“Get rid of?” Ridley and Archer echoed at the same time.
“Yes. Not all of them. Just the leadership. The director, plus the chairperson of every chapter.”
Silence greeted Nathan’s words. Then Ridley said, “Murder? Is that what you’re talking about?”
“You don’t know who they are,” Tanika said, “so how are you going to get rid of them?”
“Actually,” Nathan said, “we now know that the mayor of Lumina City is one of them. He’s the chairperson of the Lumina City chapter. Who knows, maybe he’s the director too. Maybe he’s running the whole show.”
“Or maybe it’s someone else, in some other city, on some other continent. You have no idea.”
“My point,” Nathan said, “is that if I get to him, I can get all the information I need.”
“What makes you so sure he’ll tell you anything?” Tanika asked.
“I’ll make him.”
“So now we’re talking about torture?” Ridley demanded. “Torture and murder?” An image of the rooms in the Shadow Society’s base flashed across her mind. The beds, the straps. She knew the mayor had been involved in experimenting on elementals. He’d probably tortured plenty of elementals. Yet the idea of doing the same to him—or anyone else—made her sick.
Nathan sighed. “This is why I didn’t bring it up at the meeting.”
“And this is why you probably shouldn’t have brought it up now either,” Saoirse added quietly. “You didn’t think people would agree with you, did you?”
“Actually, this might be the first thing we do agree on,” Tanika said thoughtfully.
“You can’t go out and murder a bunch of people,” Ridley said to Nathan.
“Ridley, I thought you, of all people, would be okay with this. You were captured. You were almost killed. You told me what you saw inside that Shadow Society base. You burned it to the ground. You killed whoever was left inside.”
The truth sucked the air from Ridley’s lungs. She had done that. She’d blazed through that building, not caring how many terrible Shadow Society people were left inside. How was this—what Nathan was proposing—any different? It wasn’t, and yet it felt different to sit here coldly making plans to walk up to someone and kill them face to face. What a hypocrite she was to think that one type of murder was fine while another was not.
“I—I know,” she stammered. “But … I … I wasn’t really thinking. I was acting out of anger. Maybe I … I should have got rid of the place and not the people. Things are different now, and we have a bigger plan. If we want the world to know the truth about everything, then all these people who’ve done terrible things need to be around to stand trial for what they’ve done. And if we want the world to know that we’re not dangerous, then we can’t go around torturing and killing people. That makes us no better than them.”
“Perhaps I don’t care about being better than them,” Nathan said, “if it means every elemental gets to live in a world without fear.”
“So you’re serious,” Archer said. “You’re actually intending to kill people.”
Nathan sighed and rubbed a hand over his face. “I don’t know. Maybe. We have new information now, so maybe this is what we should be doing with it.”
“Or not,” Ridley said. “I can think of other things you could do with that information.”
“And I think this is the end of our discussion for tonight,” Nathan said, pushing up from the table. His easy smile was back in place as he headed for the stove and leaned over the pan to sniff its contents. “Saoirse was right. This smells amazing. Mind if we stay and join you for dinner?”
4
After dinner—which was surprisingly not awkward, given the awkward conversation that came before it—Ridley walked with Archer to his cabin. The quiet rumble of thunder hinted at a distant storm, but here at the reserve, the night was clear, the dark sky crowded with a billion glittering pinpricks of light. Far more stars than Ridley had ever seen when she lived in the city. “The stars feel close enough to touch,” she to Archer, a smile in her voice.
He slipped an arm around her back and pulled her closer. She heard the matching smile in his voice as he replied, “Stretch high enough, and maybe your magic can touch the stars.”
She’d commented on the stars so many times since they’d left Lumina City that this had quickly become a Thing for them. A standard statement and response. It went along with the other thing that had become a Thing: lying together almost every evening on a mattress beneath the night sky, wrapped up in a cozy duvet, talking about anything and everything.
“I’m supposed to walk you to your door,” Archer said, leaning his head down to kiss her temple. “Not the other way around.”
“Don’t be sexist.” Ridley snuggled against his side as weariness settled over her shoulders like a heavy blanket. Headaches might not plague her anymore, but shifting into elemental form repeatedly for several hours definitely sapped her energy. “I’ll be perfectly fine walking back to my cabin on my own. But you, my non-elemental friend, might need protecting from the big, bad magic out there.”
“Friend?” Archer repeated with a laugh. “I thought we were a little more than that.”
“Is that the only part of that sentence that bothers you?”
“It was the most important part.”
Ridley smiled. “More than a little more.” They continued walking, and then, because she couldn’t get the earlier conversation out of her head, she added, “I keep thinking about what Nathan said about killing the Shadow Society leadership. And I keep thinking about the people I probably killed inside that base. It seemed different at the time—probably because I didn’t see them face to face, and I don’t even know if any of them were left inside or if they all got out—but it’s no different. It’s the same as what he’s planning.”
Archer shook his head. “It’s not the same. Maybe it still wasn’t right, but I don’t think it’s the same as intentionally planning to kill specific people and then seeking out each of them and following through.”
“I suppose,” Ridley said slowly.
“And when it comes down to it—when Nathan’s face to face with someone—I don’t know if he could really do it. I mean … they’ve done terrible things, these Shadow Society people. But they’re still just people.”
“Well, they might be a little closer to monsters than the average person. But … now that I’m thinking about it properly … I don’t want them all dead. They should be alive to pay for the heinous things they’ve done to others.”
“Yeah,” Archer murmured. “I think I agree. Thing is … if we go through with this crazy plan, there are going to be casualties. It’s not possible to break apart the entire city wall without coming into contact with any people. If we’re going to take part in this, we need to be okay with the fact that some people won’t survive it.”