15

Daylight waned as we neared dusk. The constant breeze that flowed through the port took on a chill and I hugged myself.

“You did the right thing in keeping silent,” Ashton said quietly.

“Well, I didn’t see you jumping in to stop my impending death.” You kept the journal a secret and protected the interests of The Order despite a gun to my head.

“He would not have shot you. Not even Riley is so cold-hearted,” Ashton said through the bars of the jail cell. His forehead pressed against the metal, dark eyes beseeching. “I knew he would not.”

“There is no way you could know that.” I turned from him, striding to the opposite side of my adjoining cell. “He’s desperate and angry, but you…you play games with the lives of everyone.”

“You think I see all of this as a game?” I heard him move, his feet shuffling on the dirty floor. “Charlotte, please…”

“Leave me alone.” Refusing to look at him, I leaned a shoulder on the cold plank wall, my head pounding.

Outside, Riley’s harsh voice echoed.

A sigh, followed by the sound of Ashton’s weight on the filthy cot made me look over my shoulder. He sat with his elbows on his knees, head in his hands. “Thank you for not saying anything about the journal.”

“I kept silent for my father, not you. If Riley has the information then I can’t use it to bargain for his return. So you needn’t worry. When he returns to question me I won’t be weak. I won’t be the undoing of your cause, Ashton.”

“The undoing…what?”

“From our first moment, you made things abundantly clear where the Blackburns stand,” my voice cracked.

The snap and flap of the flags just beyond the barred window were the only sound save for the steady drone of the tower rotors.

We sat like that, in dark and silence.

“What are you really saying to me, Charlie?” Ashton asked after a few moments.

“When I came to you…when Riley let me see you, your first words were, ‘you’re here.’”

“I’m sorry?” Ashton looked up at me, his face cast in half shadow in the gas lamp’s light.

“You said, ‘you’re here,’” I repeated. “Not, ‘you’re all right.’”

“I was glad Riley had not sold you back to the Security Force.” He stood. “They are brutal men. You witnessed firsthand what they are capable of. How little regard they have for life. I was worried.”

“But why? If Riley is correct and The Order and the Union worked together on this, then why would you try to stop them from taking my father in the first place? Why keep me from them? You would be working against your own purpose…unless The Order means to betray their agreement with the Union. You would help them do this? Even if it means obscuring the truth about the Tremblers?”

“Charlie, don’t do this.” Ashton shifted, the moonlight casting his worried face in a sliver of light.

“You didn’t say that you were glad I was not hurt. You said, ‘they don’t have you…’” I wiped my face, furious that I had been so easily used. “I am leverage. You told me yourself. I am nothing but a pawn in all of this. I just didn’t fully understand until now. I’m not a pawn of the Peaceful Union to use against my father. The Order wants to use what my father discovered to maintain their grip on those in power.”

“I cannot believe that is truly what motivates my superiors.” He stood and reached through the bars for me. “Nevertheless, that is not the reason that I wanted you safe.”

“Don’t.” I backed away. “Please don’t insult me further by feigning concern.”

“I had a choice to come to you or to fight to keep your father from the Union Soldiers. I chose to help you.” Ashton said evenly. “In that moment, I chose you over my orders and I have been ever since. Do you think it would be hard for me to wrestle that book from you? I want the truth. I am not interested in using what your father discovered for anything but stopping this affliction.”

“Do you doubt The Order? Is that why you align yourself with Lizzie and Defiance?”

“Lizzie and I have an uneasy truce out here by mutual necessity. Nothing more. I am not part of her band of rebels. I have a place. An allegiance.”

“I thought this was about truth. Fighting the blight and saving lives?”

“It is,” he snapped. Shoving his hands in his pockets, he paced the cell. “That is what I am trying to do.”

“Then why are you so resistant to finding Collodin?” I gripped the bars between us. “If you are after the truth alone and not, as Riley accuses, simply the information to use as leverage, then why continually stop me from doing what my father asked me to?”

“I don’t know this Collodin. I only know that The Order has the means, the network, and the scientists to fight this blight. I must believe that is what they will do. I have to trust them.”

“Why?” I pled. “Explain to me why, in the face of what Riley said, do you still do their bidding?”

“Not everything he said is true. The whole of The Order cannot be corrupt.”

“But enough to give you doubt,” I said and held his gaze. “I can see it in your eyes.”

“Feelings are ephemeral, Charlie,” Ashton said. “I can’t abandon all I’ve ever known because I have a moment of uncertainty.”

“A moment, really?” I ran the pad of my fingers over the shackle of his mandate.

