Page 100 of Magic Forsaken

No. I’d foolishly believed they would only be punishing the guilty. The ones responsible for the hell that I’d lived for the past ten years. But this…

I had to believe that he didn’t know. The saboteur must have been lying about that part. Surely, none of them had a clue about the human involvement in Elayara’s research—about the existence of people like me and Logan and Ari. Victims in the truest sense of the word, and now condemned criminals, unless the laws Callum and his people had worked so hard for were never signed.

Unless… I chose to side with the saboteur.

I looked up, into those worried amber eyes and almost asked for the truth. Almost asked how much he knew. But if I did, and he’d known nothing? I would only be condemning myself.

And if he’d known all along that people like me existed? And done this anyway?

I didn’t think I was ready to hear that much truth. I’d convinced myself he was a good man. That he and Faris and Morghaine and Draven and Kira were all truly decent people just trying to make a difference. And right now, I wasn’t sure I could handle the news that I’d been wrong yet again.

I looked down at myself and suddenly felt ashamed. Dirty. Complicit. I wanted to rip off the dress I’d loved so much and bury myself in the dark, shapeless clothing I’d worn after my escape.

“I have to go,” I whispered, tearing myself away from the strong hand that still held me up and heading for the door.

“Raine…” He came after me. Stopped me with the lightest touch on my arm. “Raine, what is it? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Everything. I just… I have to go home.”

Home. It was more a feeling than a place. Something I longed for without ever having truly experienced it. Callum had given me the first glimpse I’d ever had, but now those memories felt hollow and empty.

He was silent, and I could feel the questions, feel the weight of his worried gaze.

“Let me drive you.”

“No.” I said it too quickly, too loudly, too harshly. “I will be fine on my own, and you have a very important event to manage.”

“Those people downstairs aren’t going to melt or implode without me,” he said fiercely. “They can wait a little longer. This… you are more important.”

I could have cried. They were words I’d dreamed of hearing him say, but now they brought me nothing but fresh pain.

“You can’t fix this,” I insisted. “Please, just let me go.”

His hand fell away. “Did I do something wrong?”

It would have been the perfect moment for my wayward hunch magic to awaken—to tell me whether I could trust him. Whether this was all just an act. But it remained silent, and so did I, because I couldn’t answer his question.

“Goodbye, Callum.”

I turned my back, set my jaw, and walked away.

Somehow,I made it down the stairs without falling. Angelica was standing in the foyer, and watched with an increasingly puzzled expression as I walked past her, pushed through the doors, and let myself out into the night.

My eyes burned as I left The Assemblage behind, but I would not cry. Not even when I stumbled on the uneven bricks beneath my feet, causing my ankle to twist painfully. I just reached down, yanked off the shoes, and went on my way barefoot. Threading through the weekend crowd of pedestrians, ignoring the sidelong looks.

I needed to go back to the hostel. Needed to make a plan. Where would we go? What would we do? But my thoughts would not form and my feet had a mind of their own that left behind the rough, dirty concrete for the grass of Myriad Gardens. I wandered almost mindlessly for probably an hour before I finally came to a stop beneath the Crystal Bridge, remembering Ari’s innocent laughter as she tried to chase the ducks.

How could I protect that laughter if I allowed this to happen? If laws were signed that made her a criminal at only six years old?

And yet, how could I stop them without becoming the very thing I had tried so hard to prevent?

“I can see that you found answers.” The voice that echoed off the concrete walls beneath the bridge was a familiar one.

Somehow, I’d expected that he would find me again.

“And it seems equally clear that you did not care for what you found.”

“What do you want from me?” The sound of my own voice shocked me—hollow and hoarse, bleeding from a thousand invisible cuts.

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