Chapter 213
Clementine:
I watched Ian get up in the morning and get ready in silence. The others were quiet too. It was getting to be a little too much for all of us. The upbeat energy we used to have at the start was suddenly gone.
I couldn’t help but think about the crusaders before us and wonder at what point in their journey they were told to go fix the rock in the towers.
Mr. Rick said the task came at different steps for everyone. For some, it was maybe as early as the first or second task, and they were wiped out right after. For others, probably much later.
I wondered if the snake I saw in the north had been killed by one of the earlier crusaders. Or maybe other people lived up there, like the brown house people, and they killed it.
The thing was decomposing, so it wasn’t going to just stay there forever. That meant it had been killed either recently or not too long ago. At least not by a crusader, since the group before us must have been months back.
“So what were you two doing outside last night?” Troy finally broke his silence after staring at me and Yorick for a few seconds.
Yorick was sitting on his bed, head leaned back against the headrest, eyes closed. The headrests weren’t that big, so he was tilted back awkwardly. He straightened up, pressing his back against the wall behind him.
“We talked about some stuff,” Yorick replied, shooting Troy a challenging look, like he was asking why Troy even cared what we talked about.
“And we’re not gonna know about it?” Haiden asked, clicking his tongue. He sat on his bed, carving his name into the wooden side.
“It’s not like that. We didn’t talk about anything too personal,” I added quickly before Troy and Haiden could start speculating.
“So you two didn’t talk about the mate bond? Or better yet, did he not ask you to accept him instead of us?” Troy pressed, always straight forward.
Back when we were best friends, I honestly thought he was nice to me just because we were friends. I never once thought he had a crush on me. If I had known, maybe I would have approached him too, because I used to like him. But he didn’t know that, so I kept my silence.
“No,” I replied.
That was when the bathroom door opened and Ian came out, fixing his pants before walking over to the bed to grab a belt. He was wearing a white shirt, buttoning it up but leaving it untucked.
“They were talking about me,” Ian answered Troy’s question without looking at any of us. His attention was on his belt.
Troy instantly shared a glance with Haiden, then looked at me. After I gave him a small nod, he realized we weren’t lying when we said we hadn’t been talking about mate bond.
“So, what were you two gossiping about Ian?” Haiden asked, looking at Yorick, who rolled his eyes at Haiden’s choice of words.
“They want to know how I know about the monsters when we step into the North,” Ian answered, fixing his belt and shrugging his shirt before he turned to face us, head tilted, arms folded across his chest.
“Oh yeah, that is kind of sketchy. Even I agree with them,” Troy said, quick to point out that he found it odd too.
Ian didn’t look disappointed or hurt by their words. If anything, he seemed used to it, like he didn’t expect much from anyone.
“So, you know about our concerns. Are you going to answer them?” Haiden pressed, almost missing the knife and cutting his thumb. He grunted and adjusted his grip.
“Sure. You guys want to know how I always know about the monsters?” Ian asked, looking directly at me.
I had the sense he wasn’t mad that the others suspected him. He was more annoyed that I had questions and hadn’t asked him straight to his face.
Instead I’d been talking with Yorick behind his back.
“Growing up, I was sent to stay at an old man’s house that everybody called crazy,” Ian said softly, his voice low and confidential.
“He lived mostly in the basement. I worked with him on different things, mostly bookmaking. He would write novels but never publish them. I made the hardcovers. He taught me everything about the craft.” He paused, almost like remembering those days.
“Then every night after dinner, after I’d cleaned up and done the dishes, he’d sit me down and tell me stories—the stories of these monsters, the fictional things he called them,” Ian continued. “But the minute I arrived in the North and started seeing those creatures, it felt less like fiction. He somehow knew about them but couldn’t say it aloud, so he wrote them up as novels p>
Every word Ian spoke sounded like it belonged in a strange fantasy, like the old man everyone called crazy knew more than he let on.
“Who was this old man?” I asked.
Ian stretched his neck and looked away.
“I guess that’s all for today. That should answer your questions. No, I’ve never been to the North before, if that’s what you were wondering.” He sounded a little bitter when he said that, and his eyes flicked back to me.
When he turned to Troy, his voice smoothed out.
“Is there anything else you want to ask me?” he asked.
Troy shook his head slowly.
“I mean, we’d love to know more about the old man, he seems to have answers,” Haiden uttered sneakily, stealing eyes from us while playing with the knife in his hand.
Ian took his time, then turned his face to Haiden, moving from right to left with a deliberate, dramatic motion as he considered what to say next.
“Maybe you’ve never been attached to someone, Haiden, but I’ll never do that to him. So forget about it. I’m not letting any of you sneak into his safe space and ruin years of work,” Ian stated.
I watched Yorick, Troy, and Haiden glance at each other before turning back to Ian, their faces full of disappointment and disapproval at the way he handled it.