The Cave and the Truth

I could see how hard it was for him to tell me that he was in a group fighting my father although I could hardly blame him after everything my father had done. I squeezed his hand lightly to encourage him to continue. “I thought the Magi weren’t fighters.”

“We aren’t as such. Not that we would stand a chance if we were. There aren’t enough of us to openly fight. If your father had found out about us, we’d all have been locked up years ago.”

“So what did you do if you weren’t fighting?”

“We fought in our own way. Secretly. Our successes were small but undetected. We spent years recruiting new members. There are more Magi in Silverwood than you know, or, at least, there used to be. Most are masquerading as non-Magi and have been for years. We recruited from Laidys and Thalia. It was the beginnings of a group we named the Freedom of Magic.”

“But what have you actually done?” Recruiting people and hiding them in plain sight was one thing, actually doing something was another entirely.

“Actually, the last few years have been wasted somewhat. We’d spent years getting our people into your palace, thinking if we overthrew the king, the MDS wouldn’t have anyone to hide them. A lot of the Magi that worked there were part of our group.”

I stared at him open-mouthed. “You had a part in the riots last year?”

“No,” Cynder assured me. “In the end, your father’s own actions prevented us from having to do anything. I already told you that we didn’t want to use force. The riots happened exactly as you were told. At the time of your wedding, I was still on the run, but I know we had nothing to do with it. A lot of Magi were killed in the riots too. It wasn’t what we wanted at all. We only ever wanted peace. What last year taught us was that our plans and intelligence were severely lacking. We didn’t know about Xavier, and we didn’t know what your father was planning. All that time we’d spent getting access to the palace, and we realized we knew nothing.”

“My father had most of the palace bugged,” I told him. “If there were talks to overthrow my father, he would have known.”

“We were discreet, although there is every chance your father found us out. Not that it really matters now. Your father had already managed to fire all the Magi by the time of the riots.”

My brain was going double time, trying to wrap itself around everything Cynder was telling me. They’d spent so long trying to infiltrate the palace only to all be fired at the same time.

“If you weren’t planning to hurt him, what exactly were you planning to do?”

Cynder laughed without any humor. “Through years of spying on him, we’d managed to find out quite a few things. We planned on telling the media and exposing his secrets. We were almost set to do it before the events of last year unfolded.”

“What secrets?” I asked. I could well imagine my father having a few. He’d managed to keep the fact he had a cousin a secret.

“The fact that he was a member of the MDS, or, at least, he knew about them and actively encouraged their activities. My parents weren’t the only Magi to die at their hands during your father’s reign, but none or the murders were ever investigated.”

I didn’t know what to say. I should have been more surprised, but for a man who thrived on lies, it wasn’t the shock it could have been.

I had so many questions, but I couldn’t decide which to ask first. Eventually, I spoke again.

“So what now? I’ve opened up the palace to the Magi, but no one is interested. If you want to overthrow the monarchy, why are you even telling me this?”

“We don’t want to overthrow the monarchy. Not anymore. We want to work alongside you.” Cynder shifted his position so he was looking right at me instead of the fire. His face was pink with the heat.

“How?” I asked.

“Our main objective at the moment is to keep you safe. We still have a member of staff who has access to the palace. He’s there almost every day watching over you.”

I racked my brain to think who was left. My father had succeeded in emptying the palace of all magi, and despite my best efforts at recruitment, none had come back.

“There are no Magi left in the palace.”

“There is one. Daniel is a Mage.”

I’d heard a lot of crazy things over the course of the past six months, and I’d heard a lot more in the last ten minutes, but this was something I couldn’t comprehend.

“Daniel can’t be a Mage.”

“He can be, and he is. He’s been protecting you ever since things began to get bad at the palace. He wanted to tell you a number of times what he was, but we asked him not to break his cover.”

“You don’t even know Daniel!”

“Daniel is one of the Freedom of Magic. I wouldn’t call him a close friend, but I do know him.”

I thought back to my friend. He’d been spending a lot of his time at the palace, but he’d never actually lived there. Unlike the other bachelors, he had his own place in town. Could it be true? Not once, had I seen him use magic. He’d kept truths from me before though. I only found out he was gay when we were going to announce our wedding. I wondered if Cynder knew about that. I guessed not.

“No Magi were invited to the ball,” I said, feeling confused. “My mother said so in an interview.”

“Your mother believed so. Actually, there were quite a few, thanks to me and my magic wand. We hoped you would pick one or more of them out. It was a gamble, but with a little help and pushing, you picked him. The others left after the ball. A couple were injured in the explosion.”

I thought back to my reason for picking Daniel out of the hundred men at the ball. He was good-looking for a start, but that wasn’t it. He’d made me laugh. At the back of my mind, I knew there was another reason, but it took me a few moments to realize what it was.

“Jenny told me to pick him. Don’t tell me Jenny is a Mage too?”

I couldn’t bear the thought of someone else I trusted keeping secrets from me. First, there was my father, then Cynder, then Daniel. Was no one who I thought they were?

“Jenny isn’t a Mage, but a friend of hers is, not that Jenny knows that. This friend told Jenny that Daniel was her son and asked her to push for him a bit. Jenny thought she was doing her friend a favor, that’s all.”

