“It’s better if I sit for now.”
“Take her back to the horses,” Master Dorian commanded. “She does not need to be here for this.”
“For what?” I barked the words, suddenly leaping to my feet. “They’re dead. They’re already dead. They don’t have heads! Why did you kill them?”
Rilen pulled me into his side. “They had to be, Kimber. You had to see what was going on.”
“That doesn’t explain why you killed them.”
We started walking out of the clearing. “This group that Roran and I have uncovered in the past three days was far more dangerous than anything else. They want to make sure that the mountain falls before it’s ready and before you’re ready.”
“Elex…”
“He’s how we found it. He’s been a part of it for a long time. The machine he has at the university is a legit device and works, but he’s been using it to keep you from gaining power.”
Tugging me away from the gory scene, Rilen led me down the path we’d arrived on. “Come. Don’t think too hard. We’ll explain everything.”
We walked into the woods, but I didn’t make it far before stumbling to the leaves on the side of the path and heaving my guts out.
“Did you bring me here just to show me they were going to die?”
“Nothing of the sort,” he said, holding my hair as I puked copiously. “We brought you because we doubted you’d believe us if we told you about Elex’s betrayal.”
I scrubbed my lips with the back of my hand, trying to get rid of the taste of bile. “There had to be another way.”
“Kimber,ilati, you’re loyal. Almost to a fault. You’ve known Elex for nearly your entire life and us for less than a year. There was no convincing you otherwise but to hear it from his own lips.”
I didn’t say anything. I walked back to the horses, tucked into Rilen’s side.
How could Elex do this? Had he been plotting this all along? No one knew I was the Breaker until I found the cave that day.
…the day Elex first really started to show affection for me as more than a friend.
“Gods…” I whispered, the bile rising in my throat again. “He played me like a cheap harp, plucking my strings as he wished.”
Rilen said nothing as we approached the horses.
I pulled him to a stop. “Did you know?”
He glanced at me confused. “Know what?”
“Know that Elex was betraying me?”
“Not until these past few days,” he admitted. “We trusted him because you did. Roran and I thought he was just being difficult and perhaps not understanding what the consequence of this was.”
I studied the handsome, genteel twin. “You followed him.”
He inclined his head. “We followed him. Dorian ordered us to after the incident on the roof.”
“Did he ever really go to the university?”
“Repeatedly,” Rilen nodded. “The machine is real, legitimate. It can warn us of tremors. But he wasn’t there the entire time. The rest of the time he was gone, he was hiding here or in two other encampments.”
“What are you going to do about these…malcontents? It’s so clear that S’Kir is not the utopia we pretend it to be.”
“We, in the temple, know there is no utopia. No one is ever perfectly happy with everything that goes on. If this was, someone would find some way to ruin that. There is not a single creature who responds well to perfection.”
Rilen offered me the reins of my horse after untying them. “We have no king, no president, no emperor because the temple guides through the magic we hear and see. That magic demands we have dissenting groups. Not dangerous ones, but ones that challenge our boundaries and keep us on our toes. Stagnation is death.”
