Chapter 32
Chapter Thirty-Two
I pull myself together before we leave the freight building: shoulders back, expression steady, the wobble in my legs—hopefully—barely noticeable.
Cáel walks close beside me, dragging the buffer with one hand and holding the cleaning solution in the other. He refuses to let me carry anything.
Outside, he murmurs to his people. They take the equipment, and half the team falls into step behind us as we head towards the car.
“Are they coming with us?” I ask.
“Yes.”
“We’re not exactly inconspicuous.”
“I know. They already know you’re here. This isn’t the time for stealth. It’s time to look like a threat they don’t want to tackle.” His voice tightens. “They won’t simply capture you again. That’s twice now. Twice you’ve been taken.” Anger strains the edges of his control.
I did not tell him. I knelt behind a man scrubbing a floor and fixed a problem, and the first he knew of it was blood on my face.
I did the same thing in a car park, and it cost us both.
Apparently I have learned nothing at all.
I take his hand and turn him towards me.
His eyes are full of sadness.
“Hey,” I say. “I’m sorry.” I can’t promise I will not do something like that again, but I can apologise for frightening him.
“What are you apologising for?” Vivian calls from the driver’s seat.
As we climb into the car, Cáel answers, “She linked herself to the repair work and held the magic while we scrubbed. A few seconds. It gave her a brain bleed.” He swallows. “And her ears were bleeding,” he adds softly, brushing my hair away from my face.
He sounds as though he might be sick.
Vivian’s knuckles whiten around the steering wheel. “Elmo, why would you do that?”
“I thought I could.” I settle back against the seat. “And I did. It worked.”
“You could have died,” Vivian whispers. She sounds just like Cáel: on the verge of being sick. “Does it matter if the other anchors explode? We’ve evacuated the areas.”
“One more anchor could trigger a cascade through the entire rune network,” I say. “I wasn’t willing to find out.” I glance between them. “Let’s hear Thea’s view. She knows Thread magic better than anyone. She may be able to explain the connection properly. Everything will be all right.”
Neither believes me.
I am not certain I believe myself.
We drive through the Salt District towards the coast. By the time we reach the safe house near the city’s outer boundary, it is well past midnight. We pull up outside a small off-white rural house.
The adrenaline that carried me through my parents’ basement and the Iron District has curdled into something heavier. Cáel has repaired my body, but the body is always the easier part. The mind keeps its own accounts.
Every broken thought and every wound I have been holding at arm’s length are making themselves known now. I push them down into the place where they wait quietly until I have room for them, and it is harder than usual.
There are only so many times you can press the pieces of yourself back together.
And now I am the one standing in the rubble of what they built, trying to fix it.
Sometimes doing what is right and doing what hurts are exactly the same thing.
You do it anyway.
The red front door flies open before the car fully stops.
Thea runs out.
Behind her comes Mina, barking furiously, her tail whirling like a propeller.
I stare.
Auntie Thea has corrupted her.
I climb out.
Vivian sweeps her wife into her arms, and I look away and attempt to hide my silly grin. No one needs to watch their sister kissing.
Mina barrels into my legs.
I crouch and let her lick my face—disgusting and wonderful.
“Hello, smelly girl,” I say, burying my hands in her fur. “What has she done to you?”
Inside, the lamp-lit living room is a world apart from anything I know: soft pinks, sage greens and a beautiful carpet thick enough to soften every footstep. A large L-shaped sofa fills one corner, piled with cushions and neatly folded blankets.
I keep glancing at the walls.
I really do love pink.
Thea’s bodyguards are introduced to Cáel’s, and the combined detail then heads outside to patrol the perimeter.
Cáel settles beside me on the long section of the sofa, close enough that our shoulders almost touch, while Thea claims the shorter side.
“Anything back from your laboratory?” I ask.
“Not yet. Two days, perhaps three, and that is with Cáel’s people leaning on them.” She grimaces. “Whatever is in that water, we shall know by the end of the week.”
Something to look forward to.
She listens as I explain the government marks: the tracking layer, the link to the rune network, the draining function tied into both.
When I finish, she places a cushion across my knees and gestures for me to rest my wrists on top so the marks face upwards.
“I’m going to explore them,” she says, waiting for my nod before turning to Cáel. “I’ll avoid the ward you placed over the tracker, but if anything shifts, be ready to rebuild it.”
“Understood.”
Vivian announces that she is making tea and retreats into the kitchen.
She does not want to watch this part.
Mina, traitor that she is, trots after her, nails clicking across the floor.
A moment later, I hear Vivian murmur, “Yes, yes, I know. You can supervise.”
I attempt a reassuring smile at Cáel, but he does not return it.
Thea steps out to fetch her medical kit from the hall.
“Are you angry with me?” I ask quietly.
“No. I’m frightened.” His gaze does not waver. “I don’t think you understand how much I care about you.”
Tears brighten his eyes; mine answer, inconveniently.
“I will be all right,” I say.
“I know. It’s just… a lot.” He pauses, his gaze on my wrists.
“When I was eighteen—two years older than you were then—everyone at school was obsessed with the Games. I thought they were barbaric, but I still watched some of them.” His voice softens.
“There was this girl. Bright and fast. Fighting for someone else when she could have run away.”
My stomach twists.
He is talking about me.
I remember our first meeting at the roadblock, when he told me he had watched my Games.
“When you saved Keeley, my heart hurt,” he says. “Out of everyone on that screen, you were the one who chose other people over yourself. You could have abandoned them and tried to win.”
“It was fixed. There was no winning.”
“We didn’t know that then.” He looks at me. “I only saw who you were.”
His gaze drops to my wrists again. “I always wondered what happened to you. Then I met your sister and realised she was talking about you. You were still alive, and I wanted to meet you. To see what kind of person you had become.”
I follow his gaze to the government marks. “What a disappointment,” I murmur.
“Disappointment?” he says the word as though it belongs to a language he does not understand. He takes my hands, careful of the marks, and strokes his thumbs lightly over my wrists. “I thought you were extraordinary as a teenager. Then I met you, and you were—are—better than I imagined.”
My breath catches.
The sigil over my sternum burns.
“Strong. Kind. Unintentionally funny.” He holds my gaze. “You are the best person I know, Elenora Morris. I realise you don’t see yourself that way, but I needed you to know that I do. I needed you to know that now.”
In case he loses the chance to say it.
I wipe my eyes on my sleeve and sniff, entirely without grace.
No one has ever said anything like that to me.
People have called me many things. A punchline, a cautionary tale, a monster, a disappointment. He looks at me and sees… whatever this is.
I never knew that was possible.
I was right on the day we first met.
He really did see me. It is too much. Too warm, too sudden, too close to something I have no idea how to hold.
Cáel leans forwards and kisses my cheek, his lips pressing against the corner of my mouth just as Thea returns with two enormous bags.
She drops them beside the sofa with the brisk resolve of someone who has assessed the mood in the room and chosen usefulness over commentary.
“Right,” she says as she pulls out equipment. “Let’s get this sorted.”
“Right.” I draw a breath. “Let’s.”