Chapter 23
TWENTY-THREE
margaret
Traveling through the freaky woods isn’t so terrible when in the presence of a handsome stranger and while riding a massive horse rather than walking.
It had been a day and a half, and I was having a pretty dandy time.
Too dandy, actually. I should have known it was too good to be true.
We stopped for a break at midday. Gideon started a fire and pulled out paper-wrapped meat he’d brought along with him, insisting we needed strong meals to keep up our strength.
While he tended the flames, Katherine and Benedict snuck off to freshen up in the nearby river, and Carter accompanied the guards to check out the road ahead.
Leaving Gideon and me alone.
I didn’t mind it. In fact, I felt more comfortable talking to him when it was just the two of us. People could be nosy. Not me, of course. Other people.
I would never pry…
“Why haven’t you asked me about my power?” he asked out of the blue.
I blinked, registering his question more slowly than I should have. “Did you want me to ask about it?”
He shrugged, poking the fire with a stick until embers flew in the air. Manly things, et cetera. “Most people do. I guess I’m just surprised you haven’t seemed to care.”
He had a point. In a world of mystics, asking about one’s power was usually the opening line to any conversation. Even before a person asked your name, they asked about your tier. What you could do.
Growing up with Elijah, I’d always been overlooked. He wielded his phantoms with absolute perfection. And if he could do that, why did it matter what I could do?
Even in those dungeons, my powers had been overlooked. She’s just a two, he had said. Don’t bother asking her to show you. She can hardly light a candle with her magic.
He had a way of making me look like a young girl in his presence. Like an innocent in need of protection.
He was my protector—he always would be. That’s just who he was.
But as I was growing up like that, I discovered that people’s powers were the least interesting thing about them.
Who cared about your wielding shadows if you sucked at cooking breakfast (cough, cough, Elijah)?
I was more curious about people’s passions.
Favorite animals. Whether they got along with their mother.
What town they’d grown up in. What they thought of storms and cats and pretty flowers.
To be honest, I didn’t care about a person’s power. Except Benedict’s, and only when he’d forced me to march through the forest for hours and hours while he LITERALLY had the ability to jump through space.
But that was a one-time thing. But I digress.
“You seem like an interesting person. I guess I’m more intrigued about who you are and where you come from,” I answered honestly. “Besides—most people have a habit of flaunting their tiers and their powers the minute you meet them.”
He laughed, shaking his head.
“You have a good laugh,” I blurted out, my cheeks instantly flaming.
Um, was I losing my mind? Was that the type of flirty thing Katherine would say? Or was I being ridiculous?
Still poking the fire with his big, manly stick, he peered over his shoulder. A smile lingered on his face, and I could almost see a light dancing within his eyes.
He looked at me like that for far too long. Long enough that the back of my neck heated along with my face.
I squirmed, ducking. “And for the record, you haven’t asked me about my power, either.”
He finally looked back to the fire. “I figured you’d talk about it when you wanted to.”
My chest tightened. “And what if I had no power? What if I was a simple, boring woman with absolutely nothing to offer the resistance?”
“I’d find that hard to believe, Margaret.”
My stomach did a very strange flippy thing that made me want to giggle, but I choked it down. Katherine definitely would NOT laugh like that in front of a handsome, mysterious man.
“How did you become the terrifying leader of the defiance, anyway?” I asked, changing the subject.
He set the stick on the ground, then settled next to me, his legs stretched out in front of him, matching my posture. “I wouldn’t call myself the leader of the entire defiance,” he said. “And to be honest, I never intended to be a leader. It just ended up that way.”
A giggle slipped out. “That’s definitely something the leader of a magical rebellion cult would say.”
His fingers brushed mine in the dirt. I pretended not to notice. “I was young when I left the Ministry—maybe nine or ten. I was born with them—had grown up with them.”
“Wow. I’ve never heard of anyone actually being born into the Ministry,” I whispered, considering it. “I guess I just assumed everyone was kidnapped and forced to join.”
“A small group of us were born there, yes. It was fine at first—strict—but it was all I knew. It wasn’t until they killed my brother that I realized something was wrong.”
My stomach twisted into a painful knot. “They killed your brother? Why?”
He pressed his lips together and exhaled deeply.
“My brother had no power. My parents were both mystics, but he’d never shown any signs that he had a gift.
He was tested multiple times, and I was certain he would grow into himself one day.
But nothing.” He hung his head. “They were going to exile him. That’s what they told us, anyway.
But I guess they decided he knew too much. ”
My heart sank.
“I found his body in the river a few days later. They didn’t even bother burying him.
When I confronted a few of the others in our town about it, they questioned why I would even care since he wasn’t a mystic.
Since he had no ‘gift.’ And they emphasized the belief that earthly sympathizers were just as detrimental as the earthlies themselves. ”
I pushed my fingers a little farther into his. “I’m so sorry, Gideon. I can’t imagine how horrible that must have been.”
“It was a long time ago,” he said, “but I’ve lived my life for the resistance since. I left my family and traveled alone until I found a small group of rogue mystics. That was about ten years ago, and we’ve been building up the resistance ever since.”
“You’ve been with the resistance since before the war started?” Eyes drifting to the sky, I did the math in my mind. The war—the real war between earthlies and mystics—had started only a few years ago.
Gideon studied my face. “Don’t let them fool you, Margaret. Mystics in power have always killed earthlies—and they always will.”
