough for the villagers to wonder what he means, then draws in a noisy breath. “We’ve recently discovered that Rose’s mother had been poisoning us.”
Gasps of disbelief and outrage burn through the crowd.
“Yes, that’s right!” he says. “Henrietta Allgood was the original traitor. We believe she may have even been the one who first discovered the weapons, later getting her children involved. That would explain why her own son murdered her, driven as he must have been to madness by her selfish crimes.” He shakes his head sadly.
“The Record Keeper has much deliberating to do about how to proceed with the weapons that Rose’s family has collected.
In the meanwhile, you must understand that I don’t believe it’s Rose’s fault that she strayed.
She was born to it, after all. And she will soon be family.
” He shoots me a magnanimous smile. “Which is why Misia and I will take over her behavioral correction. She’ll be invisible to the community for some time. Know that she’s in good hands.”
I risk a glance at Sojourner. She’s staring at the sky, her jawbone rigid.
“Now let us conduct the wedding we’ve all come here to witness, followed by a very special surprise.”
“Not without the Record Keeper.” It’s Gryphon standing next to me speaking. He’s staring at the crowd rather than his father.
“What did you say?” Jarek asks, his tone icy.
Gryphon keeps his arm around me as he raises his voice. “The Record Keeper must be present at every wedding. It’s the law.”
My heart skips. It’s true. But will Jarek care? Apparently he does.
Jarek flicks his hand at Leonidas. “Find David.”
We hold our collective breath. The pain of my stitches and shackles, even the rawness of my broken heart is suspended.
Our society teeters on the brink. If we fall over the edge, there’s no coming back, but the habit of listening to the Record Keeper is ingrained so deeply in us that maybe, maybe, if David can find his courage, we can rebuild.
It’s our last chance.
Leo leads David into the square. He drags his injured foot but otherwise appears surprisingly bright-eyed, his hair combed, red clothes immaculate. I feel a bubble of hope that I’m too afraid to trust as David limps up the stairs, his eyes trained on me.
“Please,” I cry. “Tell them the truth.”
He nods encouragingly as he limps over to me, the picture of vulnerability. When he reaches my side, he puts his face so close to my ear that even Gryphon cannot hear. “The truth?” His caterpillar mustache brushes my flesh. “The truth is that it’s the sneaky leader that you have to watch out for.”
His chuckle makes my blood run cold.