Logan steps forward, positioning himself between Callie and me. “That’s enough,” he says, his jaw tight, his hands clenched at his sides. “This isn’t the time.”
“Whenisthe time, Logan?” Callie’s eyes flash with anger. “When she loses control again and kills one of us? When the next storm doesn’t have a convenient god to shut it down?”
Nobody argues.
Because she’s right. And I hate that she’s right.
Dozens of people watched me pull lightning from the sky to kill the hellhounds, and half of them looked at me the way Aeolus did—like I was a problem wearing a person’s face. I nearly drowned my own friends with a storm I couldn’t stop. And the god who just saved us didn’t do it out of kindness. He did it to humiliate the goddess who chose me, because apparently even the gods think T picked wrong.
The electricity under my skin buzzes, and I shove it down so hard my vision spots.
“I’m going below deck,” I say, not recognizing my own voice.
“Jade.” Logan reaches for me. “She didn’t mean it like?—”
“Don’t.” It comes out sharper than I intend, since I have absolutely no interest in hearing him defend Callie’s vile words. “Just... don’t. I can’t do this right now.”
I push past Logan, past Evie with her bag of winds, past Kieran with his sharpened blade, and past Callie with her perfect hair and terrible truths.
Before heading down, I glance up at the stars, just in time to see them rearrange themselves in new constellations.
Curse,the word echoes in my mind as I head to the room I share with Logan, pull the covers over my head, and try not tothink about how much I wish Callie was wrong, even though I have a sinking feeling she’s right.
15
AVERY
For the past four days,I’ve watched Tobias Cane startle when someone says his name, as if he’s forgotten other people exist. I’ve watched his smile arrive a half-second too late, like he has to remember how to make his face do it. I’ve watched him occasionally looking through people instead of at them, as if he’s trapped in a memory none of us can reach, only to snap back with an apology in his eyes, like he’s sorry for being somewhere else.
He said he’d be in touch, but he hasn’t gotten in contact with me since our conversation in the study room. Not a glance, not a nod, not even the polite acknowledgment you’d give a stranger. It’s like I’ve ceased to exist.
Tonight’s no different. He’s sitting three tables away, pushing food around his plate with the focus of someone defusing a bomb, and he still hasn’t looked at me.
Maybe I should take a hint and accept that he was lying to brush me off, like I was a fly he was trying to swat off his shoulder. Maybe he was just pretending to like me because… well, I don’t know why. I’m terrible at understanding what guys are thinking, which was exemplified by the way I held ontohope that Oliver secretly loved me as much as I loved him, even though he clearly never saw me that way at all.
I stab a piece of steak and chew without tasting it. The dining hall hums around me, and all of it feels like it’s happening behind glass. Every day, the void in my chest aches a little less, the magical wound scarring over the way it does when an emberlinked partner is permanently gone, and no one seems to care.
But I care, and that’s going to have to be enough. Because Oliver’s dead, the people in charge are lying about it, and I’m not going to sit in the background waiting for someone else to discover the truth.
Finally, dinner ends and people filter out in small groups, their conversations hushed, their glances nervous.
Tobias rises from his seat, and I time my path to intersect with his near the side door. Not the main exit where everyone’s streaming out, but the smaller one that leads to the faculty building, where there’s less traffic and fewer witnesses.
His shoulders tense, and his pace quickens.
I speed up.
“Tobias.” I catch him as he reaches the door, my hand landing on his arm.
He flinches like I burned him, but he doesn’t pull away.
The flinch isn’t new. I’ve watched him do it with everyone—a reflexive recoil from any contact, as if touch itself is a threat his body can’t override. Professor Rousseau touched his shoulder two days ago, and he went rigid for a second or two before his posture unlocked.
But he’s not rigid now. His arm stays under my fingers, warm through the fabric of his sleeve, and that tiny absence of flinch makes my stomach flip in a way I have absolutely no right to feel.
“Avery.” His pale eyes dart around the emptying hall. “This isn’t a good time.”
“You said you’d be in touch,” I say, low and steady, like the reasonable, dependable Avery who would never cause a scene. “That was four days ago.”