“Aidan.” Fear rippled through Myra, ice-water in her veins that brought back painful memories of the North Atlantic Apex. I’ve misread him. We all have.
She gasped, clutching her chest, her fingers tearing at her bodice in a frantic, automatic attempt to get at her wand. Robert and Laurel were on their feet, each shouting in an attempt to keep the peace. Even Kady had risen to her aid, throwing a restraining arm to Aidan, her eyes begging explanation.
Myra felt a tickle on the back on her neck and knew that Ben had leveled his wand at her as well. What is going on? What had any of this to do with her having gone to DMI with Stephen?
“I’m so, so sorry Myra.” Aidan’s words cut. He spoke truth. His wand was pointed at Myra’s heart, and he had intent to hurt her if need be. And yet he was sorry for whatever he was about to do. It was tearing him apart.
He loved her. This, too, had bearing. Somehow.
“Aidan. Don’t.” Myra forgot the wand, instead opting to hold her hands out in front of her. Empty. Surrender. How had she missed it? He was a Maester of Triewes. He could not lie.
“He told me, Myra,” Benjamin supplied the rest. “Told me what you entrusted to no one else in this house.”
“Told you what?” Myra whipped around, flinching as Benjamin’s wand jerked in response. A hastily checked action. A warning.
Fine. Hit me then. Live with that memory, Benjamin Egrett.
“Where he found you. Why he found you.” Benjamin’s voice trembled, as did his wand. He was going to do it. He would use his powers on her. Murder lived in his eyes—perhaps, always had.
Myra met it head on. “Told you what?”
Anger snuck in, catching Myra unawares. It might have been Benjamin’s. Not that it mattered. Her voice rose, cracked under the strain, “I told you all. The night that I arrived. The night you made him question me.”
“The doctors, Myra. The asylum.” Aidan had her attention once more. There. There was the source of his guilt. Myra cringed, a kicked and cornered animal, a frightened child. “The reason you had run away.”
This time there was no mistaking it. The anger that swelled in her chest was absolutely her own. Myra did not bother turning around. She kept her voice even, facing Benjamin as she addressed Aidan and reveling in the crumpling of the former’s resolve. She said, “That was something I told you in confidence. Something I told you because I feared—”
“And caused subsequent fear in me, Myra. I let you have your secrets. Even when James had me questioning you right here, in this very room. Yours has always been an incomplete truth, and someone had to know of it. It was too heavy a burden for my gift to bear alone.” Aidan’s voice pleaded. He wanted her to turn around. Needed her to. Benjamin shifted his stance, using both hands to hold out his wand. As though such would make any difference now that he had seen her pain, experienced it firsthand.
“Burden.” Myra spat the word, fighting back with her gift, her Empathy. She felt for Aidan, truly. But she would not satisfy him.
Benjamin could not face her. She could see that now. And Aidan? He would have to strike her in the back.
“You know that he had to tell me, Myra,” Benjamin reasoned. “He knew the truth of your heart. Surely your gift grants you that knowledge. But Broadmoor . . .”
He shook his head.
“What is this Broadmoor?” Myra shrieked, patience snapping.
Benjamin’s eyes darted over her shoulder. Whatever he had seen in Aidan’s reflecting surprise stunned him into dropping his arm. A saving truth.
“That’s what began all of this, Myra,” Laurel’s quiet voice cut through the dying animosity, cool water to quench the fire. “That’s where we had to send Addair’s firstborn mage for attacking the Queen eight years ago. His power had rendered him . . . mad.”
Laurel’s simple statement shook her more than had the dual threat of both Aidan and Benjamin. The words had Myra sinking to her knees. Surrender and grief washed over her in waves. Theories and half-wild hopes chased each other through her mind.
It was Robert who helped Myra to her feet, his angry brow shooting figurative lightning bolts at Aidan and Ben—neither of whom dared approach just yet. “Come, my dear. ’Twas an honest misunderstanding. We don’t shoot rashly. Leastways with one of our own.”
Myra wished she could turn grateful eyes to the wizard. She wished she could find the source of what turned her knees to jelly and burn it out with the power of all the world’s magic. Most of all, she wished that such were all that was wrong with her.
