I lead the way back to the elevator. “No, I’ll drive. I’ll drop Lady Sachelle home after. I don’t like her to be out alone after the incident the other night.”
Downstairs in the carpark, Galen gives Sachelle a sympathetic look as he holds the passenger side door of my car open for her. “I’m sorry about what happened at the hotel. You were at dinner together, weren’t you? I didn’t realize you knew each other.”
I glance at Sachelle, who’s staring straight ahead. “We’re getting to know each other.”
As I drive, I catch Galen’s amused smile. Having dinner. Arriving at his office together. He thinks we’re secret lovers.
Not yet, but we’re getting there.
At the restaurant, I tell the waiter to seat us away from the windows, preferring to be far from any projectiles that might be thrown through them.
“So, what would you like to know?” Galen asks Sachelle.
She hesitates. “I was going to start with questions about your job to break the ice. What I’m interested in might be painful, and I don’t know if you’ll want to answer.”
His brows lift, amused. “I haven’t been asked many personal questions lately. Go ahead, and I’ll tell you if I can answer them.”
“All right. I want to know what you saw during that first revolution, and how you felt about the King and Queen. I’m interested in how Varga took control of Paravel.”
I glare at my menu. “Varga was able to seize power because he was an insidious, power-hungry zealot.”
“Yes, and no,” Galen says, glancing at Jakob. “I’m sorry to tell you, though, that I kept out of it. We lost our home and I went to work in a factory. I worked my way up to foreman, and then founded my own factory with my friend, Reynard Desjardin.”
Galen’s pleasant smile is hiding a lot more than what he’s saying, but if he doesn’t want to talk about the past, that’s his business. God knows I don’t.
We order, and I sit back and watch them talk. Sachelle listens as Galen tells her what he saw of the Midsummer Riots and other key moments, and she takes notes now and then.
Finally, Galen says, “What I can tell you is nothing to what the people who were involved in winning Paravel back could tell you.”
“Oh, yes? Like who?”
Galen hesitates and casts the tiniest of glances at me. “The King and Remus were out in the mountains with no idea what was happening in the capital. People risked their lives to contact them, month after month, year after year. When my brothers and Reynard were hanged, these people nearly died trying to rescue them. Those are the stories worth telling. They sacrificed every waking moment for Paravel.”
Sachelle puts her pen down. “I haven’t heard anything about this. Why haven’t these people come forward and told their stories?”
Because they want to forget about those days and everything that happened. But you can’t forget, no matter how much time has passed and how deep the bodies are buried. I wonder what Galen remembers about the day we met. I wonder if he remembers why.
“It’s not my place to tell you,” Galen says, “but if you keep talking to people and making it clear that you’re interested, they might come forward.”
Sachelle makes a note on her paper as if she’s thinking about what to ask next. “Were you involved with this people?”
Galen considers this. “Yes. But probably not in the way you’re thinking.”
He never wanted to be on the front lines, but Galen did his part. More than his part. I met him the day the Prince asked me to break into the home of a Party member close to Varga, to search his desk and find out what he was up to. I watched that house for days and when I was certain it was empty, I broke in.
Except it wasn’t empty. As I was rifling through the man’s desk, he must have come home and he walked in and found me. We stared at each other in shock for what felt like a full minute, but was probably one second. Then he pulled a pistol out of his holster and was taking aim at my chest. He was a soldier. He wasn’t going to miss. Every instinct was telling me to run from danger, but I knew if I turned my back on him he’d put a bullet in me.
Instead, I dove at him and tackled him to the ground. He didn’t go down easily. I could feel that I was outmatched in weight and muscle, and he was going to kill me if I didn’t do something, fast. In the struggle, his tie came loose. I grabbed the ends and pulled it tight around his throat. He thrashed left and right and it was all I could do to hold on. My brain was flooded with adrenalin and was screaming at me that it was either me or him. Suddenly, there was a blazing pain in my thigh. The man had grabbed something and stuck it in my leg. I barely felt it. My mind was jammed into one gear, and one gear only. His life, or mine.