Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
It feels as though I have stepped into a parallel universe.
This morning, I had only Mina. No friends. No family. Now I sit at a kitchen table with my sister, her wife and Cáel.
None of it makes sense.
Vivian slides a plate towards me. “Eat. You must be hungry.”
Not really. The growling in my stomach has faded.
Nerves, shock or both.
I rub my face. Why would my sister rescue me after all these years? Why now? It has been a very long time since I believed in fairy tales.
My family disowned me. They were all perfectly clear.
And now I am expected to believe my sister wants to save me.
Even if I did believe it, how could I tell her there is not much left worth saving? I am a very different person from the girl I used to be.
A lifetime has passed.
And so has my trust.
“Please,” she says. “I made your favourites.” She smiles, and I take the easier path.
I serve myself.
My appetite has long been indifferent, but I place a pancake on my plate, drizzle syrup over it, add a rasher of bacon and cut a neat square. Whatever else Mother was, she insisted upon impeccable table manners.
I taste the mouthful of sweet and salt and almost freeze.
I had forgotten food could be like this.
I take another bite and a sip of perfectly weak tea, then look at my sister and wait.
Vivian leans back in her chair. “Let me start at the beginning. After your Games, I petitioned to bring you home. I caused an absolute stink. Mother and Father were furious, but I kept pushing.” Her fingers tighten around her cup.
“They pushed back. I kept trying to reach you. I even spent a month in prison.”
“Prison?” I whisper.
It cannot be true.
Can it?
“A month,” Thea says quietly. “In winter.” She does not look up from her plate. “She still doesn’t sleep properly.”
“Thea.”
“Well. She asked.”
Vivian turns her cup a half-circle on the table and does not deny it.
I put down my fork. Somewhere in the worst year of my life, while I was learning which streets I was permitted to walk down, my sister was in a cell for saying my name too loudly.
Nobody told me. Nobody would have.
“Eventually, they sent me away.” She pauses. “Whatever deal they made, I promise you, Elmo, I tried to undo it.”
Elmo.
For a second, the name does not sound like a sneer. It sounds the way it used to: a family nickname, soft with exasperation and affection. Mine before the world took it, twisted it and threw it back at me until it became a curse.
I kept it because I am stubborn. If they were going to use my childhood name as a weapon, I would carry it like armour.
But hearing Vivian say it gently hurts in a place I thought had scarred over.
“Instead, I was exiled to another country. A few years later, I met Thea.”
They share a glance that holds years of choosing the same person until the choice becomes the shape of life itself.
Something twists beneath my ribs.
Envy. Jealousy.
And genuine happiness for her.
What must it be like to be loved that way?
“We were friends first, then we dated, and almost sixteen years ago, we married. The law is different where we live.” Vivian folds her hands on the table.
“Our country is broadly fair, but it didn’t want to be drawn into Elyrion’s problems, so I had to let it go.
” Her voice softens. “Let you go. I never forgot, though.”
She glances at Thea, who nods. “I’m a biologist, and Thea is an orthopaedic surgeon. Through work, I met Cáel.”
“I am one of Velmora’s governors,” he says. “Education and magical welfare. Similar in rank to an Overseer. Very different in practice.”
He sits back with his cup cradled between both hands, watching me rather than Vivian.
“I’d asked others before,” Vivian continues, “but nobody wanted to risk a confrontation. Cáel was the first with enough authority to act, and the first who was willing.” She gestures around the kitchen.
“We borrowed this house from the Overseer. Mother and Father were thrilled that I was finally getting married and didn’t ask many questions.
Apparently, marrying a prominent Velmoran official was enough to make them overlook a few decades of disobedience. ”
She grins, and for a moment, she is thirteen again. “The marriage was the cover we needed. Cáel did most of the work; I waited. He located you quickly. Just a few days after we arrived, you drove into that checkpoint—” She falters.
“Elenora had just carried out an execution order on a child,” Cáel finishes.
Thea makes a soft sound and grips Vivian’s arm.
Thanks, Cáel.
Why did he have to say it like that?
“Don’t worry, Thea. I know my sister.” Vivian looks at me, her eyes doing all the work her voice will not. “Elmo wouldn’t hurt an innocent.”
It is not quite a question.
I remain silent.
“There’s no way you would kill a child.” Doubt creeps into her voice, and she hears it. I see the instant she registers the slip. “Please.” She leans forwards. “Please tell us the child is all right.”
I shake my head.
“I’m your sister.”
“I know.”
“Thea is my wife.”
“I know that too.” I glance down at the table.
I cannot.
It is not safe.
I do not know Cáel. I do not know Thea, and I barely know my sister any more.
I will not risk those children.
Vivian exhales slowly through her nose. “You’re even more stubborn than before,” she murmurs, without heat.
Silence settles over the table.
“We came to get you out,” Vivian says at last, “and now it seems getting you out might mean getting the whole city out, if what Cáel told us is accurate.”
“It is,” I reply.
“I’ve reviewed the medical reports Cáel was able to obtain,” Thea says.
“The Fade behaves like no virus I have ever seen. It doesn’t cluster.
It doesn’t travel along contact lines. It doesn’t spare the people it ought to spare.
” She sets down her cutlery. “Whatever is killing them, they are not catching it. Your theory is the first thing I have heard that fits the numbers.”
“It fits because it is not an illness,” I say. “It’s a yield.”
The word sits on the table where I put it.
Nobody argues with it.
The table falls quiet.
“I should say plainly that this is past me,” Cáel says. “My work is schools and welfare. Teaching people to hold their own magic without hurting anybody. What you saw from that tower is ancient Elyrion rune-work, and that is a different discipline entirely. Not one of mine.”
