cold, shaky fingers into his pocket and pulled out a small container of matches. The first one struggled to catch light in the wet air, but the second sparked and bloomed into a brilliant orange flame. Protecting the glow with his cupped hand, he held the light up to the hut until he could see the distinct marking slashed across the door in mud.
Two diagonal lines descending toward each other.
The letter V, he remembered with a jolt of anticipation. He was in the right place.
The roof of the structure sagged at a strange angle, and the hut’s rusting walls seemed to billow as the angry wind picked up speed. Marcellus pushed open the corroded door and stepped inside.
Shadows swallowed him. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the low light. And then he saw her.
She was sitting on a wooden bench, her hands tucked into her lap, her head turned so that Marcellus could see her profile. A face pulled straight from both his darkest and brightest memories. When she turned toward him, her lips curled into a warm, familiar smile. “Marcellou. I hoped you’d come.”
Marcellus’s legs gave out from under him. He sank to his knees in front of his former governess, feeling every emotion that he’d blocked out for the past seven years suddenly wash over him at once. Anger, frustration, betrayal, regret, guilt, longing.
It was the longing more than anything. Mabelle had been marked as a traitor to the Regime. An enemy spy. He was forbidden from missing her. From thinking of her in any way but resentment. But, Sols, how he’d missed her.
There was so much to say. And yet all he could utter as he knelt by her feet was, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
What was he apologizing for? For treating her like a criminal when he’d come face-to-face with her three weeks ago in Montfer? For believing his grandfather’s lies about her? Even when they scratched against his heart in the most uncomfortable of ways? For not saving her that day seven years ago when the droids dragged her away?
But he knew the answer.
All of it.
He was sorry for all of it.
Suddenly, he felt Mabelle’s gentle yet reassuring hand on his head. “It’s okay, Marcellou. It’s okay.” And for the briefest of moments, every last drop of his anger melted right off him. He felt safe. He felt protected. The decrepit and wind-beaten hut he’d entered had turned into a warm place, a familiar place, a place of love and light. Suddenly, he was a little boy again, playing with his little plastique transporteurs at Mabelle’s feet while she read aloud from one of the books she’d smuggled into the Palais.
“Does anyone know you’re here?” Mabelle asked, her voice suddenly taking on a grave tone. “Were you followed?”
Marcellus momentarily thought of the footsteps he’d heard earlier. The ones he was now certain he’d imagined. “No.”
“Are you sure?” Mabelle asked. “The general has spies working for him all over the planet.”
And just like that, the bubble burst. Marcellus was thrust back into the present moment. Everything flooded into focus: the leaking, rundown hut; the cold, uneven floor under his knees; Mabelle’s drawn, weather-beaten skin; and the splintered bench where she sat. The anger came flooding back too, seeping into his bones, returning his vision to red.
“I know all about his spies,” he muttered, thinking once again of Chatine. “I took precautions.” He pushed himself back to his feet. “I left my TéléCom back at the Palais. I exited the grounds through the gaps in the perimeter you showed me when I was little. I parked my moto far away from the exploit.”
Mabelle exhaled audibly. “Good. Good boy.”
Marcellus’s lips quirked involuntarily at the praise. She might have aged a lifetime on Bastille, but she was still the same woman who had raised him for eleven years.
She patted the bench next to her, and Marcellus sat down.
“I must say,” Mabelle said as the cruel wind beat at the walls and the rain oozed through the cracks in the roof, “I wasn’t entirely sure you’d come.”
“I almost didn’t,” he said, and when Mabelle cocked an eyebrow, he smiled bashfully and explained. “It took me a while to read the message.”
When he’d first discovered the piece of paper that had been slipped into his pocket during one of his patrols in the Frets, the letters felt impossible to decipher. It had been over seven years since he’d practiced reading and writing them. He’d spent hours tracing