Madness. Her longstanding fear come back to haunt her. And with evidence damning and impossible to run from this time. Aidan had been right to warn Benjamin. Myra could well have used such a warning about herself.
Echoing in her ears: the laughing words of the MI2 agents, unaware of the spy in their midst. The memory was dulled, indistinct under Myra’s shock. Only the two men’s disdain for wizards remained. And the fact that Griggs had been transferred to Broadmoor. The empty office swam in her vision, a life raft towards which she eagerly swam.
Transferred to Broadmoor. And though they had not since heard from Julius, perhaps there was some good to come of it. Likely he was in charge of those of Addair’s men that had been apprehended. It was not beyond reason to think that such tied into his work.
Relief won out. Myra said as much, repeating what she had overheard in DMI’s offices, “Julius Griggs was transferred to Broadmoor.”
“Is that where you heard the name?”
“How did you hear such?”
“When? From whom?”
All three questions came at Myra simultaneously. It was near impossible to tease out which came from whom. She covered her ears in protest, cringing as M.I.’s mages, noisy crows flapping about, crowded ’round her.
“DMI. When I went there with Stephen,” she said.
“You told us you found his offices empty,” Aidan pressed, kneeling to peer at her, an unavoidable confrontation.
Myra nodded, truth spilling from her, “That I did. But I also overheard two agents mentioning Broadmoor. They . . . laughed. I assumed it was just a bad office to have to work out of and didn’t think any more of it. Nobody asked, you see. Nobody else really seemed to care that he was gone.”
Again, it was Laurel with answers. “It’s a hospital—”
“—an institution,” Benjamin corrected. “The full title of the place being Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum. And Maclean was not the only of Addair’s affiliates to end up in that place.”
He still had not approached Myra. She addressed him next, hurt that he was still distancing himself so. Hurt at the none-too-subtle implication. “What would Julius be doing there?”
“What indeed.” Benjamin folded his arms. His wand stuck out, still grasped as it was between his fingers. That he had not yet secured it away was telling. He smirked. “Perhaps he’s played us all.”
“Now see here,” Robert half-rose to defend the honor of one of their own, ord though Griggs was.
“No. You see here,” Benjamin shouted, for once abandoning his lackadaisical demeanor. “Informant; even to the point of compromising his position within DMI—deny it if you will, Robert! He does things, knows things, that no ord ought to know. Julius Griggs is slippery.”
At this incendiary statement the battle was joined. Shouting erupted all around, and Myra lowered her gaze, escaping it into yet a new flavor of pain, that of heartache.
She wanted to blush. Stammer and deny it all. Benjamin had, himself, called Myra’s correspondence with the agent a game. But all too quickly that game had become real. First when she had found Julius gone without a trace. And now at the real possibility that Griggs might have been a traitor all along.
The ache of betrayal hurt so that Myra almost wished Ben and Aidan had hexed her and been done with it. Then she might have been saved this pain. Tears blurred her eyes, and she closed them to their sting.
For there was no mistaking it. Memories laid waste to Myra’s heart: Julius’ attentions to Myra, her being the only member of the team he might not otherwise account for. The doomed reconnaissance of the Flameists’ ceremony and the happy accident that not even Griggs might have predicted. That of Stephen’s and Kady’s indiscriminate massacre, an act that had most likely saved Myra and James and Aidan’s lives. The glaring fact that it had been Griggs who had been their inside man at DMI; his providing of the corpse whose information they had acted on with regards to the Order. Lastly, James’ anger at Julius himself over Griggs’ device ostensibly meant to siphon electricity from the air, but could easily be turned to harness and direct such power against mages.
Distantly, Myra noted that even Aidan and Benjamin had joined the fray. Which was nice, she supposed. But nothing compared to Julius’ squashed face and crooked smile, his kind eyes. His kind, deceitful, infinitely cruel eyes.
Myra found the thread of her anger again and grabbed at it, holding on for dear life. A lifeline, pulling her back out of herself and into the land of the living, she let fury take her from the mire of her broken heart.
Perhaps it was time for M.I. to go to Addair, put his men in danger and force him to make the next move. Myra would relish the confrontation with Griggs. She had words she would like to give him . . . along with a pendant she no longer wanted.