Page 116 of The Warrior
Flames shot up my neck, and licking my chapped lips I exchanged a panicked glance with Pearl, who shouldn’t have dropped that bomb right now.
“I’m so sorry,” Pearl breathed. “I thought he knew.”
“Laura.” The way Magni said my name, in a deep voice, sounded like a warning.
“Ehm.” I coughed from the thorns on the words I had to force out. “It’s true.”
A vein near Magni’s temple popped out and his facial color grew crimson red. I had seen him throw tantrums many times, but seeing him too mad to speak was new and terrifying.
With a shaky voice, I explained. “The thing is… I was granted citizenship when I lived in the Motherlands.”
Magni’s hands were pressed against his thighs in tight fists, his lips formed a grim line, and he looked at me with disgust.
“I’m still a Northlander too,” I called after him when he stormed out. “I’m both.”
The front door to the school slammed hard and the rest of us stood for a few seconds, collectively holding our breaths.
“You shouldn’t have told him that,” Khan reprimanded Pearl.
“I’m sorry!” she repeated. “It just slipped out.”
“Let me go talk to him,” Finn suggested and moved to the door.
“No!” Khan took a step forward. “I know Magni and right now he needs time to calm down.”
“Why is he so mad about you being a Motlander?” Shelly asked.
I closed my eyes, unable to express in words what I felt on an instinctual level.
Athena answered for me. “Shelly, try to see it from Magni’s point of view. He has been raised to see us Motlanders as the enemy. To hear that Laura crossed over to become one of us must have felt like the ultimate betrayal to him.”
“I didn’t cross over. It was just a formality for me to live there. I’ve always been a Northlander.”
“That’s right, and we’re not the enemy,” Shelly pointed out. “I don’t understand what Magni’s problem is.”
“His problem,” Khan said dryly with an undertone of annoyance, “is that Magni’s life revolves around his role as the defender of the last free men. He doesn’t like the influence you Motlanders have over us, and he doesn’t trust you.” Khan gave Pearl a sideways glance. “To learn that your wife has been keeping something this big from you, and that the person you consider your adversary knew about it, would be a blow to any of us.”
Sympathetic glances met me from the women, and Christina placed an arm around me. “He’ll get over it. You know Magni; he’s a hothead.”
I nodded, but inside I knew this time things were different. Everyone had a breaking point, and my gut told me Magni had reached his.
“Fuck me.” Marco ran to the window. “Magni’s drone is lifting. He’s taking off.”
Finn walked over to stand next to Marco, looking at Magni’s red drone flying away from us. “Maybe he’ll really go to Alaska this time.”
I was so used to Finn making fun that it hit me hard how serious he sounded this time. With my eyes large and my body stiff, as if rigor mortis had just set in, I stood with an equal amount of despair and disbelief.
“Don’t worry,” Boulder said and walked over to stand next to Marco by the window. “He’ll be back. As long as Laura is here, he’ll always come back.”
I recognized the same doubt on Khan’s face that I felt myself.
The last pieces of string holding Magni and me together had been brutally snapped just a few minutes ago. For the first time, I felt the painful desperation he must have felt when I left him without a goodbye seven months ago. I sucked in a shallow breath that failed to fill my lungs. The strings that had once bonded us were now suffocating me and I couldn’t speak.
“You look sick, Laura. Do you need to sit down?” Pearl and Athena led me to a chair. “You need to take a deep breath, honey, you’re pale as a corpse.” I tasted the salty taste of tears in the back of my throat and tried to focus on their blurry faces through my wet eyes.
My voice broke and my chest felt like it weighed a thousand pounds when I whispered, “He’s gone. I lost Magni!”
The fact that none of the women contradicted me made it sink in deeper. Magni was gone and he wasn’t coming back to me.
