Chapter 52 Ezra
The walk back to camp was nearly silent, save for planning on what we were going to do and a brief stop for Helena to create a cave to hold him in.
There was nothing to say of it really. We had seen what we had seen and there was no changing it.
By the time we entered the camp, Helena was fuming.
She looked as though she would crawl out of her skin.
Liv was just blank, cold. I could not say that I was mad.
It was more so disappointment. We trusted him.
“Where is Rafael?” I asked Arabella who was sitting with the younger girls near the fire.
“He is still over there, working on whatever it is he has been working on for days.” She nodded in the direction of the wood pile. “Is everything alright?” I did not answer her. We headed for the pile where Rafael had apparently been woodworking carefree while sending us knowingly into an ambush.
He saw us coming before we even spoke. He stood quickly and brushed the curls of wood from the long piece he had been whittling.
I stopped short when I saw what he held.
The thing he had been working so diligently on was a sign.
It was the length of his arm span and only about three feet tall.
It read ‘The Sanctuary’ and below the words was a small sigil, the same one that was inked into my skin and the girls’.
It was sloppily carved. He was a blacksmith, certainly not a carpenter.
But it was readable. He smiled brightly as he offered it up to us.
“I know it is not much. I thought perhaps it could be the start of a new home.”
None of us spoke. I stared blankly at him.
“The sanctuary was never the manor, anyway. It was us. The people. Stanhope cannot burn that.”
Lavinia scoffed behind me and his smile faltered.
His eyes drifted to Helena and the smile grew wide once more.
“You are back early. How did it go?” She spat at the ground by his feet.
“Hell?” Her fists clenched so tightly that her knuckles turned white before she turned and left without a word and headed in the direction of the cave.
“Actually,” I stepped forward. “We wanted to speak with you about that.” I tried to be as polite as possible.
“Come with us.” Liv made no such attempt. Her words were cold, clipped, before she too turned on her heel.
Together we led him out of the camp and into the woods toward the cave.
When we entered it, Helena was already waiting there.
A chair sat in the center of the space and torches lined the walls for light.
I waved my hand forward, silently gesturing Raf further into the space.
The ground began to rumble as soon as we were all inside, and a rock rolled in front of the mouth of the cave, effectively sealing us in.
Rafael’s eyes shot to the stone, then to the chair.
Confusion began to morph into alarm. His now-wide eyes snapped to Helena.
“Hell, what is this?” She did not respond.
She remained perched against the wall, one shoulder leaning against the stone, her eyes fixed on Rafael.
I had seen the same look before, on wolves who were eyeing their dinner.
“Sit down, Rafael,” I said calmly.
His gaze finally left Helena and settled on me. “Why?” I looked at the chair. “I would prefer to stand.”
“It was not a request. Sit.” My voice was low now, dangerous. Rafael held my gaze for another moment before lowering himself into the chair. His hands settled on his thighs, fingers flexing once against the fabric.
“Will someone tell me what this is about?” No one answered him. His eyes found Helena again. “Hell?” Her jaw tightened even more, if that were possible.
“Do not look at her,” Liv warned.
Rafael’s head snapped toward her. “What?”
“You heard me.”
“No, actually, I have heard very little beyond demands and threats.” His voice hardened. “So if one of you would care to explain why I have been dragged into a cave and sealed inside, I would greatly appreciate it.”
“Where did you go two nights ago?” I asked.
His brow furrowed. “Forsgeth.”
“Why?”
“To see my brother. You know that.”
“And what did you speak about?”
His confusion returned. “Everything. Nothing. I do not know. What does that have to do with any of this?”
“Did you speak to anyone else?”
“Of course I did. I went into a bloody town where I used to live, where I used to work. I spoke to hundreds of people.”
He began to stammer. “Wh…what in the seven hells is going on here?”
We all remained silent, still. I could see small beads of sweat forming on his brow.
His eyes kept shifting in Helena’s direction despite Liv’s warning. “Hell, please?”
Helena pushed away from the wall and began to circle him like prey. “Did you know?” she said quietly as she came to a halt. The cave went eerily still.
Rafael stared at her. “Know what?”
“Did you know they were going to kill Margaret?” Every trace of color drained from his face.
“Wh…what?”
“Answer me.” Her voice cracked for the first time. “When you told them where we were, did you know they were going to kill her?”
Rafael shot to his feet. “I did what?”
“Sit down.” Helena’s shout echoed through the cave.
“No!” He did not even look at me. His eyes remained fixed on her. “Is that what this is then? You think I told Stanhope where you were? You think I had something to do with Margaret?”
“We know you did,” Liv said.
His head snapped toward her. “You know nothing.”
Liv took a step forward. “We gave three people three different locations. Johanna’s was empty. Arabella’s was empty.” Her voice dropped. “Yours was crawling with enforcers.” Rafael stared at her. Silence.
And then he lowered his head. “I had no choice.” He whispered it, but the acoustics of the cave carried even his whisper.
“Excuse me?” Helena stepped in front of him. “You what?!”
His breathing quickened. “I did not have a choice.” He spoke louder, but his words were strangled.
Helena laughed, but there was nothing amused in the sound. “Of course you did not.” Her hands moved to her hips and she stared up at the cave ceiling. “You had no choice but to betray the people you claimed to care for? No choice but to burn our home to the ground, to tear Margaret away from us?”
“No!” Raf shouted. “I…I gave Stanhope information. But not that. Never that. I only gave him just enough.”
“Enough? Enough for what?” I shouted. “Enough to cost us everything? What could you possibly say to justify that?”
Rafael dragged both hands through his hair. “My brother.”
Helena went still. “What about your brother?”
“Stanhope has him.” The words seemed to hang between us.
“He found me in Forsgeth the first run I made alone.”
Rafael's voice shook. “He knew who I was. He knew I was helping you. And he knew exactly who to threaten.”
Tears filled his eyes and for a moment I almost believed him.
“They took him. They said if I did not cooperate, they would torture him, kill him.”
“So you sold us out?” Helena asked.
“No!” Rafael turned toward her. “I gave him things that would not hurt anyone. Things he could have learned elsewhere. How many of us there were. Which girls had already been taken from Verith. Places we had already abandoned. I gave him scraps, Hell.
Just enough to make him believe I was cooperating.”
“And our sanctuary was a scrap?”
Rafael recoiled. “I never told him where it was.”
“Then how did he find us?”
“It was not me! I swear it!”
Helena surged toward him and I caught her around the waist before she reached him. “Do not lie to me!” she screamed.
“I am not lying!”
“My mother is dead!”
“I loved her too.” His voice was barely more than a whisper, a broken cry. “I would never betray her, I would never do that to you. When I took him the information about the supply run, he said he had found another way. He said he sent Laraesa’s father.”
“You expect us to believe that?” She sneered.
“I do not expect anything of you.” He looked up at her from the chair. “But you know me, Hell.” Silence lingered between them for only a moment.
“There was a time when I truly believed that.” She turned toward the mouth of the cave. The stone blocking it rolled away, and before leaving, she gave him one final devastated look. “Clearly I was mistaken.” Then she left the cave without another word. Liv and I turned to follow her.
“Wait!” Raf cried. “What are you going to do with me?”
I looked to Liv and back to him. “That remains to be seen. We can no longer trust you. So, you will remain here. Until we have made a decision.”
We left the cave and Lavinia snuffed out the torches.
Helena waited outside until we emerged, then rolled the stone back into place and we went back to the camp.