I remembered now. I don’t know how I’d not noticed before, but Daniel never spoke about his mother. It was always his father.

“What about Leo and Luca?” Could my own fiancé be lying to me? It seemed everyone else was.

“No. I’ve never met either of them, but when we found out who you picked, we looked into them. Leo has helped a lot with Magi rights. You already know that. At one point we thought about telling him our secret but decided it was too risky. Luca is exactly who he says he is. An all-around good guy.”

Cynder said the last few words as though it was a bad thing. I suddenly felt very defensive.

“Luca has been good to me, and he’ll be good for the kingdom.”

“I’m sure he has,” answered Cynder with the same disdain as before.

“What is it? What do you have on him?” I suddenly worried that I’d find out something I didn’t want to know about Luca.

“I don’t have anything on him,” replied Cynder testily. He stood up and began to pace the cave floor. “It’s what he has that bothers me.”

“Oh,” I shouted, suddenly feeling annoyed. “and what is that?”

“He has you.”

Cynder pulled a hood over his head and stepped out into the storm. A second later and he was swallowed by the thick rain. I stood up and ran to the mouth of the cave. I could just see him heading off down the mountain trail.

Fine. If he was angry, so was I. My family had lied to me, my friends had lied to me, and Cynder had lied to me. Ok, so he’d not lied exactly, but he’d not told me the full truth either.

I stomped around the cave, feeling angry. Angry at my father, angry at the people who’d hurt Cynder, and angry with Cynder himself for keeping this from me for so long. Most of all I was angry at myself. I had no idea how to deal with the situation I had found myself in. I was a queen. I shouldn’t be stuck in a cave in the middle of nowhere. I should have been more firm and stayed in Thalia. I should have stayed with Luca.

It was an hour before Cynder came back and my anger had dissipated as I realized that there was no way I could have stayed with Luca without putting him danger too. Cynder might have saved me from a bullet, but in taking me away, he’d saved Luca and his family too.

“I’m sorry,” he said, handing me a bottle of water as he walked back into the cave. “I’m having difficulty handling my feelings.” He pointed his wand at the fire that had almost died out, and the flames roared back to life. “Before last year, I didn’t believe I could find love. I’ve lived a lonely existence, and when I helped found the Freedom of Magic group, I swore to myself that I’d be loyal to it. I had no time for girlfriends, and, truth be told, I didn’t care. I began work at your palace last year. I was one of the last Magi to enter the workforce there. Before that, we’d spent a good couple of years holding peaceful demonstrations, trying to get somewhere, but we never did. It was infuriating. The more time we spent organizing demonstrations, the worse it all seemed to get. The MDS have people in high places all over Silverwood, and no matter what we did, we could never win.”

“It was looking bad for us. I felt hopeless, but then I met you.”

“I don’t see what I did.”

“You changed everything. For the first time ever, a non-Magi was willing to listen to me. Not only did you listen, you were in a position of power. The first night you came to the kitchen, I realized what an asset to the cause you could be.”

“I was an asset to you?”

“I told the Freedom of Magic that things had changed. We made a new plan. I’ve already told you that Daniel was coming to the ball.”

“I was an asset?” I repeated, my heart spiraling downwards as he spoke.

“You kept coming down to see me, and my feelings began to change. By the time the ball came around, I didn’t care about what you could do to help the Magi anymore. I didn’t care what your father had done, or how bad it was for people like me. My biggest fear on the night of the ball was that you’d pick someone to marry. Someone that wasn’t me. I fell in love with you, not because you were an asset, I fell in love with you because you were you. Since then, everything else has been secondary. “When you picked Luca and announced your engagement, I knew that I had to leave you alone. I gave up on the Freedom of Magic and moved to Thalia. The king and queen gave me a job straight away.”

I’ve spent the last six months trying to get over you. When I saw you in the royal dining room, I realized it hadn’t worked. I still love you. I’m not sure I know how to turn that off.”

“I don’t know how to either,” I whispered.

He took my hand. Just the slightest touch from him made my pulse race. It always had.

“I have to marry Luca,” I said. “It’s the only way I can think to help the Magi. It wouldn’t be fair to him to break it off either.”

“I know.”

“I’m not sure I want to marry him,” I said, verbalizing for the first time what had long since been at the back of my mind.

“I know that too.”

“I love you.”

“I know,” he replied almost silently.

“Is there anything you don’t know?”

“I don’t know how I’m going to be able to let you go.”

I closed my eyes, letting the tears fall. It was exactly what I wanted to hear and didn’t want to hear at the same time. I felt his lips as he kissed away my tears.

“What now?” I asked, opening my eyes.

“Tomorrow, I take you home. It’s a day away from here. You’ll be safe there. Daniel will look after you, and you’ll have the best security.”

“I go home? What if I stay here with you?”

He looked around him at the cave.

“You have a country to lead and a man who will be worried about you. I know you well enough to know that Silverwood will thrive in your hands. You told me before that marrying Luca will provide stability for the Magi of Silverwood. It’s what I used to dream about.”

“And what do you dream about now?”

“I dream about something I can never have. Come on, it’s late, and you need to sleep.”