I had a million more questions. I wanted to sit here in the dirt for a million more hours and talk to Gideon.
But Benedict and Katherine jogged up to us, giggling, breaking up our tense little conversation.
“How’s the water?” Gideon asked—his voice had changed completely. The vulnerable side of him had vanished and the leader of the resistance had returned.
“Freezing,” Katherine answered.
She shot Benedict a look, and he grinned in return.
God, what was going on with them? They were acting like two kids in love.
Not the enemies they’d been when I met them.
It really was freaking me out.
“Sir, you are gonna want to see this,” one of Gideon’s men announced as he returned to the clearing.
His eyebrows were drawn, and his right hand was glued to the handle of the knife he kept on his belt.
“What is it?” I asked, my pulse picking up.
Gideon hauled himself up and held his hands out to pull me up. “Stay by my side,” he murmured. “And take this.”
He slipped a knife, similar to the one the guards carried, into my hand.
My breath caught. “What? No, I—”
“Please, Margaret.” He closed my fingers around the handle. “For me.”
I never thought I’d be the kind of girl who would bend so easily for a handsome, dark-haired man with a knife and strong fingers, but here I was, bending faster than a willow’s branch during a thunderstorm.
“Fine,” I sighed. “But I can’t promise I’ll be good at using it.”
He watched me secure the knife at my hip, his scrutiny making my stomach do that weird thing again.
Thankfully, he turned away before I could do anything stupid.
“Let’s go,” he called to the others. “Stay alert. We’re in a gray zone, but nothing here can be considered completely safe.”
Carter and the rest of the guards were waiting for us half a mile ahead. We’d walked to meet them, our horses being led behind us with ropes.
My heart raced the entire time. Every snap of a branch made me jump. Every chirp of a bird made my fists tighten.
I hated this. I hated fighting. I hated war.
The nonexistent sense of safety was the worst part. Was it too much to ask for a safe life? Where I didn’t have to look over my shoulder every three seconds?
Carter’s blond hair finally came into view—along with the rest of the guards awaiting us—but that’s not what caught my attention.
It was the large brick wall behind them. It was massive; some areas had been destroyed, leaving holes every hundred feet or so. It looked long abandoned, covered in thick forest vines and brush.
The guys stood straighter as Gideon approached.
“Any actives?” he asked.
“No signs of anything fresh. But it’s a brutal sight in there.” The guard’s eyes flickered to me. “Are you sure she’s ready to see this?”
Without hesitation, Gideon said, “She has seen more of the horrors of the Ministry than most of us. She can handle it.”
I clamped my mouth shut, hiding my shock.
What would make him say something like that?
And how would he know? He hardly knew me.
Maybe this was his way of making me look tougher to his manly bodyguards.
Maybe he wanted them to see me as more than just a young girl with long dark hair and skinny legs.
I knew I did.
My thoughts ceased when Gideon slid his hand into mine. “Come on,” he said.
As he led me through the largest, crumbling hole in the wall, I took it all in. It was possibly the strangest thing I’d ever seen. A massive crumbling wall in the middle of the forest? There’s no way this was good.
On the other side, Gideon gave my hand a gentle tug, keeping me moving while the others followed, but they kept their distance. When the view came into focus, I gasped.
“What is this?”
A small town stood beyond the wall.
Or what used to be a town.
What awaited us was nothing but death. Ruin. The downfall of an entire civilization.
“This city was known as Rahjomage. A city of earthlies.”
I could hardly breathe. My throat tightened with emotion and the words were stolen from my mouth.
He led me down the cracked path covered in broken stones and debris. Building after building had been crushed entirely. Like a force had barreled through and wiped out every structure, every place an earthly could hide.
“Why would anyone destroy this place?”
Gideon’s fingers tightened around mine. “I’ve heard of this place. It was a popular place for travelers to stop between larger cities. A town of earthlies, but mystics, too. Sympathizers.”
The word alone didn’t sound right. “Earthlies were sympathizers to mystics?”
“Mystics who refused the summons of the Ministry, yes. And the Ministry doesn’t like that. They’ll kill them all.” He sighed.
We made our way to what I assumed had once been the center of the city. From there, we were surrounded by destruction, like gods standing before a broken creation. “They won’t stop killing earthlies until there are none left. And they’ll kill all the mystics who stand in their way, too.”
I couldn’t breathe. Tears burned my eyes. The smell of smoke and rot and horror made my lungs seize up.
I’d seen terrible things—Gideon was right about that.
But this level of cruelty?
This was what the Ministry did. And this was why we had to stand up to them.
“I can’t believe this,” I croaked. “There must have been hundreds—thousands—of earthlies living here.”
“Gideon,” one of the guards called. “Over here.”
He pulled me to the right, between the remains of two buildings, then to another opening on the hill.
I couldn’t imagine anything worse than what I’d just seen. I didn’t think the horror could hurt me any more than it already had.
Until I saw the thousands of earthly bodies.
Piled in a mass grave.
And left to rot.
Gideon locked up beside me, processing the sight. Letting it fuel him.
I understood why.
Why he forced himself to consume a wicked sight like this. Why he surveyed each of the bodies, why he took his time covering as many of the faces he could as a small sliver of respect for these lives lost.
He forced himself to look at the horror so he would remember.
I did the same, tucking away visions of each man, woman, and child I saw decomposing in that pile.
There was no question. I would remember this forever.