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I dropped my face in my hands. If they had that much power, no one who stood against them had a chance. Not the outlaws. Not the citizens. Not us.
“If this hoard exists, who do you think knows about it? asked Cait. “All of the Academy? The Enforcers?”
Keane shook his head. “Probably only those at the very top—like the First Immortal and the king or queen. I suspect even the Enforcers using the machines are unlikely to know the full extent of it.”
Enforcers like Dominic, I thought.
“We should find out what Dunn knows,” said Cait, her mind following the same path.
Reluctantly, I agreed with her. I still felt protective of him, but we needed the truth. And if he’d been privy to his grandfather’s drunken secrets, maybe there was more he’d heard.
“Dunn,” said Keane, scoffing. “He should be a Pearce. When I heard the name, I wondered if he might be related to the Dunns from my wife’s side of the family, but I never imagined . . .”
“He does kinda look like you,” said Cait, “that is, if you dyed your hair, chopped it off, lost your wrinkles and your tanned skin, stood up straighter?—”
I laughed. “I think he gets the idea.”
“I see no resemblance between myself and that pampered little prude,” said Keane.
There was a commonality between them, but not something I could easily name. They were worlds different, but there was a quality that gave them away as father and son, now that I knew to look for it.
“You are both on the shorter side,” I said.
“Only compared to giants like you,” he said with a wink.
“No, compared to me, too,” said Cait. “And I’m average height.”
Keane pantomimed stabbing a dagger into his heart.
“So,” I said. “I told you what I’m planning to do when we get back to Cambria. What about you?”
Keane rubbed his beard, looking out to the black sky and sea. “Isn’t it obvious?”
My smile fell. “The arsenal. You still want to find it.”
He nodded grimly.
“But why? What will you do if it really exists?”
“Make ‘em pay,” said Keane, avoiding my eyes.
“Who exactly?” I asked, afraid of the answer.
“All of 'em,” said Keane. “The Immortals, the Enforcers . . . my father.”
A chill ran from the top of my head to the tips of my fingers. I rubbed my hand over the goosebumps that had formed on my arms. “You can’t kill the whole Academy. I mean, yeah, they haven’t done great things, but isn’t there a better way to change Cambria?”
“Like what you tried?” asked Keane. “How’d that work out for you?”
I shook my head. “I’m not saying what I did was right, but mass murder isn’t the answer either.”
“Is it murder if they deserve to die?” he asked.
My jaw dropped. “Keane! What makes you think you can judge if they deserve to die? You and your men would’ve killed Dominic without remorse before you knew who he was.”
“You know,” said Keane, “one of the only things preventing me from making this plan sooner was knowing that my son could be in the Academy. Now that I know who and where he is, there’s no one left for me to worry about.”
"What's your plan to get into the city?" I asked, mentally preparing for the answer I didn't want to hear.
