“I’m fine,” her little brother says, heat in his voice. “Stop fussing over me.”
I come up on the other side of Caleb’s bed. “You’re alive,” I greet him. Maybe not the most diplomatic thing I could say, but I believe in cutting to the chase.
“Yeah,” he says.
“You wanted to tell me something?”
He hesitates. “It’s why Rissa’s mad, but she doesn’t understand.”
“Ca—” she starts, but he silences his older sister with a look.
“It’s about my wings. How it happened.”
I shift a little closer. “How did it happen?”
“Kai did it.”
I stare stupidly. It takes me a moment to register what he said. Mósí giggles somewhere behind me. “I’m sorry. I don’t understand.”
“Not the wings themselves. Gideon made them. Well, grew them, maybe? I’m not sure. But he’s amazing. He can make anything out of metal. They’re metal, but you can’t tell. They look real, don’t they?”
I’m tempted to reach out and touch the wings, but I stay my hand.
“Gideon did the surgery,” Caleb’s rushes on, “but Kai helped with the healing time. It used to take weeks, and some people rejected the implants. But Kai helped me so there weren’t any problems.” His eyes are bright with wonder, not the horror I expected, and his breath is short with excitement.
I’m afraid to ask, but I want to know. “Does Kai have wings too?”
He shakes his head. “He told Gideon it would be better if he didn’t, and Gideon agreed. He said Kai was special and he had another purpose.”
“Another purpose? What kind of purpose?”
“You hear that, Monsterslayer?” Rissa says, cutting in, her voice sharp with accusation. “Without your boy helping, Caleb wouldn’t even be like this.”
“No. He said without Kai, it might have been worse.” I turn back to Caleb, picking my words carefully. “You make it sound like he was helping this . . . Gideon? But we saw the tape, Caleb. You were kidnapped. That was your blood on the wall, wasn’t it?”
Caleb flushes. “I was being stupid, you know? I didn’t understand what Gideon wanted. So I fought him. Ziona hit me. That’s what that blood was in the guardhouse. He yelled at her for it. Made her stay behind at their old camp as punishment. It was my fault.”
“So Gideon is the one who took you? He’s the White Locust?”
And that explains who our archer was and why she was left behind. If I had to guess, I’d bet that Gideon knew exactly what would happen to anyone he left behind. He wanted her dead for some reason, and he came damn close to getting exactly what he wanted.
“Sounds like Kai isn’t the Boy Scout you keep trying to convince yourself he is,” Rissa says, picking up where she left off.
“Why would he hurt Caleb?” I ask. “He went out of his way to never hurt anyone.” Except you, Maggie, a voice inside me whispers. He hurt you.
“Hurt me?” Caleb says. “He didn’t hurt me.”
“Then how did you end up with wings, child?” Mósí says somewhere behind me.
Caleb’s eyes search her out, and his smile is beatific. “I volunteered. Just like I volunteered to stay behind. To be the messenger.”
“The messenger for what?” I ask sharply, a chill rolling down my spine.
His head turns to me. His eyes are too big, the whites too white. He looks crazed, and I fight an urge to get away from him. My monster instincts are dinging. Hard. I remind myself that this is just Freckles. Not a monster, even with those wings and that terrible look on his face.
“The message is for you.”
The place on my cheek where Rissa hit me throbs.
“What is the message?” I ask.
“Tell the Godslayer to come to Amangiri.”
The four of us leave Caleb to sleep. Step outside into the cooling evening, the empty town.
“What do you think?” I ask no one in particular.
Clive sighs, rubs a hand over his face and through his hair. “I think Caleb’s only fifteen and he’s been through some traumatic stuff and maybe he’s not thinking straight.”
“He said he volunteered.”
“I don’t know what that means,” he admits. “In his mind, I mean. You said this White Locust is a cult leader of some kind. Maybe he talked him into it and Caleb doesn’t even realize it.”
“Maybe he has a clan power like Kai’s,” Rissa says. “What is his called? Talks-in-Blanket? Maybe he can talk people into doing stupid shit. Hell, maybe Kai talked him into it himself.”
“Kai didn’t make Caleb volunteer for some kind of wing-implant surgery. He definitely can’t make him climb up there to be nailed to a wall. His powers don’t work that way.”
“Why not? You frame it the right way—”
“Perhaps,” Mósí interrupts. “Perhaps the why of the thing doesn’t matter.”
“Easy for you to say,” Rissa fires back. “That wasn’t your brother pinned to a fucking wall like an insect.” She gasps. “Oh my God. With wings even. Jesus . . .” She lets loose a string of curses under her breath.
I rub my forehead. I’m getting a headache.
“Who do you think is the ‘Godslayer’?” Clive asks.
I realize he didn’t hear what the locust man back at Grace’s trailer said to me, and Ben isn’t here to tell him what the archer on the mountain said either. But it doesn’t matter. Rissa gets it.
“Oh, seriously, Clive? You don’t know?” She looks at me pointedly.
“I did not kill a god,” I protest.
“Whatever you call him,” she says, exasperated. “Hero. God. It’s semantics.”
“It’s definitely not semantics, whatever that means.”
“Well, he’s dead, isn’t he? Who else could it be?”
I stare, dumbstruck. “He’s not dead,” I finally manage, but it even sounds weak to my ears.
Rissa just snorts and folds her hands across her chest, unimpressed.
“So, what now?” I ask, changing the conversation to a subject that doesn’t send me to the dark, unforgiving places in my head. “You’ve got your brother back. You clearly hate Kai—and me, for that matter. Does that mean you and Clive are bailing?”
“Why shouldn’t we?” she says before Clive can answer.
I have a million reasons why they shouldn’t. Because I don’t understand the White Locust’s power. Because Caleb being nailed to the Wall and then praising the man who did it to him scares the shit out of me. Because I don’t want to do this alone.
“You don’t want our help finding Kai, Maggie?” Clive asks, sounding hurt.
The words feel awkward as they leave my mouth, but I say, “Yes, I want your help!”
I turn to Rissa. She’s cradling her hand slightly, the one she hit me with. It must hurt. That cheers me up a little, but I still can’t believe I’m really going to say what I’m about to say. But . . . I am. Because I told Kai that I wanted to try something different, and maybe that something different also means admitting shit like this.
“You’re a pain in the ass,” I tell Rissa, “and I think you might have a worse attitude than me, which is saying a lot of nothing nice about you. But you’re good with a gun, and a fist”—I touch my cheek pointedly, and she has the grace to blush—“and I’m going to need help. Mósí thinks the people left Lupton under the influence of a powerful force, something that makes Kai’s Bit’ąą’nii clan power look like a polite suggestion. And we know Caleb volunteered for”—I point back toward the infirmary—“that. We’re up against something—someone—I’m not sure how to fight. I don’t know what to expect, but I know I don’t want to face him alone if I don’t have to. Because I will bring Kai back home or I will die trying. I promised Tah. And I promised myself.” And Kai said he loved me. I take a deep breath, and the words tumble out before I can second-guess myself. “I haven’t seen Kai since he came back. You both have. And it”—I exhale, not sure I want to admit this but knowing that they need to hear it—“and it’s killing me. I need to see him. Alive. I need to know I didn’t . . . I just need to find him, okay?”