“Youwhat?” I sink down the stone wall, legs unable to bear the weight of this revelation.
He steps forward, then halts when I flinch.
The man standing before me now is capable of causing infinitely more pain than the one who threatened imprisonment. The chancellor can harm me physically, but only his son can harm the one thing more fragile than this impaired outer shell: my heart.
He didn’t just break it. He tore it into a thousand pieces andtossed them out, along with a trunk of my belongings and a mangled remnant of our marriage brand. It’s taken ten years to find those pieces and stitch them back together into a mockery of what it was. A patchwork heart, one wrong move from tearing apart the seams.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I finally ask.
Gabe lowers himself to the floor, meeting me at eye level—reminding me of how gentle he used to be with me.
“It was part of the agreement. My father didn’t want word to spread of your exemption. If others knew, they might question why you’d be excused from doing your duty. They could accuse him of abusing his power.”
I can’t help the breathy scoff that escapes through my nose. The chancellor’s been abusing his power since well before his first term. The notion that my exemption from the Hunt would be the catalyst to stir up dissent after eighteen years of his actions going unchecked isn’t even a good lie.
“And you believed him?”
The lines along his forehead deepen. “I had no choice. You know I have a different vision for Caligo’s future, but none of it will happen if he doesn’t back me as his successor. And I need our people’s trust as much as I need his.”
And there it is.
Gabe’s love for this city runs deep. Deeper than whatever love he felt for me—a bitter truth learned too late.
The lamp on the vanity illuminates Gabe’s silhouette in a violet aura while he stares at me expectantly, begging me to understand. And I do. I understand why he replaced me with a woman who could bear his heirs. It isn’t a mystery to me why he bends the knee to his father time and time again.
“Okay,” is all I say, knowing it isn’t what he wants to hear, butit’s all I’m willing to give.
“Okay? Does that mean you forgive me?” Gabe presses.
“It means I understand. You are your father’s son.” I shrug, like it’s as simple as that. Because it is. Despite their differences, both Brens crave power. More than anyone or anything.
Before Gabe can push any further, I shove myself back to standing and tug open the door. “You can go now.”
And then my ex-husband does what he does best. He walks away, leaving only the ghost of his clean linen scent behind.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
A tickingmechanical sound alerts me to the hidden cameras pivoting for a better view as the ten of us are shepherded into the war room.
You’d think the production staff that’s in charge of condensing the daily footage into a half-hour episode got enough material with our makeover reveals that they wouldn’t need a clip of us silently walking into a room. But now that it’s two hours till our impending eviction, I suppose they’re ready and willing to catch any potential meltdowns that would make for an intriguing first episode.
The war room is bigger in name than in reality. A large circular table fills most of the space, leaving just over three feet of walking room between the table’s edge and where the ten of us stand shoulder to shoulder against the concrete wall. Several unrolled maps, weighed down by flickering lanterns and miniature figurines, overlap each other like a puzzle across the corkboard surface.
Every publicly accessible map is of the underground city systems, so this is my first time seeing the world from this vantage point. A push pin with our black-and-silver crescent moon flag denotes thelocation of our capital city of Caligo within the sliver of sand cushioned between lush western forests and an expansive eastern ocean.
The few times I’ve ventured outside the Gate, all I saw was a long stretch of dunes. If it weren’t for the moments in past video montages showing the rare instances of women who’d made it to the western tree line, I would’ve presumed a boundless desert stretched above our haven. But our “great city” is little more than a dot in a world far more vast than I’d thought to imagine.
A camera operator stationed in the room’s corner holds up a thumb, and the theatrics commence as the Commander of the Guard approaches the head of the table.
“As you’re aware, the primary objective of the Hunt is to eliminate any Sol you come into contact with, but your ancillary goal is to act as a second pair of eyes for our team of cartographers. Each of you has a visual recording device built into your helmet.”
I lift my helmet from where it rests on my hip and frown when I spot the telltale pinprick of red light in the space that will rest above my brow bone. The camera is already recording. How long has it been watching us?
Is this how Chancellor Bren knew his son had snuck in to see me?
At least it’s a mercy we were given the headgearafterour training sessions. Otherwise, my private lessons with Kalden wouldn’t be so private anymore.
Commander Guffian continues, “These devices will not only provide footage for the nightly updates of your progress, but also an opportunity to fill in potential gaps in our understanding of the terrain above and the enemy numbers. We have strong confidence in the accuracy of the inner zone here.” He gestures with his finger in an oblong circle around Caligo’s dunes. “But the confidence decreases the further we get into these outer zones due to distance and the Sols’frequent mutilation of the land.”