“So,” Vivian says, turning a strip of bacon between her fingers, “what do we do?”
No one answers.
“At the observation tower,” I say at last, “I could see the rune network from the viewing platform. The Aegis Spire would be better. It’s higher and more centrally positioned, so we could see more of the magic from there.”
Vivian looks towards Cáel.
He nods. “That won’t be a problem.”
“We have to be careful,” I warn. “About what we say and who sees us.”
“That won’t be a problem either,” Cáel says.
I meet his gaze.
He offers no further assurance, yet, against my better judgement, I believe him.
“You’ll need to change your clothes,” Vivian says, “and perhaps have a shower.” She wrinkles her nose.
Only a sister could say it that way.
And only my sister could get away with it.
“I’ll show you to the spare room.” Cáel rises and heads towards the kitchen door.
I start after him.
Mina stays where she is, her gaze fixed on the table—specifically, on a sausage foolish enough to remain within her sightline.
“Be careful,” I call over my shoulder. “She’ll eat everything if you leave it unattended.”
Thea looks down at Mina, then up at me, and the warmth goes out of her face somewhere along the way.
Execution order on a child. She heard it, and she is not letting it go.
I am so used to that look that I nearly missed it arriving in a kitchen where nobody had given me one yet.
Fair enough. I do not trust her either.
Vivian moves towards Mina with the determination of someone who has just acquired a dog, consent optional. “We’ll look after her,” she says. “We will, won’t we, Mina? Auntie Viv and Auntie Thea will look after you.”
I leave to the sound of Mina’s tail thumping against the floor.
Cáel waits in the hall, and I follow him to the staircase. A large chandelier hangs overhead, and the bannister is beautifully carved, ornate without being excessive. At the foot of the stairs, I remove my boots and set them beside the door.
My little toe shows through a hole in my sock.
Wonderful.
As I climb, I fold the worn fabric beneath my foot to hide it.
Cáel switches on the light.
The spare room has the polished calm of a five-star hotel: soft sage-green walls, olive-green cushions and a bed dressed in crisp white linen. Mirrored wardrobes catch the light and make the room appear larger.
The carpet closes around my socked feet, thick enough to hide them completely.
Clothes lie neatly arranged across the bed.
They have prepared for me.
“Thank you,” I say awkwardly.
Cáel leans against the doorway while I touch the fabric. Soft linen trousers in warm beige. A white top made from thick angora. A beautiful coat. Shoes.
Even underwear.
As I run the wool between my fingers, something I can’t name lodges beneath my breastbone.
These clothes would never survive in the Districts.
I know I cannot keep them.
“Why didn’t you tell your sister the child is safe?”
I do not even shrug.
“It matters.” His voice remains quiet. “You protect everyone except yourself.”
I turn towards him. “You don’t know me, Cáel. You met me a few days ago. You have no idea who I am or what I have done.”
“I know you,” he says.
I laugh, a short, disbelieving sound. “You really don’t.”
“I know your record. You kill only those who try to harm you or who have seriously harmed others. You take all the children’s contracts that come through.” He pauses. “I also know that all those children end up at an academy in Velmora.”
I go still.
The room seems to narrow around me.
I have knives.
“They arrive traumatised, every one of them. They speak of a woman they thought would kill them, yet she saved them. Those children then grow in safety and in power.” His eyes do not leave mine.
“Once Vivian gave me your name, I compared the children’s arrival dates with the child bounties assigned to you.
The pattern was unmistakable. I still don’t know everyone involved or how the children are crossing the border, and I have no intention of finding out. ”
I have been so careful.
Did he meet my sister on purpose?
“How?” My voice is barely a murmur.
“Because I’m the Governor for Education and Magical Welfare.
Of course I noticed when more than a dozen traumatised children began trickling into one of my schools.
The academy specialises in foreign-born and displaced magical children,” he adds.
“Complicated paperwork is not unusual. Forged paperwork is not unusual either. But Elyrion children arriving with new identities while children under your chits were being declared dead back home? That was harder to miss.” He straightens slightly.
“Everything has been handled with complete discretion. I promise you.”
“You sat at that table.” My voice comes out lower than I intend. “You watched me refuse my own sister. You knew the whole time, and you let me do it.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because it isn’t mine to give away,” he says. “She can have it from you or not at all.”
I have no answer to that, so I do not attempt one.
I press my fingers to the bridge of my nose. “It shouldn’t have reached your level. If anyone else knows—if it gets out—”
“It won’t.” His certainty leaves no room for argument. “The children are safe, and the information is secure.”
I study him. “So you know I’ve saved a few children, and from that, you think you know me?”
“I know you threw away your future to save a girl called Keeley Boneson. I watched it happen live on television. Years later, when Keeley’s daughter was placed under bounty, you tried to protect her as well.
” He nods towards the fading bruises on my face.
“The betrothal gives me standing to ask the Overseer’s household for anything touching the Morris family.
Last night that included the report you filed.
Her family left you with those injuries. ”
“You’ve been following me.”
“If I’d been following you, they wouldn’t have touched you.”
I almost laugh. “How generous.”
“You can trust your sister,” he says. “And you can trust Thea. They’re good people.”
The habit of making every decision alone is too deeply ingrained to dislodge. He implies that I am brave, yet I can’t even tell my own sister that a child is alive.
The secret is not mine alone.
Break often enough and broken becomes what you are.
Still, I get up.
The children need someone, and for a long while, I have been the only one.
But now there are others.
People who might see what I see.
People who might know what to do.
If they do not—if this comes to nothing—I shall find another way.
I always do.
I realise I have been silent for too long. Cáel nods once, straightens and steps back from the doorway. “I’ll leave you to change. Come down when you’re ready.” He pauses. “Take your time.”