C. Redwine - Deception

Melli watches me, her fist bumping against my finger, and I cry until the tears are gone. Until the blood on my hands means less than the baby I now hold. The grief subsides, and in its place is a small fragment of hope.

I can’t bring Melkin back. I can’t make a different choice, and somehow, I’m going to have to find a way to live with that. I’m not sure how to learn to trust myself again, but maybe I don’t have to be so afraid of the fierce instincts that live inside of me. Maybe I have those instincts because while I can’t nurture like Nola, or love everyone like Sylph, or fall easily into motherhood like Eloise, I can do something none of the other girls raised in Baalboden can do.

I can fight.

After talking with Drake, I ask him to find Nola and bring her up to speed. I want to tell Frankie and Ian myself. Willow should be back soon, too, and she’ll need an update. But first, I want to talk to Rachel. I return to her room, and stop when I see Quinn hiding under his blankets, Rachel’s tear-stained face, and Eloise sleeping with a baby— her baby—cradled beside her.

I open my mouth to say something, but I never get the chance.

“Logan? Logan McEntire?”

A tall man with thinning blond hair and pale blue eyes strides into the room.

“Yes?”

“Maxwell Stallings, member of the triumvirate.”

I step toward the man. “I’m pleased to meet you.”

Maxwell’s pale eyes bore into mine. “Why didn’t you tell us you were actually from Rowansmark?”

Before I can answer, Darius and Jeremiah hurry in behind him, followed by two women I recognize as Clarissa Vaughn and Portia Rodriguez, the other members of Lankenshire’s triumvirate, who greeted me yesterday in the hospital and assured me they would wait to hold a formal meeting until after my people were out of medical danger. Willow walks in right behind them, nods briefly to me as if to tell me the device is now safely hidden, and then goes to stand beside her brother’s bed. Frankie and Adam crowd in through the doorway as well, just in time to hear Maxwell say, “We’re waiting for an explanation.” Both Frankie and Adam look ready to start a fight.

“We aren’t from Rowansmark,” Rachel says. Her voice is still weak, still husky from smoke inhalation, but she manages to pack in every ounce of Rachel attitude she possesses. “We’re from Baalboden. Look at our cloaks. Our boots. And then draw the logical conclusion instead of coming in here spewing foolishness.”

“I didn’t say all of you are from Rowansmark. I said he is from Rowansmark.” Maxwell points at me.

Frankie laughs, a short bark of disbelief. Adam’s lip curls. Willow tosses her braid behind her back and runs her hands down her bow.

They’re not here to start a fight. They’re here to defend my honor.

They may not want to defend me for very long once they realize the truth. If not for my past, none of our people would’ve died. If not for my choice to keep the device, Rowansmark would never have levied a sentence of pain atonement against us.

Against me.

“You’re crazy.” Rachel pushes against her pillows, wincing as she struggles to sit up straighter. “I’ve known him all of my life. All of it. Are you going to tell me I’m from Rowansmark, too?”

Maxwell glares at Rachel, but Clarissa, a tall woman with dark hair cut close to her scalp and a delicate web of wrinkles spreading from the corners of her eyes, grabs Darius’s arm and pulls him forward.

“Tell us what you know,” she says in a voice that crackles with the kind of authority people rarely question.

Darius refuses to look at anything but the carpet. Jeremiah stands close to him, fury written in every crease of his face.

“Logan came to the museum to talk to Jeremiah and me while we were working on maps. I recognized his name, saw the similarity between him and the Rowansmark McEntires, and realized that he’s the lost McEntire boy.”

Frankie steps forward. “I’m sure McEntire is a common name. Probably every city-state has several families—”

“What do you mean by ‘the lost McEntire boy’?” Clarissa asks.

The tension inside the room swells until I don’t think the four walls can contain it as Darius explains that I was kidnapped during one of the Commander’s visits, and that he recognized me as soon as I walked in the door. When he’s finished, Rachel attacks.

“That’s absurd.” She shoves at the blankets covering her like she wants to stand up. “I knew his mother. I knew him. I know him.”

“I think he’s right, Rachel,” I say quietly, because I can’t stand to have every detail of my past dragged out of the mouth of a stranger. She stops pulling at her blankets and looks at me like I just suggested combining acid with sulfide salts and then drinking the mixture for breakfast. “It explains why I was always treated like an outsider. It explains why the Commander told me I was a nineteen-year investment that he couldn’t wait to be rid of.”

I try the words out for the first time, and find that they fit, sharp edges and all. “I was born in Rowansmark to Marcus and Julia McEntire. I was then kidnapped by the Commander when I was a few days old and was brought to live in Baalboden. All of my life, I’ve believed I was Baalboden born, but I wasn’t.”

There’s a moment of tense silence, and then Adam shrugs. “So what? He was born in Rowansmark but was raised in Baalboden. I don’t see how that’s a problem.”

“He’s been Baalboden for all but five days of his life,” Frankie says, his huge hands slowly clenching into fists and then relaxing. “He’s ours.”

I’m grateful that they’d jump to my defense so quickly, but the knowledge that the rest of the story is going to rip that defense to shreds makes me feel sick inside.

“Why were you kidnapped?” Rachel asks. Her voice is as cold as her expression. I can’t tell what she’s thinking, but I should’ve known she’d be the one to realize that the most important detail was the one I hadn’t explained.

Darius clears his throat. “Because his father—”

“Let the boy tell his own story,” Jeremiah snaps.

I take a deep breath and force myself to say, “Darius told me earlier that Marcus McEntire is a senior member of the military council in Rowansmark, and is also the head of the Division for Technological Advancement. He was working on designing tech that could call and control the Cursed One. Apparently when the Commander found out about it, he kidnapped me to use me as leverage over Marcus. The plan was to exchange my life for the completed invention.”

“But you never left Baalboden,” Frankie says.

“Because the invention took nineteen years to complete. In that time, Julia committed suicide. Marcus had lost both his son and his wife. When he finally finished the device, he gave it to Baalboden’s courier—Jared Adams.” I look at Rachel as I say her father’s name, but she’s no longer looking at me. Instead, she’s cradling her injured arm and picking at the bandage with her fingers.

“But Jared refused to return the device to the Commander because he knew what it was,” Quinn says from his bed behind me. “He hid it at his safe house and continued the journey home, prepared to lie to his leader in order to keep the Commander from having the power to destroy everyone who opposed him.”

“You knew about me?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “I only know what Jared told me when we caught him traveling too close to the village. He was looking for a way to destroy the tech. He worried there was a tracking device on it that would make burying it only a temporary solution.”