He stilled, his eyes boring into mine.

“Is this the only time you’ve questioned what they were doing?”

“You look down on me because I am steadfast?” He pulled away, his features tense.

“Steadfast or stubborn?” I shot back and he recoiled. “Faithful or too fearful to seek answers you don’t want to face?”

“Enough,” he growled. “You speak without knowing more than what others have told you to think. Is this you or Riley talking now?”

“This is me, Charlotte Blackburn, questioning Ashton Wells; the man, not the agent, not the servant, not the warrior.”

“What is it, then?”

“What are you doing, Ashton?” I asked softly, my heart tumbling. “You cannot straddle both worlds. You can’t help me find the truth and secure it for The Order if you have even the slightest doubt that they will do the right thing.”

“One can never be absolutely certain of another.”

“Yes, you can.”

“Can I? You would do anything for your father, yes? If given the choice between saving thousands and getting him back, how do you know what you would choose? You said yourself you kept your silence for his sake. How dedicated to fulfilling your father’s wishes are you, really?”

“I…” How had this conversation gone so awry? Now he was questioning my intentions?

“He sacrificed himself so the truth might get out. You, on the other hand, would trade the truth for his safe return. You say you mean to find Collodin because your father entrusted you to, but I suspect you will use the tinkerer as you’ve used me. To get you the means to bargain for your father back.”

I stared through the bars, wiping at my eyes and grateful that the dark hid my face. Finding Collodin kept me going despite my fear and confusion. It gave me direction in this chaos, but deep down I had always held the hope of both getting my father back and revealing the truth as he’d asked. I had not let myself think about the possibility that I might have to make a choice. “I am sorry that I used you.”

“We used each other.” Ashton smiled ruefully. “And for that I am sorry.”

“Why can’t I do both?” I croaked.

He looked at me then.

I felt small and ignorant.

“You will have to choose soon,” he whispered. “And I fear it will break you either way.”

We sat in silence for a long time, the din of Outer City in the background gradually dying down to only the sound of the tower rotors.

Only a short time ago, my greatest concern was whether or not I might feel butterflies in my stomach if I walked in the garden with Cornelius. How silly and petty those worries. Now my thoughts whirled with anguish over my father and aunt. I huddled locked in a cage in the dreaded Outer City next to a spy, all the while concealing secrets both the government and a rebel faction were willing to kill to retrieve. I shook my head. How different my idea of what was important had become. “I don’t understand how my father could keep these secrets only to thrust them upon me all at once. Why would he leave me so unprepared?”

“It is because I lost his trust.” Ashton’s voice broke.

“What?” I shifted, peering at him.

“I don’t know what happened. How could I have failed him so utterly that he lost belief in me completely?”

“Failed him? You barely knew him. You thought I had a twin brother.”

“Your father saved my life.”

Rising to my knees, I tried to see him in the dark of the cell. “What are you talking about?”

“When I was orphaned at a young age he rescued me from the streets. He took a dirty, thieving child and gave me a purpose. He paid for my education in The Order, taught me how to fight. Told me of his assignments and trained me to do better, to be smarter. I strove so hard to be what he…” Ashton looked at me with bewilderment. “I don’t know how I lost his trust. I thought he wanted me to be loyal to them.”

Stunned, I could only stare, struggling to understand. “You’ve known my father that many years? How…how could that be?”

“He was a benefactor. I rarely saw him and when I did it was because I’d risen in rank or passed a gauntlet; always for official reasons, never personal. That is why I didn’t know he had a child.” He rubbed his face with both palms, clearly nearing exhaustion. “I—I never knew about you…not one thing. I had to find out when he went missing and The Order sent me to locate him. I never even knew he lived in New York. I only saw him in Missouri. He kept his personal life very hidden.”

“How long,” I repeated. “When did you first meet my father, Ashton?”

“Since my eighth year.”

The enormity of Ashton’s revelation hit me, took my breath away. All those years of my father’s constant traveling. Those times my mother and I spent holidays alone were finally made clear. I was not his only child. Not really. Nor was I the one he meant to belong to The Order.

“You are why he told me nothing of this,” I said and finally understood. “He never meant me to succeed him. I was never his legacy.”

Ashton held my gaze, comprehension in his eyes. “It was me.”

“Why would he do that?”

“Perhaps he had doubts all along,” Ashton murmured. “And I was the one he was willing to sacrifice if he was wrong.”

“A trade.” My soul ached for Ashton, for the boy who trusted in benevolence despite all he’d been through. “He traded you for me.”