16. Elara #3
“Things with the Counseil getting a little uncomfortable, Auclair? Plouffe can’t stop raving about how you made them all-powerful.”
“I didn’t ask to be Favored. If I remember correctly, you put me in that position. Or maybe you just did it because you didn’t think I’d have a chance of winning.”
“Because you don’t!” He laughed, raking a hand through his curls, which had grown scraggly in the last week. “You should have walked away.”
“From a chance at success?”
“Don’t be na?ve. They want blood. They always do.”
She rolled her eyes. “That’s the past, Fernand! Who else has died since my mother? Who are they killing?”
“Us!”
He pushed open the Cradle door, and Elara wished she could scrub the scene from her memory.
A man was stretched on a cot. At least, it must have been a man. It was difficult to see beneath the swelling and bruising. His face was mangled, stitched improperly at awkward angles, and his skin was a sickening shade of purple.
“Colin.”
Jeanine’s husband.
The bright-eyed, hopeful man who used to sell magied trinkets in The Market. The same one Fernand had roped into his schemes. He was here, not dead.
But he might’ve been better off that way.
“Look as his hands, Elara.”
She would have, but they were gone. His wrists were cauterized and stitched closed. Acid burned up her belly, and she staggered back into the hallway.
“Why?” she whispered.
“Because magie performed by anyone outside of a Société is illegal, and this is the punishment the Counseil thinks they deserve.”
Tears blurred her vision. She’d seen police use excessive force.
She’d seen them beat the defenseless before dragging them off to never be seen again.
Now she felt foolish for thinking that was where it ended.
How had she come to accept a life of fear where she ducked her head and lowered her eyes at every uniform she came across?
“Every day,” Fernand pressed, “more and more of our neighbors, our people, starve to death or are crushed by machinery running their factories. Every day, more people end up like Colin. We are fodder to the Counseil, and it has to stop.”
She’d lived for Fernand for years, and in that time, she’d heard so many passionate speeches, but none like this. This … this was new and rooted so deeply in his soul that she almost took a step toward him.
Blai interceded. “What happens when you don’t succeed, hero? What happens when you bring all these people down with you because you underestimated their evil?”
Fernand didn’t blink. “We’ll get back up. We always do.”
“Easy to say now when you’ve got that fire in your veins.” They poked his chest with the tip of the fan. “Trust me, it all turns to ash in the end.”
Fernand’s nostrils flared. Blai didn’t flinch.
When their pissing contest was over, Fernand acknowledged her again. “What do you want?”
How foolish it was to ask for anything when a man was suffering just behind that door. How foolish to ask for her problems to be fixed when the Restes was … dying. It really was.
“The Counseil are going to try and get the truth out of me,” she replied.
“What truth?”
“Anything. Everything.” She motioned to the club, the Cradle.
“Then make something to stop them,” he said.
“I can’t. They’ll be looking. I need an undetectable way of blocking them.”
He rubbed his face, sleeves drooping to reveal his arms, which were covered in little red marks barely the size of a pinhead. They’d left welts, some larger than others. All of it was angry. Fevered.
She reached. “What are those?”
“Nothing.” He covered them quickly. “I’ll need a favor in return.”
Elara glanced at Blai, who, despite their previous exchange, looked nonplussed about the whole situation. They shrugged as if to say, What else are we going to do?
“Fine,” Elara said. “What do you want?”
“Meet me here in four days. I’ll have a solution and a request.”
Elara mentally checked the timer at the bottom of the letter.
Six days, six hours, fifteen minutes.
That only left two days to determine if his solution worked.
“Deal.” And she spun on her heel right out of the club.
To their credit, Blai didn’t say a word until they were across the bridge. The air was too heavy, the memory of Colin’s battered body too fresh.
“Talk about old flames. I thought you two would end up burning that place to the ground.”
Fernand was right. The Restes was dying, and she was playing pretend in a contest she didn’t even want to win. He was doing the real work. But it was dangerous and the consequences were immeasurable. Just like with her mother.
There had to be another way.
“If it helps, he makes it easy to believe they have a chance,” Blai said. “Even for me.”
Elara stopped just before they headed back into the dark alleys.
“Please, don’t tell Nik about this. If he knew that I…”
“Went to the leader of a burgeoning rebellion for help over him, he’d self-combust into a pile of tiny, furious particles?”
Elara nodded.
Blai hooked their elbow in hers and continued down the street. “Your secret is safe with me. Besides, I wouldn’t survive all his insufferable jealousy.”