Linh had told Wylie she didn't trust him.
Her voice reverberated through her head, and she didn't have the energy to stop it.
Only Purity members know where these meetings take place, and they only share that information with people they can trust.
She hadn't told him where the meeting was.
She'd told him she didn't trust him.
A sob slipped through her lips; tears welled in her eyes and dripped down her face like tiny streams of sorrow. She'd told Wylie she didn't trust him, and now he didn't trust her. He couldn't—why would he? She had done everything he hadn't wanted her to, and even though she knew she had to do what she wanted, leaving him on Solreef's steps was the hardest thing she'd ever done.
A wave of doubt soared above her, threatening to crash down and break her any second. Was Wylie right? Was she making a mistake? What would her friends think when they found out? What would Tam think?
It had been easier to swear the Purities' oath without thinking about Tam, and without him there she didn't have to think about him. But if she faced him now, would she see anger? Disappointment? Hurt?
The last thing Linh wanted to do was hurt her brother. The last thing she wanted to do was hurt anybody.
But she had hurt Wylie. She was the monster now. She wasn't a part of the "good guys" anymore.
Except she wasn't bad, either. So then what was she?
Finding my way. And sometimes in the pursuit of yourself, you couldn't be one or the other.
Flecks of color fashioned a setting of red wheat stalks bending in the wind, the sky orange with a sunrise. Linh's eyes squinted as she got used to the time change, and she saw a group of people in the distance, gathering in a large circle.
This was a Purity meeting—a real one. Her first one as a member.
I'm one of them, she reminded herself as she walked toward the group. They're not strangers. They wouldn't be by the end of the day, at least—and the thought gave Linh a thrill. She was really doing this.
The walk to reach the Purities was a blessed few minutes to calm herself, but then she was there and she had no idea what to do. Up close she could guess the amount of members gathered—about fifty. Some sat on the ground, others stood, some talked, some didn't. They all had one thing in common, though: the chokers they wore around their necks that blurred their features into something forgettable and unknown. Linh felt the absence of an addler like she did Wylie, but one she had to push out of her mind, and the other wasn't important. At some point she had taken off her makeshift mask, but it didn't matter that everyone could see her face; they all knew she was there, and if they didn't, they would soon.
"You're probably telling yourself 'everything's okay, I have no idea what I'm doing but I'm going to pretend I do, it's totally fine...,'" a voice next to Linh's ear said. She jumped, and the Purity who'd spoken—pale and freckled on the arms and red hair in a tightly woven braid that ended in the middle of her back—laughed. "Oh, so you're jumpy? Well, I won't take it personally. My name's Ginger—well, that's my alias, which was totally optional, by the way. I've been a member for about six months now, so I can tell when we've got a greenhorn on our hands."
"A what?"
"Aw, it's nothin'. Just a saying."
"You're into humans?" Linh asked. The phrase felt weird on her tongue, and what made it weirder was she had asked a Purity the question—a Purity who, until just an hour before, she had thought belonged to an anti-human rebel organization. Except their goal—their real goal—was to protect the humans.
The Purity who'd recruited her—Doug, he'd said to call him—appeared inside her mind with sudden clarity, the mountain winds blowing his brown cloak back as he spoke words that changed everything for Linh.
Have you ever felt like you're only making decisions for others rather than yourself? he'd asked her. I think that's something a lot of the elves are struggling with now. They're saying, "Sure, go ahead with the program," because they think the humans will benefit from it. But in reality, it'll only harm the humans MORE.
What the Purities were doing, their agenda in preventing the humans from being reinstated into the Lost Cities, sounded horrible. But they had legitimate reasons for what they did, reasons Linh couldn't ignore when presented with them. And it was baffling to her that she hadn't realized them before—that the Council or Black Swan didn't understand what they were fighting against. She'd heard for so long that the Purities were the bad guys, but no one really knew what they were trying to do. Besides, was it so wrong to protest? The Council didn't like that—it shook the people's faith in them and their decisions. So was the Council purposefully painting the Purities as the ones in the wrong, when it was the other way around?
As for the Black Swan, Linh was starting to think her friends were projecting the old rebel group onto the new one—and she got that. So many of them had been scarred by the last war it was hard to differentiate between the past and the present.
But the Purities weren't the Neverseen—that Linh was sure of.
"'Into humans'?" Ginger asked, chuckling. "I wouldn't quite word it that way, but yeah, somethin' like that."
