“Actaeon sees the illness as a solution, not a problem; a useful aid in cleaning house.” Matthias paused before turning to Devyn for the first time since he entered the cell. “He’ll only be happy when you’re all eradicated.”
Devyn smiled thinly at Matthias. I felt a pulse in the connection; Devyn wasn’t visibly reacting but he had caught Matthias’s slip as well: he knew Devyn was not a citizen. He knew he was a Briton.
“Why tell us now? You still have Marcus. Find him a new bride. It would be easily done. Back on course in no time,” Devyn spat.
“Have you not been listening? They won’t be able to do anything now that his magic has become such public knowledge. But it’s never going to come to that. Marcus won’t live long enough to have children.”
“What do you mean? Why not?”
Matthias looked at his son as if he were mentally deficient before continuing in his familiar glacially scathing manner. “Actaeon is the head of the faction that has exterminated all latents identified within the walls for generations in order to ensure the end of magic. You think the verdict of the public vote is anything more than a stay of execution? He will come for you. Calchas may have used the mob to his advantage today, but Actaeon means to end you. Now, in a week, in a month. It is inevitable.”
Marcus’s shoulders slumped.
“But you are still my son. I will do what I can to keep you alive.” He cast a lidded sneer at Devyn and me and was gone, the metal door clanging in his wake.
We were once more in the dark until Marcus repeated his feat of earlier in the evening, after he had grudgingly asked for instruction on how to quench it without burning himself.
Despite all the new information Matthias had divulged, nobody broke the silence. What use was it to us now? Devyn was condemned, Marcus’s relatively lenient sentence unlikely to stick. And it sounded as if the outcome of my own trial was a foregone conclusion.
“Shhh. Relax now.” I sat back against Devyn, cocooned in the security of his arms. His hands were in my hair, soothing me, calming the turmoil surging through me. “Hush. The breeze lifts you, the current carries you, the earth holds you, and fire lights the way. Relax, be at one.”
His odd chant soothed me, and, finally, I slept.
Chapter Three
I came awake slowly, stiff from lying on the cold stone floor. The awareness of the new day – and my new reality – slowly seeped in. It was a cold, unwelcome reality. Devyn had been sentenced to death. Today we would face the mob once more. My muscles tensed as if bracing against the day, protesting, sore from the waves of adrenaline that had surged and ebbed in response to the previous day’s events. Devyn’s arms were wrapped around me and squeezed a little tighter in response to my awakening.
I lay there, listening to the sound of my breath and his heartbeat, not wanting to open my eyes to acknowledge the day. I didn’t know how to face a day like today. I was still reeling from the events of yesterday. Devyn had been condemned to death in the arena; that had really happened. Today we would be brought back out to face the city again.
When I did finally open my eyes, it was to find Marcus’s glacially green ones staring over at us. My stomach whooshed downwards like a lead box falling from a high tower. I did this. I brought him to this.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered when he didn’t break his gaze. I should have got out with Devyn months ago. The night we helped Marina leave the city, we had both been beyond the walls. There had been Britons there to help her; we could have gone with them; it would have been so easy. I was being foolish. I wasn’t ready then, would never have gone, too attached to the comfort and security of my cage.
Marcus blinked, leaning his head back against the golden stone wall. Our windowless room was still lit by the ball of light he had created the night before.
“For what?” he asked resignedly.
For not being his match, for not even being a particularly good friend. All I had done for months and months was lie to him. Like me, Marcus felt alone his whole life; his mother had died when he was very young and his father didn’t really care for him. Being matched with me should have meant that Marcus finally had a person who loved him for himself. Instead, he got a girl ready to throw away all that the city offered at the crook of the little finger of the man in whose arms she now lay… in a cell, where we awaited the completion of the Mete that would send us to our ends.
I shrugged at my inability to adequately apologise to Marcus.
“I guess, I’m sorry for everything,” I offered. “Without me, none of this would be happening to you.”
Devyn stiffened and straightened up, slightly dislodging me.
“Without you, Cass, he would be dead,” he defended.
Marcus’s eyes snapped up.
“Looks like I’ll be dead anyway,” he snarled.
“And that’s my fault? I’m not swinging the blade here. You are being executed by your friends because they don’t like the blood running in your veins and because you are not one of them. Not really, even though all you’ve ever tried to do is be a good citizen. Help other citizens. They don’t care because ultimately you are not one of them,” Devyn threw back at him. “You never will be.”
“That’s not true. I used magic, the ultimate crime against the Code.” Marcus sounded tired, resigned, as if overnight he had reconciled himself to his fate and his own part in earning it. “Magic is illegal for a reason.”
“Is it? What reason
