Pa killed them. Pa killed Luc’s family.Rolan struggled to breathe, to make room in his heart for this terrible new information. But it was too much pain at once. If he let it all in, he would collapse from the sheer weight of it. He focused on Luc instead.
“That’s why you became the Arcanist,” Rolan whispered. “To findhissecrets. So you could find him. And you did. You found his secret, and it led to me. And I was to be your bait. You used mejustlike Hoff.”
Rolan began to laugh again, harder this time, a horrible, rasping laugh like the wheezing of a sick animal. He began to pace, his legs still wobbly from the sudden loss of Arcana.
Casting his eyes around the cave, his gaze fell on the list of Arcanist names carved into the wall, and the blank spot underLuc’s where he’d imagined carving his own name one day, and he felt infinitely, unbearably stupid.
“But he never came for me,” Rolan continued harshly. “He never took your bait. So you werestuckwith me, until you decided you’d had enough. And you sent me back, as you’d intended to do from the start. You filled my head with your books and your histories and your knives and your stupid,stupidsense of honor, and then youdumpedme in the gutter because you never wanted me in the first place!”
“I…” Luc’s face twisted into a grimace. Still he would not look at Rolan directly. “At first, yes. That was my intention. And it was wrong, I know that. But it’s not that simple anymore, boy. I didn’t expect…”
“You didn’t expectwhat?” Rolan cried, desperate for Luc to say something, anything that might reverse the way this was going.
But the Arcanist only shook his head. “It doesn’t matter now.”
Of course this was how it would always have gone. Why would Luc have ever wanted Rolan, the son of his family’s murderer, for an apprentice? He probably loathed Rolan almost as much as he did Rolan’s pa.
It had all been a lie.
Rolan stood. He took the knives from his belt and threw them on the ground with a clatter. He took off the belt of supplies and dropped that too. His cloak had been a gift from Luc, and he hurled that down, though it fluttered to the ground with a less satisfying result.
Finally, the boots. The boots that had been Luc’s son’s. Mylas’s boots. He kicked them off, flinging them at the wall.
He’d been trying so hard to prove himself to a man who’d never wanted him to begin with.
“I don’t want any of it,” he snapped. “I don’t want any part of you or your miserable life!”
“Rolan—”
He didn’t wait to listen.
He ran, out of the cave and into the woods. It was properly dark now, but he knew the way back. He couldn’t tear out everything Luc had taught him, rip it from his brain and dash it to the ground. If he could, he would have. He’d claw out every memory of the man and his house and his goat and his secrets and he’d drown them all in the river.
Rolan tore through the trees, knowing Luc was still too weak to give chase. He thrashed aside branches and stumbled over roots, glancing up now and again to fix his eyes on the star that led north, hating that he knew how to find it now, hating how proud he’d felt when he’d first managed to pick it out on his own.
See?he’d boasted to Luc.I’m not so stupid after all!
Oh, how wrong he’d been.
He made enough noise to draw every Cryptic within ten miles, but he couldn’t find it in himself to care.
When he finally broke through the forest’s edge, a short distance from Luc’s house, his anger broke like a dam and the pain flooded him. He fell to his knees in the grass, under the half-moon, and sobbed into his hands.
“I’m sostupid,” he wept. “Stupid me. Stupid Arcanist!”
Played for a fool from the start. Worse, he’d let Lucin, let him closer than he’d ever let anyone, maybe even Anaya. He’d let Lucchangehim. He could never go back now to who he was. Maybe he hadn’t been happy before, but he’d beenfine.
Now he was sure he’d never be fine again. He was ruined. He’d been shown too much, both of the world and of himself. He’d seen the things he might be capable of, and the person he might have become. He’d believed, actuallybelieved, that Luc had chosen him for Rolan’s own merits. That the Arcanist had seen something in Rolan no one else ever had, and that he’dwantedhim for an apprentice.
And Rolan had felt something he’d never felt before: that he was worth wanting.
But oh, what a fool.
What a pathetic fool he’d been.
- CHAPTER 34 -KIDNAPPED
Rolan sat dejectedly on the curb outside the lamplighters’ guild, sullenly watching its members set off into the evening. They carried flagons of oil on their backs and long poles with wicks at the end, looking like odd fisherman.
