I fumbled around my brain for words, some way to make sense of what was happening. This was James. My James. The boy who showed me how to love. The boy I had given myself to. But it wasn’t him at the same time. I hadn’t been foolish enough to think that James wouldn’t be different, but I never expected this.
James reached down with his free hand and dragged me to my feet by the collar of my uniform. He pushed his face into mine. “Answer me,” he said coldly.
My eyes pricked with tears, and I had to look away. Otherwise, I would lose it entirely. They had won. The council had won. They made him into a monster. No matter what he had written in his letters, I never thought they would win. I didn’t think it was possible. He was the kindest soul I had ever met.
I shook my head. “I didn’t take it—I found it. I came in here to look for Richard. I didn’t take it.”
“Let her go,” said a seemingly bored George from the doorway. “Can’t you see how scared she is? She didn’t take it. Besides, you know how these two imbeciles are.”
“She was snooping,” James growled, still holding me.
“Don’t you have a creator who’s waiting on you? You think he will like that you wasted so much time on this simpleton? I highly doubt it,” George said. James shoved me away and I fell to the ground. Without a second glance or word, he walked out of the room.
Once he was gone, George shut the door behind him. With the outside world locked away, I could no longer control the emotions that flowed through me. A sob broke free from where my soul, despite the world’s many attempts to destroy it, still managed to live. I pressed the palms of my hands against my eyes. I couldn’t stop the tears that spilled from me, but that didn’t mean I had to look at George while I was doing it.
The first time James had disappeared from my life, I had attempted to give him up. I made peace, albeit a flimsy one, with the fact that I would never see him again. But then I did. He had come back into my life to save me, and even after George took him from me, I always expected him to come back. Somehow. Some way. I knew it wasn’t the end of our story. I lived with that hope, even if I never spoke it aloud, every day.
I lived to find a world where we could be together.
But he had changed. James had always told me that I kept the darkness from him. The truth was we had both done that for each other. Like Jane and Mr. Rochester, the couple from the first book we had ever read in secret together. There was nothing James feared more in the world, except for maybe my own demise, than losing himself to the council.
And they had finally succeeded in taking him from me.
“You done?” George asked. I looked up to see him leaning against the door. He offered no words of comfort or sympathy, and I was thankful for it. It wouldn’t have helped. Not from him. Words of kindness from the man I hated would only make the malice that oozed from James even more unbearable.
“There’s something I want to show you,” George said, not waiting for my answer.
“What about Terrance and Richard?” I asked, my voice strained.
“I have a feeling they’ll be busy getting read the riot act for a while. But that doesn’t mean we should sit around and waste time. Get up.”
I pulled myself to my feet and followed behind George. That was my place after all. Creators. Chosen ones. Naturals. That was the order of things. “I saw the map,” I mumbled.
George stopped dead in his tracks. “And what map was that?” he asked casually—much too casually.
I had to decide which map to give up—the one that outlined my possible freedom or the one that would give him every secret he couldn’t take for himself. I didn’t bring up the map by accident. I knew how George worked. He would find some way to touch me and discover what Terrance and Richard had hidden. He would never even mention it, but he would take the information all the same. This way I would bring it up. I would decide what he got to know, and I would do everything in my power to make sure he didn’t place a hand on me.
But what information to give him?
I didn’t trust George. Not a bit. Which meant I knew what I had to do.
I cleared my throat. “There’s a map that shows the damage of the war on the land. Every battle. Every destroyed compound. Every loss and every win. All the things about the war the council doesn’t bother to share with us.”
“Did you understand it?” he asked as he began walking again, a note of disappointment seeping through his words.
“The war. It’s here.”
“It’s not just about the war. It’s about something bigger.”
“Something bigger?”