“If Ashcroft finds out he’s here,” the thin man, Benjamin, added, “he’ll burn this city looking for him.”
August wrinkled his nose. “Forme?”
“Why would Ashcroft give a damn about him?” Felix asked.
The wrinkles on Benjamin’s face deepened as he frowned. “The boy’s magic is unprecedented and clearly powerful.”
Felix groaned and rolled his eyes.
“It toys with the boundary between life and death,” the man continued. “Ashcroft will be dying to get his hands on that.”
“Plus,” Gideon added, “if the crown finds out the aesling’s alive—”
“My name is August.”
“Stay out of this,” Felix and Gideon both barked at once.
August felt like he was back in the castle, his mother and tutors laying out their criticisms of his shortcomings as if he weren’t standing right in front of them.
Frustration boiled over, and he tossed back his hood, glaring at Gideon. “No! I didn’t have to help them find you, and yet I did. If I’d known you’d be such ataesan, I might have kept my damned mouth shut.”
“Helped you find us?” Gideon asked, looking to Felix and Marlow. “How’s that now?”
Neither offered a reply at first, then Felix softly said, “Theo showed him.”
Gideon dropped back into his chair as if the words had knocked the wind out of him. “Oh.”
“How’d it happen?” Felix asked.
Gideon shared a look with the slender, scary girl, then breathed a heavy sigh. “There were more of us then. Got too sure of ourselves. We went for the ministry building here, but it went sideways fast. They slaughtered eight of ours and hauled off ten more to make a show of their deaths. Theo was one of those.”
August regarded the anchored boy. Theo was young, with knobby limbs and boyish features. He was a child. And they executed him.
“The ministry is trained to deal with groups like theirs,” Lottie said softly. These people hated them, wanted their family erased—yet her voice held only compassion. Sympathy. “They never stood a chance.”
“Especially not with the elixir,” August added. He remembered the ministry that night in the market square using stolen magic.
Gideon’s attention shifted to him. “Speak up, Aesling.”
“There’s no way to take down Ashcroft,” Theo said. His eyes slid over the group. “Please. Tell them to leave. Go back to Bedwyck.”
This was the reason he didn’t respond to the anchored. Delivering messages, passing along their words . . . he didn’t want to deal with any of it. If he started accepting their requests, it would never stop. And they were already relentless.
But ignoring Theo felt wrong.
“Theo says you can’t beat Ashcroft.”
Gideon’s face blanched. “Theo’shere?”
“He wants you to go back to Bedwyck. He’s worried about you.”
“Tell him no need to worry. We’re done fighting.”
Felix’s brow knitted. “You’re giving up? Just like that?”
“Just like that?” Gideon echoed bitterly. “Most of us are dead!”
“We’ve lost too much, Felix,” the girl added. “Our people, a quarter of the ones left aren’t even wielders.”
