“I do know, Rid. I know because I haven’t finished telling you everything.”
She hesitated, her back still to Archer.
“There’s more,” he said, and it sounded a little as though his voice broke on the word ‘more.’
“More?” she asked, looking over her shoulder at him.
“I have to tell you … everything.” He tugged at his hair with both hands. “I should have told you long ago, but—” He inhaled sharply, blinking furiously. “I didn’t want you to hate me,” he finished, his voice hoarse.
Ridley let out a heavy sigh. She wanted to hate him. She wanted it so badly. She could even try to pretend that this sickening ache eating away at her core was hatred, but she knew it wasn’t. It was pain because of how much she’d come to care for him. It was shame because she’d been stupid enough to fall for him when she knew—she knew—she shouldn’t have. “I don’t hate you,” she said quietly, wearily. “I may never like you again, but I don’t hate you.”
He couldn’t look at her as he said, “You will. Once you’ve heard everything.”
“What’s worse than you betraying my trust and being part of a secret organization that wants to kill me?”
He swallowed. His breaths grew shallower. His eyes glistened, and he blinked furiously again, then pressed a fist over his mouth. This is an act, Ridley reminded herself. A damn good one, but still an act. It isn’t real. He’s just trying to—
“The Cataclysm wasn’t an accident.”
Ice-cold shock flooded Ridley’s body.
A moment passed.
Then another.
Another.
“E-excuse me?”
“The GSMC was meant to be the end of the energy crisis,” Archer said in a shaky voice, “but the Shadow Society—my father—saw an opportunity to change the world. To cripple it. To control it. To decimate the population and ensure the survivors would always fear magic.”
Ridley opened her mouth, but no sound came out.
“The Shadow Society selected certain cities around the world. They convinced those in power that something might someday go wrong. They planted the idea of hovering arxium panels. The right people liked that idea. The arxium panels were slowly put in place. More panels were discreetly embedded in the ground around these cities. And as the event itself—the GSMC—grew closer and closer, my father made sure that the complement of magicists for every group conjuration that would take place that day included at least one Shadow Society member. A person who would make very slight adjustments to the conjuration they performed. Adjustments that rendered all the other energy conjurations useless.
“Near every group conjuration, Shadow Society chapters gathered in secret. They had all been taught an ancient conjuration my father discovered. A conjuration people used to do to … cleanse small areas of land for renewal and regrowth. A conjuration that stirs up the magic in the elements until it reaches a point where it reacts violently, wiping out everything in that area.”
Ridley’s body was shaking now, but still she couldn’t utter a word.
“It was only ever meant to be done by one person on a small scale,” Archer continued, his voice still shuddery, broken. “Not in groups. Not attached to the kind of amplification conjurations that were going on because of the GSMC. But I … I didn’t know that. I didn’t know anything back then except what my father told me: We were aiding the GSMC. We were clearing the world of all the bad in it. Elementals and their magic. All dangerous magic. He said the world would be a better place afterwards. And I—” Archer breathed in a ragged breath “—I believed him. I was young. I thought my father knew everything. If he said this was how we would save the world, then I figured he must be right.
“So when he—” Archer broke off, blinking again as he cleared his throat. “When he took my hand and pulled me into the circle along with my mother and everyone else, I didn’t stop him. I …” Archer shook his head, leaned forward with his hands pressed to his knees, and breathed in shakily. His voice was strained and oddly high-pitched as he said, “I watched my father start the conjuration that ended the world, and I didn’t do anything to stop him.”
Ridley shook her head, tears fracturing her vision. “My mom …”
“Your mom,” Archer whispered. “And billions of other people—” He broke off as he straightened, turned away, tugged at his hair yet again. “All dead,” he managed to say. “And afterwards, when I saw what had happened, saw how many people had been wiped out, I felt so … so sick. I couldn’t believe he—we—had done that. I thought I might die from the guilt. So I told myself to never think about it. That was the only way I could survive. It was the only way I wouldn’t … implode.”
He turned back to face her, but his red-rimmed eyes and contorted expression were blurred by her own tears. “So when I told Lilah it wasn’t appropriate for her to be your friend anymore, it was because of my own guilt. It was because I couldn’t stand to look at you knowing what I’d done to you.”
A sob clawed its way up Ridley’s throat as her heart cracked open. A shuddering breath passed her lips. She whirled around and pushed blindly through the flowers and bushes until she came to the edge of the roof. She grabbed the railing that ran atop the wall and pulled herself up. She stepped over the railing.
And she let herself fall.
Down, down, down, glittering glass panes flashing by and the road rushing toward her, until finally, with a heartrending cry, she pushed her magic out and vanished.
10
It wasn’t an accident.
Ridley fled the city upon the gusts of a windstorm and kept going until she was too weak to continue. Which wasn’t particularly long. The wind slowed to a persistent breeze as she collapsed on a crumbling street of a storm-ravaged wasteland suburban area, her body sick and shaky. Part of it was the shocking knowledge that the entire world had fallen apart because of a small group of power-hungry people. Part of it was simply hunger.
It wasn’t an accident.
Ridley had no idea how much time had passed since her last meal, and she didn’t feel like eating, but she knew her body needed something. Somewhere far above her, the constant flicker of magic and lightning illuminated the dark night as she let the backpack slide off her shoulders. With trembling fingers, she opened it and removed a can of soup.
It wasn’t an accident.
Mom had died. Billions of people had died. And it was all because someone had planned it. Archer’s deceit was still a shard of ice wedged into her heart, but this—the revelation that the Cataclysm had been a carefully orchestrated event—was monumental in comparison. The weight of it was crushing her.
She clutched the unopened can with one hand while pressing the other over the stone pendant lying against her chest. She squeezed her eyes shut and let hot tears drip down her cheeks. How could individuals take it upon themselves to decide the fate of the world? It was so heinous, so utterly unjust. Everything inside Ridley screamed to fight back. To make them pay. She wanted desperately, fiercely, to destroy all their wicked arxium and bring about the future Nathan envisioned. The future she and Archer—the ice shard pierced a little deeper—had discussed so often over the past couple of weeks.