We eyed each other warily before turning our gazes to Amelia as she spoke.
“Now that we have the dagger, we stand a chance,” she started, and I couldn’t help but notice the exhaustion in the way her eyes pinched and the fact that her usual confidence wasn’t booming from her words. “However, we’re still faced with the issue of how Kieran plays into this. We need to have Noah spend some time with her, subtly testing her to see if she’s the one we’ve been looking for.”
My heart squeezed in fear at the thought, though not for the first time. The second the dagger appeared in her hand on its own while in the Text Keepers’ archives, a heaviness settled over me. She didn’t deserve the fate that awaited the one destined to wield it in the prophecy. My jaw clenched as my nostrils flared with a deep inhale.
“She can’t be,” Steele muttered, kicking the ground with the toe of his boot, glaring at the ground like it had personally offended him. “She doesn’t have what it takes. If it’s her, we’re all doomed.”
I closed my eyes, trying to center my emotions as they lashed out in my mind wanting to defend her. He knew nothing about Kieran and what she’d endured. Hell, I probably didn’t even know the half of it, but I was in awe of the way she hadn’t allowed her tribulations to harden her heart. I felt a gravitational pull to the light that shined from her, and I already knew I’d do anything to protect it.
If she was the Star Keeper, I’d be by her side until the bitter end.
“Well, Steele,” Amelia sassed, “wouldn’t that just mean we need to do our best to prepare her?”
“What’s the point?” he argued, turning his gaze up to clash with hers. “I pulled a dagger on her using onlyhalfof my speed. She couldn’t get out of my grip and I didn’t even have the intention to kill her. If Alfemir comes for her, they won’t give her a second to think, let alone fight back.”
Before I could argue his logic, Amelia let out a heavy sigh and shook her head. “That’s exactly why I’m placing you in charge of training her, Steele. Whatever has a thorn in your side about her, you need to find a way to remove it. This is a direct order from the council. You will remember your place here.”
I blinked repeatedly.Shit.I’d never heard Amelia pull rank on Steele before.
My eyes flicked between them as they silently stared at each other, both of them refusing to look away.
“I’ll train her,” I offered, hoping to diffuse the situation and also keep him the hell away from her. “I can?—”
Steele cut me off, breaking his stare with Amelia to whip his narrowed gaze to my face. “No. I received orders, and I don’tplan to break my oath to the Rebellion. I will do what is required of me.”
The thing I’d learned really fucking fast about the Rebellion when I joined was how important the chain of command was here. No one stepped out of line, and if they did, they were banned from our territory and their memories of this place were removed. I’d heard it preached over and over how they couldn’t have a single cog out of place, lest it lead to our downfall.
This was the first time I really fucking despised that fact. By stepping up to defend Kieran, I’d overstepped since Steele was the commander of our forces. I wasn’t sure if they were going to punish me for it, but I’d do it all over again.
“As for you,” Amelia began as if she could read my mind. I shrank beneath her gaze, feeling like I’d disappointed her and hating that fact. She’d been nothing but generous to me since I’d joined their lives here. It was her who had forced Steele to let me into his home. “If she isn’t with Steele, I want you with her at all times until she can prove that she can defend herself properly.”
The corner of my lip tugged up in a lopsided smirk. That was an order I could get behind.
Her tone turned glacial as she continued, “But when she’s with Steele,youwill report to the kitchens to help with meal preparations. Do not ever cause a scene like that in front of our troops again or your punishment will not be so simple. You’re lucky that Steele was also in the wrong, lightening the consequences for your public defiance.”
Relief poured through me, loosening the tension that had lined my body.
“I understand,” I accepted easily, counting my lucky Little Star that my punishment wasn’t worse. “It won’t happen again.”
She let out a small laugh, shaking her head as she began to walk away from us. I barely heard her mutter, “With you two knuckleheads? I doubt that.”
Steele and I stood there for several moments, both staring up at the house. The uncomfortable stretch of silence grew overwhelming, and I let out a growl of annoyance now that it was just us.
“You know what she means to me. How could you do that to her?” I asked, dejection and shock warring in my tone.
His voice was clipped and detached as he brushed past me, hitting my shoulder unnecessarily hard as he passed, “We all have a job to do, Gabriel. How either of us feels doesn’t matter when it places the Rebellion at risk.”
This wasn’t the Steele I’d grown to respect and admire. This was the Steele who’d fought to not show me the real him the first year we lived together, instead focusing on drilling me in training to distract me from what he’d actually been concerned about. The thought startled me because it could only mean one thing. Whatever he was truly feeling, he felt the need to hide it from me.
Knowing I was going to get nowhere with him in this mood, I followed him into the house and watched as he ignored everyone, heading up the stairs toward his room on the third floor. His door slammed, and I saw Kieran startle from her seat at the kitchen island.
I was still confused about why the hell Steele chose to lead the whole group to our home if he hated the idea of them being with the Rebellion so much. A small part of my brain was screaming at me that he’d done it so he could watch Kieran closely. The theory had my brain spiraling in endless loops as to the reasons why, though. I shoved them down, hating that they didn’t all revolve around the idea that he was just watching her for security purposes. That maybe he was intrigued by her, instead.
She spun around, glancing at me with what appeared to be guilt in those big hazel eyes of hers, instantly sucking me into her gravitational pull.
“I’m sorry—” she began, causing me to hold up a hand as I approached.
I didn’t want to hear it. Yes, she’d brought two unknown people and a potentially dangerous creature with her, but I trusted her judgment. I knew she’d never knowingly place me at risk.
