Page 103 of Magic Forsaken

“Whenever you’re ready, there’s a family waiting for you.”

With that final blow, Blake melted away into the shadows of the garden and left me broken and bleeding—from the past Icould not change, the choice that now confronted me, and the ruins of everything I’d dared to hope for.

TWENTY-TWO

I heard laterthat multiple people reported seeing a ghost haunting Myriad Gardens that night—a woman with white hair, a shimmering white dress, and bare feet, wandering the paths alone with empty eyes.

As much as I might have preferred to haunt the garden for eternity rather than make this decision, I didn’t wander long. Shortly after Blake disappeared, I made my way back to the hostel, knowing that Faris’s guards would see me, but unwilling to shift in order to avoid them. Faris would know the full truth soon enough.

Kes was waiting up for me, and the moment she saw my face and my feet, her entire body seemed to slump in disappointment and dismay.

“We’re leaving, aren’t we?” she murmured.

“I’m sorry. I wish there was another way.” But no matter which choice I made, this city could never be our home again after tomorrow.

Her eyes fluttered shut and her fingers clenched as she absorbed the news, but after a few shuddering breaths, her spine straightened and she looked at me with steely determination. “When?”

“Tomorrow.”

“And where are we going?”

I managed not to flinch at the piercing look from her gray eyes. “I don’t know yet.”

In all these months we’d been on the run together, she’d almost never questioned me. Buried so deeply in her own sense of culpability and shame, she’d been no more than a shell of her former self. A shadow that followed, but had no desires of her own.

But even if just for a moment, her spirit seemed to awaken as she regarded me by the light of the single, tiny lamp.

“We can’t run forever, Raine.”

I knew that. I did. But how could I explain that we were about to become wanted criminals? Even if we took Blake’s offer, we would be hunted relentlessly by the people we’d once called friends.

“And,” she added softly, “I’m worried about you.”

“I’m fine,” I lied, trying to give her the same encouraging smile I always did.

But for once, she wasn’t buying it.

“Cut the crap, Raine.”

I blinked at her, mouth open, feeling like she’d physically slapped me.

“You like it here,” she said, her tone quiet but firm. “You’ve started making friends. You enjoy your job, and I think you’re even halfway in love with your boss. So why are we running? Why settle for the half-life of hiding instead of staying and fighting for a future you actually want?”

Why indeed? Feelings of rage and futility rose in my throat, threatening to choke me unless I spoke them aloud. I needed to cry. Needed to rage, to scream, to sob, to let loose all my fury at a world that simply didn’t seem to care. That kicked us at every turn.

“Because after tomorrow, that future won’t wantme,” I whispered furiously. The truth had finally burst its chains and came pouring out of me like a flood—a caustic, burning torrent of every hurt I’d swallowed since the day my father died and I’d been taken to a shelter. The first of many. Filled with kids who had nowhere else to go. The most broken among us, the ones who needed family the most, and the ones who never seemed to find it.

“They don’t want any of us, Kes. We’re too strange. Too broken. Too scary. They don’t know what to do with us, so they make little boxes out of platitudes and laws and stick us inside so they can forget. So they don’t have to face the ugliness or the uncertainty. Don’t have to fight the complicated battles or walk the long, hard road of making space for things they don’t understand. And I’m sick of it. I’m so, so sick of having my life reduced to a set of laws instead of being treated like a real person.”

If anyone understood, it would be Kes. An outsider in her own home since the moment she was born.

But she only shrugged. “So we fix it.”

That was not at all what I’d expected her to say.

“How?” I shook my head incredulously.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I know it’s not as simple as I make it sound. And I know it may not work no matter how much we want it to. But the people who care can’t accept you fully until you let them in. Let them see you. All of you.”

---