Page 22 of Knight's End
Eventually, Blue succeeded. He used the lid to lift the leather cord and slowly drop it into the tin jar.
He clamped the lid down.
My heart unclenched.
Declan called out from behind me. “Well done. We have a massive weapon in a jar. A weapon we can’t touch without dying. What are you planning on doing with that thing now? Are you gonna sling it at the first enemy you see? Open the jar and drop it onto their head? How are you gonna pick it up again? How are you gonna stop it from hurting someone else?"
Blue kept his eyes on the tin in his hand. "I don't know."
Declan said. “Bloss, for the record, I’m still against this. If you don't know how to use a weapon, then you shouldn't have it.”
"If you don't have a weapon strong enough to defeat evil, it will win.” Blue looked up at us, his eyes lit by my green magic. They glowed as he said, "Make no mistake. We are fighting evil."
“Ooh, we are?” Dini asked, her petals fluttering like she was excited.
Unlike Dini, I felt no excitement. The truth of Blue’s words sunk into my bones like a shipwreck sinks into the sea. The truth swirled and twisted and grew as ugly and jagged as a broken vessel, until it drifted down and landed in my heart. He was right. Hadn’t we just seen it? Isla was planning to feed people to her giants. The sultan tortured his own children, his wives, destroyed entire towns for the offenses of a few.
Desperate times … but did we have to use such dangerous measures?
Blue’s eyes looked a little manic as he climbed back up the ladder. When he reached the top, he knelt before me and offered me the tin.
I took it with steady hands, but inside, I felt shaken.
“With this, we’ll find a way to get him,” Blue whispered to me as he stood.
Maybe I shouldn’t have scrutinized his words. But his thoughts didn’t picture Isla or the sea witch. His thoughts leaked out, and I don’t even know if he was aware of that fact. But his mind shoved a picture of the sultan’s face into all our heads. Blue didn’t seem nearly as concerned with the war as he did with revenge. His father was evil. But we had larger goals. More important goals.
Raj was only one part of the puzzle.
Avia was still out there. But even I knew getting to my sister couldn’t come before stopping this horror.
Blue gazed longingly down at the tin. I handed it back to him, testing his thoughts.
“Can you carry it? Perhaps in Cerena’s pouch?”
He grabbed it back quickly and nodded.
I watched him as he put the tin carefully in the pouch and secured it to his person, in easy reach.
None of his thoughts moved toward betrayal. Nothing in him spoke of ill-intent or dishonesty.
He simply had a fixation. But that alone could be the destruction of all of us.
He strode out the door and I watched his back as it was swallowed up by afternoon sunlight.
And part of me started to wonder just how much I could trust my newest knight.
