“Other two?” I wonder if he means Hanna and Luna or—
“The other two princes,” he spits the last word.
I don’t know how I hadn’t picked up on the hostility that’s rolling off him in waves. But now he’s standing upright and there’s pure vitriol burning in his eyes.
All directed at Silver.
“They remembered her. And then we all saw what she could do last night. The little weapon keeping us all in line. Dirty witch with foul magic.”
He shakes his head, not looking directly at Silver, like she’s not worth looking at, or maybe he’s afraid of her. Not too afraid to be acting like an asshole, though.
I thought I understood what had kicked off the trouble last night. The people of the district are angry. They’re angry with me. With Felix. With how the district has been run under his watch.
Mywatch.
I don’t blame them for that.
They’re angry with the Archarcans too, no doubt, since they're the ones hell bent on keeping everyone else down. Though, Silver’s also caught their attention, their ire. That’s the part that makes no sense to me. Because it isn’tmeGordo seems most angry with.
It’s her.
She stares at Gordo, his face blank of any expression.
“What are you saying? You think people smashed up your shop just because they might have seen me in here with Roscoe and Zeph?”
He lets out an angry grunt. “Look at the neighbors. Does it seem like they got hit to you? Why else would they pick my shop over any of the others?”
The question is clearly rhetorical. He’s decided that rather than it being a random attack, the looting and destruction have something to do with Silver and I can see by his expression that he won’t be swayed.
I step toward him, anger coursing through me. “That makes no fucking sense at all, man. You can’t just blame Silver for bad things happening.”
“You have magic, Gordo?” Silver asks softly.
He grunts, not looking at her as he tips a pan of glass into the trash.
“Sure,” I reply for him. “He’s got minor elemental magic. Fire, right, Gordo?”
She nods, folding her arms over her chest. “Pretty weak, though, right? Weaker than you’d like it to be, huh?”
He grunts again, and I shoot her a confused look. I don’t exactly know where she’s going with this, but it doesn’t seem the best idea to taunt him if we want to get any further information out of him. Although, I’m pretty sure that’s a losing battle.
“But you didn’t choose to be like this, right? No one chooses their magic or their power level. We’re not the ones that decide if a type of magic is wrong, either. That’s all down to the Archarcans. Although everyone else is happy enough to go along with things, even though it’s not in anyone’s best interest for things to be like they are.”
“They are when you’re dangerous,” he mutters. “When your magic’s filthy.”
That’s the thing about anger. It stops people from thinking clearly. Clouds their judgment and makes them dangerous.
I put my arm around Silver, like I can protect her from his words or his opinions. It shouldn’t matter what he thinks, but Gordo has always been a loyal employee and scout. He gets paid handsomely, and he keeps an eye on things from the street for me.
If this is how he feels, I’m pretty sure what we’ll find in the rest of the district is going to be worse.
Maybe this visit wasn’t such a good idea.
“I’m sorry,” I tell Silver softly as we’re leaving a few minutes later. “It blows my mind he was blaming you for people targeting his shop.”
“Nothing I haven’t experienced before,” she says with a shrug. I can tell she’s not as nonchalant as she seems though. The whole interaction with Gordo had a bitter sting to it and his poisons likely to still be floating through her veins.
“You know,” she continues. “People think the city has two levels–-the elites and then everyone else. But really, there’s another layer. We’ve always been the ones at the bottom. And who do you think is the easiest target to blame things on?”
