My heart leaps into my throat. That isn’t true. It can’t be true.
“It’s been safer to keep it hidden. Do you think the Up-Mountain officials would want to interact with Gomorrah if they knew the proprietor could twist their very minds? Hiding it has brought prosperity to the Festival. I’ve brought us to more and farther places than any proprietor before me.”
“You’re the reason I forgot about Luca,” I say. “It was you. Have you been killing the illusions, too? Has it been you all along?”
The resigned expression on his face is all the answer I need. I stumble back in horror.
“How could you do this to me? To our family?” I cry out.
He looks at me sadly, pityingly, as if I’m still the naïve child he rescued all those years ago. “This has never been about you. I have only done what was needed to protect Gomorrah. I must take my responsibilities as proprietor more seriously than my role as your father, which you ought to understand. Even you have risked your life for Gomorrah, bravely, selflessly.” He sighs and holds his face in his hands. I should run from him, run far away, but I’m rooted to the spot. I have to hear him out. I have to understand.
And then I’ll run. I’ll leave Gomorrah and never look back. We can start over in the Down-Mountains. We’ll find some place to be a family again. To be safe again.
I squirm away from him.
“Your illusions are the imaginary friends of a child,” he says, his voice suddenly cold and condescending. “They’ve never been real. I never hurt them myself, not that it matters to you, I’m sure.” He stands and approaches me, but I back away. I don’t know what he means to do—hug me? Plead forgiveness? But I don’t want him anywhere near me. He doesn’t sound like my father.
A spark of madness twinkles in his eyes. “But the others we’ve killed together...the princess, the duke, the prince...they were very real. Together, you and I are creating the war that will save the Down-Mountains and millions of people. The Alliance shall fall.”
“I never helped you kill anyone,” I whisper.
He laughs, and the sound chills me to the bone. “You’ve never been aware, but you’ve been instrumental to our cause. The crown jewel of the entire plan is in your head this very moment. The new, young lord of Leonita, Exander, leader of the Alliance. Without his power over the city, Leonita will fall, and the entire region will follow. When the Up-Mountains are no longer united, our people can strike.”
“Luca,” I say. “Luca is linked to Exander.”
“Yes. The boy you made to be a lover. Your illusions never do turn out as planned, do they? From the rumors I’ve heard...he’s hardly much of a lover at all.” He laughs again, as if this is all a joke to him, the way we’d laugh if Blister tried to pronounce a curse word or Unu lost five straight rounds of lucky coins. As if he’s teasing me, not insulting me and destroying everything I’ve always believed to be true.
So that was the reason I created Luca? To be my lover?
He was made to love me. That’s the explanation. Only someone forced to could actually love a freak like me.
I’m trying desperately not to cry as my heart breaks. “You knew about Luca from the beginning?” I ask.
“I suggested the idea,” Villiam says. “And it was our secret—you were too embarrassed to tell the other illusions. I had every intention of giving you a happily-ever-after—I never wanted to use Luca. Our suspicions about the prince as the leader were very slim then. But by the time you finished the process, the lord of Leonita had developed the snaking sickness, and Leonita is too important to gamble with. I didn’t want to risk you learning the truth. So I used your mind to give Luca a past and then wiped your memory of him entirely. He was born a stranger to you. He would have remained a stranger had you not met. By the time I discovered it, I couldn’t undo it—you’d already told Nicoleta, whose mind I cannot mold. So I watched and I waited for the opportunity to take him.”
If a worker looks into your mind, then pieces will be left behind. So Kahina said. If Villiam has been playing with my mind for years, then that explains why pieces of my memory have disappeared. With Jiafu... With Agatha...
This revelation makes it difficult for me to breathe, and I can’t hold myself together anymore. I break. I sob.
Villiam reaches into his pocket and takes out a sapphire ring. “Do you recognize this?”
It’s the ring Jiafu stole from Count Pomp-di-pomp on the night of Gill’s murder. “How do you have that?”
“As you know, the thieves of Gomorrah work for me. I’ve known you’ve been working with Jiafu for quite a while. I assigned him his projects, though, admittedly, a few you likely don’t remember.” He points to Blister’s top on the table. “Charm-dolls need something to connect them to the original person. An item close to them. You don’t remember, but you helped steal Nicoleta’s hairpin. Venera’s lipstick. Luca’s pocket watch. Then Jiafu gave them to me, and I gave them to you. Your illusions wouldn’t even exist without my help.”
That’s why Luca’s pocket watch was engraved with Exander’s name. It did belong to him, once.
A new determination takes hold of me. “I won’t let you hurt Luca,” I say.
“If you’re going to become Gomorrah’s proprietor one day, you need to make the tough decisions.” He reaches forward to touch me, but I back away again. His face falls. “If we finish what we started, we can free the Down-Mountains from the greed of this region.”
“There are other ways,” I say. “I’m not letting you touch him. I won’t let you touch any of them.” I wish my voice sounded firmer, more confident, but it quivers instead.
“Ways the Up-Mountains could see coming. We don’t have the money or the organization to fight a proper war. But because of you, we might not need to.”
He’s trying to guilt me into this. As if I would ever agree to let him hurt any more of my family. To let him hurt anyone, period.
“I’m leaving Gomorrah,” I say, sniffling. “You can’t hurt us. And you can’t hurt him. Only a fire-worker can kill Luca, and Agni is dead.”
“There are plenty of fire-workers in Gomorrah. And there is more than one way to destroy Leonita’s lord through Luca tonight.”
“How?”
He shakes his head. “Let me take care of it, Sorina. You’ve barely known him a month. Look the other way, and let me save Gomorrah. Let me do my job. We can work this out together—”
“No!”
I lunge for the exit, already planning my escape from Gomorrah in my mind. Hawk can fly me for a while, and my illusion-work can keep us from the notice of Up-Mountainers. But, on foot, how long will it take us to reach the Down-Mountains? Probably months.
Villiam grabs my arm but, in doing so, nearly falls over. “I have to do this, Sorina.”
“Let go of me.” I try to wrench my arm away, but his grip is too strong. Even wounded, he is hardly weak. I’m crying so hard that my chest aches.
“I don’t want to hurt you. I love you, Sorina.” He shakes his head. “I wish I’d known how close you were to learning the truth. I could’ve spared you from this pain. I should’ve kept Luca close to me instead of where you might find him on your own. He’s too clever. Without him, you would’ve never figured this out.”
“I was the one who realized I have two kinds of jynx-work,” I say indignantly. “I was the one who thought of Agni. Who realized the illusions were linked to the politicians. I’m cleverer than you think I am. Just not enough to realize that you’re a monster. I trusted—”
His face twists into a scowl. “I’m hardly a monster.”
“You’ve been manipulating me. Killing people.”
“You know of the evils of the Up-Mountains as I do. You know what happened to my uncle. To Agni’s son. About your own past. I am not a monster.”
What happened to Agni’s son and Villiam’s uncle were tragedies, and I know the evil that lurks in the Up-Mountains. I want to help the Down-Mountains and the people of Gomorrah—but not like this. Maybe that means I won’t make a good proprietor. I don’t care anymore. Not about pleasing my father, whom I’ve tried to please my entire life. Not about a legacy built on lies and murder.