“I owe that to the care I’m getting,” he replied with a sideways glance at Trina.
I poked at my food, trying to be interested. “Tenger is still talking with the Brill?”
Basil nodded, then added, “He’s also keeping watch for any of my people, if they come in time. Gabe believes Kestra will attack the palace sooner rather than later.”
“Agreed. And the Halderians … my people will come as well.” I still stumbled over identifying them as mine, but I had to speak of them that way, or else how would I ever think of them that way?
“These fry cakes are the best I’ve ever had, honestly. But of course, I made them, so what else should I have expected?” Gabe took another bite while Basil and Trina chuckled at his joke; then more seriously, he said, “How long do you think it’ll be before Harlyn returns?”
“You think about her more than I do,” I replied. “If you’re interested—”
“Trust me, Hatch. If I thought I could get her attention, I would gladly save her from a life with you.”
I stared at him until we all broke into laughter. I didn’t know why. He was perfectly correct that Harlyn would be better off away from me. Yet it felt good to smile. It had been so long since I’d had any reason for it.
My mind shifted back to months ago, before Loelle took Kestra away from Nessel. Kestra and I had met in a small alcove, just the two of us. I had smiled then, and meant it.
“Someone else will have to face Kestra … at the end,” I mumbled, and when Gabe tilted his head, unsure of whether he’d heard me correctly, I added, “You all think I can’t see the truth about Kestra, but that isn’t the problem. I do see it. But if a battle comes between us, I won’t make the correct choices. I won’t know the difference between what I want and what I’m supposed to do. And I will choose her over myself every single time.” I glanced up, meeting the eyes of everyone at the table in turn. “I’m saying this because I know a battle is coming, and I’ll need as much help as possible to survive it.”
“To survive her,” Gabe echoed. He put a hand on my shoulder. “May we all survive her.”
Basil leaned forward. “Trina told me that Kestra was here, that she healed me.”
I nodded.
“What the Dominion did to me …” He closed his eyes as if remembering it all, and a shudder seemed to pass through him. “They took me to the brink of death, and Endrick suspended me there in the cruelest sort of torture—unable to die, unable to live. I became so weak, so hopeless, that the Ironhearts became sloppy with their watch over me. One night, they left the bars of my dungeon cell open. It took most of the night for me to work up the courage and the strength to leave, but I did. I remembered hearing of how you and Kestra escaped before, and at first, I seemed to be following your footsteps exactly. I went over the edge of the lowest cell in the dungeons but never could find the exit. There I waited, expecting death, even wishing for it, until the Ironhearts finally found me.”
Basil paused as if seeing the events he described play out in his mind. His shoulders had hunched increasingly as he spoke, and his hands occasionally trembled. We waited for him to continue, and eventually, he did. “I expected to die down there, and not because of hunger or thirst, but because Endrick’s magic still lingered with me. Without even knowing exactly where I was, he was still torturing me.”
Trina placed her hand over his. “I’ve seen the dungeons, Basil. I can’t imagine what you went through down there. What you were still going through even after we rescued you.”
“I should be dead right now, but I’m not.” For the first time since he began to speak, Basil looked directly at me. “Kestra took all of that curse from me. Even while I was unconscious, I perceived that she was pulling the wickedness out of me, like ice melting and draining. She took it.”
“Pulling the curse into herself,” Gabe said. “She made herself worse.”
“That’s how she saved me.” Basil rapped his fingers on the table. “While you’re all discussing how dangerous she has become, I think it’s important for me to add that Kestra is the only reason I’m still alive. She saved my life.”
“She has saved all of us, at one point or another,” Trina said. “Whatever she is now, we owe her a chance to survive.”
Gabe shook his head. “No, we don’t. I’m sorry, Simon. I know how upsetting it must be to hear that, but the reality is, we may not have many opportunities to stop her, and if we get the chance, we cannot pause and debate Kestra’s current position on the scale of good and evil. We must act.”
Basil sat up straighter. “How can you say that? In Reddengrad, we would never condemn a person on so thin a judgment.”
“In Reddengrad, you are not led by a nearly immortal king who has redefined evil, and a girl who seems to be folding herself into his mold.”
“What is happening to Kestra is a consequence of her trying not to be like him!” Basil insisted. “There is good in her, and we must have hope for her future.”
“Simon and I just saw her bring a hundred Ironhearts to their knees in full surrender,” Gabe said. “Seconds later, she and Joth killed them all. What if this were to happen again? Will you explain to the families of her victims that we did nothing because we were hoping she wouldn’t do it?”
“Don’t you see my point?” Basil looked to each of us before his eyes settled on me. “If the evil can be pulled out of me, it can be pulled out of her too.”
“It doesn’t work that way,” Trina said. “A magnet pulls iron shavings from the earth, but the earth cannot pull the iron shavings back to itself. Magic is the magnet and cannot help but to pull corruption to itself. Once there, the corruption binds to the magic. The one becomes part of the other.”
“Then we must pull all magic from her,” Basil said. “That is her best chance.”
“Unless the magic is bound to her life,” Gabe said. “If magic is in her breath, in the beat of her heart, in her every footstep, then she has no chance. The only question is how many people she will destroy on her way down.”
Trina sighed. “We don’t have answers to any of these questions. All I know is that, at this moment, there is no way to pull magic from Kestra without killing her.”