Paper Moons Part 18 (Patreon)

I pressed my fingers to my eyes.  To kill the Knowing.  It sounded like an impossibility that I had only read of before.  And the stories I had read about such atrocities, did not put the killer on the right side of such stories. To think of Reese as someone capable of that, of someone who could walk through to the heavens and slay the divine, made my stomach roll.

“Reese, I am not trying to get philosophical here but is the Knowing even something that could be confronted?” I had been a good girl. I had read my books on faith and had gone to my father's sermons. I believed. I believed with all my heart. But to think the Knowing could even be something that a mere flesh and blood individual could slay was not something in which my mind could wrap around.

Then again, that felt like the entirety of the Night Market at times.

“Elias says it is.” He was holding his body with such stillness, walling himself off to my questions.

“That doesn’t mean anything.  You hear how they speak. They are…” I trailed off, not wishing to disparage what both Elias and Gabriel believed in.

“They are what?” Reese asked. “Brainwashed? Yeah. They fucking are.”

I was growing frustrated. There was a fury behind Reese’s eyes. One that said it did not matter if he killed himself with this mission, he was going to do it anyway. I had never known hatred like that before. I prayed that I would never have to.

“You are not even listening to yourself. You gained more magic, hid yourself away from your loved ones, so you could go on a crusade to go kill a being that you have no knowledge of. You don’t know what this entity looks like. How it could even be killed. Reese, you don’t even know how to get to the celestial court.”

His eyes were dark, swimming with the kind of pain that was bred so thoroughly from fear. “Not yet,” he said. “But I will.”

“That’s not what Elias would want,” I told him. “Nor Gabriel.”

“You don’t know what the fuck either of them would want,” he spat. “You forget that you’re new here. You don’t know my family. You aren’t watching the people you love die every day.” But I had my family die.  Was he forgetting how I even came to the market? How my mother and father were now at rest in a desolate world filled with ash?

“You are far too close to the situation to see that your actions are only going to cause them harm,” I fought back.  My mother's smile and my father's eyes were flashing through my mind.  “You do not like the Knowing for what they did to them? Fine. But do you think killing that entity, hiding who you are, amassing power to go and do such a task that will most likely end in your death, is going to keep the madness at bay?”

Thunder roared outside, rolling across the night sky and cracking into the sand that was just beyond. I startled, seeing the same electric shock reflected in Reese's eyes as just beyond my sight, the low roar of a beast prowled.

I felt my heart hammer against my chest. “That’s what this is about, isn’t it.  The madness is coming for Elias. Far more than any of you have let on.”

“More than he even knows,” Reese gritted out.

I felt so small suddenly.  The life that I had walked into was far more than I had bargained for.  I had always wished to help people, but this felt far grander than what I was ready for.  Nor did it even seem possible.

“Reese,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm.  “There has to be a way to help them. Both of them.”

“You think I haven’t looked? You think I haven’t tried to contact other Fallen? There are none. None with their right minds, at least.  The worshipers of the Knowing are all as brainwashed as Gabriel and Elias and the scholars of the damn thing are nothing more than cult leaders, trying to get others to flock to their congregation.”

I felt myself bristle at that. “That’s not true.”

“Isn’t it? Your dad was someone like that, right? Someone that believed in a higher entity and then told others about it. Tell me, kiddo. Did he charge for his services? Did he use it to manipulate people into doing and believing what he wanted?”

“You don’t know a damn thing about my father,” I snapped.  “He was a kind and loving man. He was someone that actually cared. He would never–”

“Never what? Use people's kindness and generosity to help his family?” Reese sneered. “You probably had the biggest house in the village, huh? You probably had people with real problems, being shamed into acting a certain way because your Pa deemed it to be wrong from whatever fucking entity you believed in. But here’s the thing.  What did he do when you came forward and told him to run? When you came forward and said that this entity had offered salvation? He didn’t take it, did he? Because it didn’t serve him to lose that kind of control. To be ousted as a–”

“Enough!” Gabriel’s voice boomed across the room.

He was standing, one hand against the wall to brace himself.  His silver gaze glowed brightly in the dimness of the room, so much so that I didn’t know how we hadn’t seen it before.  I felt my vision blur though and my breaths come raggedly.  Shoving past Reese, I fled from the shack, needing the crisp air and a moment to myself.

The storm raged just over the horizon, out against the cosmos where Gabriel claimed he was from. I felt the sob erupt from my throat as I braced my hands against a rock fence, head hanging over the cliff face to look blearily down at the moors below.  My hair was sticking to my back and my clothes were getting drenched through with rain, but I couldn’t bring myself to go back inside.

How dare he. How dare Reese speak of my family at all. He did not know them. The anger that was consuming him was so palpable that it was threatening to poison everything he held dear. Something in which I had been hopeful I may be able to become a part of. Because I had no one in the market. No one.  And then I got a glimpse and this beautiful make shift family and just like that it was all crumbling apart.  How could the Knowing have let something like this happen? How could Reese not see that he just had to have faith? To trust that it would all be okay?

Why had the Knowing let my family burn though and why were they actively maddening good souls who wished nothing but compassion for those that came their way?

I squeezed my eyes shut as the sobs wracked my body, bending at the waist as my heart physically hurt.  I had left them. I had left the ones I had loved and trusted in the Knowing. I didn’t fight.  Who was I to tell Reese not to?

“Graceling?”

It was Gabriel, his voice soft and soothing as he approached. I said nothing to him though.

“Graceling,” he repeated again.

I was sick of hearing it. I didn’t want to hear that title anymore. It was cursed. It wasn’t who I was.

A callused hand laid across my shoulder. “I am so sorry,” he whispered.

I felt the laughter bubbling in my throat at that. Gabriel was sorry for something he hadn’t even done. He was the victim in all of this and yet he was the one offering such care.  Another cry ripped from me, ragged and painful, and when he wrapped his arms around me, I allowed myself to be pulled into his chest.

“How much did you hear?” I mumbled against him.

“Enough to know what is going on.” His hand was on the back of my head, fingers stroking against me in a soothing manner.  “He had no right,” Gabriel whispered.  “I know he spoke in anger but he had no right to say what he did to you. Not about your family.”

[[He was wrong. The Knowing has a plan]]

[[What if he was right? The Knowing has only brought destruction]]

[[I don’t know what to believe anymore]]