I will give you one last chance, he says. If you join me now, peacefully, I can promise all of you safety and a place of power in this, our new world order. If you don’t … He pauses. Any blood shed now will be on your hands.
“We will never join you! We have all promised to protect the thresholds from any threat, including one from within,” Guardian Kamali Okorie shouts back at him. The skin around her left eye is purple and swelling, and she spits a glob of dark blood onto the floor. “We will not break that promise.”
I’d be very careful taking that stance now, Joe replies. It is a choice from which you cannot return once it’s made. If you do not decide to join us, then you are our enemy, and you will be treated as such. His supporters lift their cloaks and spin, disintegrating into black dust that disappears midair. I will give you an hour to decide.
My coin immediately goes cold. Henry looks at me questioningly. He couldn’t hear Joe’s words.
Valentin, the guardian-in-training from Romania, slumps to the floor. “We’re screwed, aren’t we?”
XLI
The dead are laid on benches, white sheets thin as bridal veils shrouding their bodies. The wounded are taken to the dais, where Seral ministers to them with ladles of water and jars of foul-smelling ointment. No one speaks above a whisper. They are too shell-shocked, too lost in their thoughts. Too defeated.
There’s something I’m supposed to say. Something I’m supposed to tell the council. But I can’t stop staring at the bodies: two council members, Briel and Tiberius, who I have seen once a week for the past twenty months; and though they never spoke much, I can’t imagine looking up at the dais and not seeing them there; Ballinger’s intermediary, Tertia, who had been with Ballinger’s family for hundreds of years, and Ballinger kneeling at her head, whispering something to her as a tear rolls down his cheek; and Guardian Anaya Kapoor, the girl from Bangalore who always smiled at me. Does she have a family waiting for her at home? Friends? An entire life, snuffed out in the flash of a blade.
Henry’s fingers twine through mine, his palm sliding across my palm, his lips pressing against my temple. I close my eyes, but I still see them. The lives Joe took. The lives he will take, if we don’t give him what he wants.
Seral’s voice murmurs through the static echoing in my ears, “If only Celia were here,” and I remember what it is I’m supposed to say.
My eyes spring open and I turn to Seral. Watch her shake her head as she spreads the ointment on Valentin’s shoulder.
“I know where Celia is,” I say.
Alban snaps his attention to me. “What? Where?”
“Brussels. Joe tried to poison her and her husband with dragon’s bane. We believe they were able to escape through the Brussels threshold.”
“How do you know this?” he asks. “And who’s ‘we’?” He shifts his focus to Henry, narrowing his eyes. “I do not know you.”
I step in front of Henry, shielding him. “I’ll tell you everything, but we need to send for Augustus and Celia.”
He hesitates, sucking in a breath—probably at my audacity for trying to order him around—but then he nods. I wait for him to send Kamali’s intermediary, an Old One named Leok, to look for Henry’s parents before beginning my story. The guardians and council members listen intently. Henry fills in the gaps, describing his upbringing, and how he knows so much about the wood. They look horrified when I tell them about the Sentinels, but not as horrified as when I tell them about letting Henry through to the modern world.
“He stayed with you?” one guardian shouts.
“For three days?” another joins in.
“Let her talk!” Kamali growls back at them.
“You have to understand,” I say, “I would do anything for even just the slightest chance of finding out what happened to my father, and when Henry said he thought the disappearance of Augustus and Celia was connected to the disappearance of my father and this conspiracy to overthrow the council, I had to take him seriously. And it was a good thing I did, because he turned out to be right. My father did not walk off the path, as Joe and his supporters, who I’m guessing headed up the ridiculous investigation into my father’s disappearance, led us to believe.” I stop, my breath hitching in my throat.
“What happened to him?” Ballinger asks quietly.
I force the words out. “Joe threw him off the path,” I say. “For knowing too much.”
For a moment, no one says a word. Then—
“What if we give him what he wants?” Valentin asks. “Would it really be so bad?”
His mother, Remi, smacks him upside the head. “Of course it would be bad,” she says. “This is the very thing we have sworn to keep from happening. No one should be able to use the thresholds for personal gain, and no one should attempt to change the past. It is too dangerous.”
“If it’s so dangerous—don’t hit me, I’m just asking,” Valentin says, “then why does Josiah think he can get away with it?”
“If he’s anything like Varo once was, he thinks his power is stronger than the wood’s.” Alban’s voice is quiet, resigned. “He sees himself as indestructible, infallible, which is the greatest mistake anyone can make.”
“So, what do we do?” Seral asks, closing the lid of her ointment jar.
Kamali’s eyes flash. “Isn’t it obvious? We fight.”
Seral stands. “They have the only poison known to kill us on their side. We will most likely lose.”
“Well, we can’t do nothing,” Kamali growls. “What other choice do we have?”
Henry has moved to sit in the corner, his back against the wall. He digs idly at a hangnail on his thumb, staring at nothing. I leave the others to fight it out, crossing the room and pressing my spine against the damp stone, sliding down to the floor next to him. “Leok will find your parents. Kamali wouldn’t have volunteered him to go if she didn’t trust him.”
He leans his head back against the wall and closes his eyes. “I know.”
Now that I’m closer to him, and not distracted by the threat of death, I can see the burns on his face, neck, and hands. Red welts surrounding puffy white blisters. I reach my hand toward him, but touching him would hurt him even worse. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to see you get hurt—”
“You have a funny way of showing it,” he says.
“I couldn’t risk losing you, too.”
He doesn’t look at me.
“Henry.” I breathe his name. My hand hovers in the space between us, and then, slowly, tentatively, I lace my fingers through his. He winces, but his fingers tighten around mine, and he breathes a little deeper. “I’m sorry.”
He sighs, pulling his head forward so that his hair falls into his eyes. “You have nothing to apologize for. I would have done the same in your situation. Only…”
“Only?”
His eyes flick to mine. “Only I thought I’d never see you again, and I…”