Just then, a final figure glittered into the clearing, wearing a rich brown cloak. Ginger gasped a little "Ope!" and shushed Linh, even though she hadn't been about to say anything. She was shaking too badly to even focus on her surroundings; all she could see was the member in the brown cloak. It had to be Doug.
"Members," he greeted, in his warbling voice. "We gather here in a familiar place, one we're told has lesser quality than the ones we have come from."
Linh parsed through the words he said until she understood: they were somewhere in the Forbidden Cities.
"Even for something as simple as this, as our fellowship, we are reminded of how the elves find the humans inferior. It is our constant companion in the Lost Cities as we see hundreds of humans being reinstated to places they will not be welcome. They are being sent to their demise, a slow death of abandonment... for the elves will indeed abandon the humans. It is written in history. It is the nature of the species that is 'superior.'
"Today we plan, and every day we fight. But before I get too ahead of myself, I want us to welcome a new member—Linh Song. Come up here, Linh."
Her limbs froze from the attention of so many mysterious faces, but Ginger pushed her forward. "It's just initiation," she whispered. "You basically swear the oath again, but this time in front of everybody."
That didn't sound any better than what Linh was imagining, but she shuffled forward anyway. If she was going to do this, she had to commit.
"This is Linh Song," Doug repeated, placing a hand on her shoulder to steady her. She couldn't stop the fleeting thought that Wylie should have been there, should have been the one she leaned on, but it was gone in a blink, and she forced herself to forget about it. "She is another elf willing to pledge allegiance to this cause. Linh." Now he faced her, shifting her body so she was facing him too. "Will you dedicate a portion of your time and effort to preserve the well-being of the humans? Will you defend the lives of said humans? Will you, if necessary, choose the humans over the elves?"
Linh blinked. Choose?
"It's just a phrasing of words," he murmured so only she could hear.
She nodded gratefully. "I do."
"Then you are now a Purity."
The sentence, so simple yet so powerful, caused a fresh wave of tears to arise. The Purities gathered started clapping, and she wandered numbly back to Ginger.
"Welcome," Ginger said, holding out her hand.
Linh shook it and wiped away the moisture in her eyes. It was the first time in as long as she could remember that she didn't use her Hydrokinesis to do it for her, but it didn't feel right to use her elvin ability now. Not when she had just promised so much to the humans.
"Now," Doug said, tone changing to one more serious, "we are nearing the final phase in the plan. All that's left is ensuring the humans aren't caught in the crossfire. For some, that means you will be in charge of keeping them at home. If that's not possible, guide them away from the destinations.
"When we initiate this phase, there will inevitably be those who come to stop us. Others of us will be there to defend ourselves. The rest—the majority—will monitor from afar. If anything goes wrong, you will be what's left of our organization. If that happens... run. Run very far, and don't turn back for the elves. They will only betray you."
"What phase is he talking about?" Linh asked Ginger. "I feel like I've missed something."
"He'll explain later—when he knows he can trust you."
Linh drew her brows together. "But I swore the oath, I completed the initiation—how does he not trust me?"
"It's not that he doesn't want to—he's just gotta be careful, y'know? If he reveals the plans to the wrong person, everything we've worked so hard for will come crashing down."
"Is that why you all are still wearing your addlers?"
At least Ginger had the decency to look sheepish. "Er... yeah."
"We are close," Doug continued, reiterating the assurance. "Just a few more weeks. Be ready. We will meet once more; the location will be sent to you discreetly. As for now, rest up for the occasion. In a few weeks, we will be free."
The Purities cheered, and Linh joined with them despite being thoroughly confused.
"Hey," Ginger hissed, grabbing Linh's arm and pulling her to the side. The rest of the Purities were either mingling or leaping away. "I want you to know that you are welcome, and you are trusted, okay? Doug doesn't make false promises; if he says he thinks you're good, then you are. So..." She looked around them, then reached for her neck—for her addler. "I'm gonna show you my face, 'kay? I'm technically not supposed to, but see it as a token of our gratitude."
"You really don't have to—" Linh started, but it was too late. Ginger clicked a button, and the choker released its hold on her neck. Her face was clear and stuck in Linh's mind: narrow chin, pointy nose, and freckles so thick it was almost as if she were already wearing a disguise.
But it was her eyes that didn't make sense and yet suddenly made the most sense in the world.
Her brown eyes.
Linh felt her jaw gape open. "You're... human."