“No,” I answered. “The most he’s said is he’s afraid of war.” I checked Dad’s forehead with the back of my hand. He was warm. Alive. Peaceful. “Is there a reason you’re asking?”
“No reason.”
It was a lie. I knew it the same way I knew I had two arms and two legs. Everything Leland said, I immediately knew if it was true. It wasn’t my gift — that only had to do with the liesItold. This was something else, a new ability I hadn’t had with Ash or anyone else before Leland.
Leland packed up his bag while I tended to Dad, setting a glass of water on the coffee table for when he woke up later. And for a few minutes afterward, I was free to move about the living room and kitchen, minding my own business, tidying. Then I stole a glance at Leland and found him leaning casually against the arm of the sofa, holding another syringe.
I folded my arms over my chest. “I’d like you to leave my house now.”
“Ember.” He said it slowly, a pause between the syllables tainting it with regret.
I slid around to the kitchen table to put an obstacle between us. He followed, taking slow steps.
“I’m going to offer this to you.”Step. “I’d prefer it if you sedated yourself. But if you don’t — ”Step.“Then I will have to do it. I have to take you to Everden unconscious.”
“Says who?” I stumbled, grazing my hip against a dining chair.
“Says the portal that will give you motion sickness if you’re awake in it, and the non-‘regular’ witches, who will kill you for something as simple as not calling them ‘Echelons,’ who I happen to have the pleasure of working with.”
I pulled a chair out from the table, tightly gripping it.
Leland eyed it with indifference. “Are you planning to throw a chair at me and escape out the back door?”
“Maybe,” I said bitterly. I would’ve preferred to execute my plan without him knowing about it, but if I lied, it would be my fault when my gift changed the fate of the world, and not necessarily for the best. Plus, if I didn’t answer, I wasn’t taking responsibility for all the ways I’d already ruined it. “I was also considering throwing it here” — my eyes flicked to where it would block his path — “and running to the front door, as another option.”
In the moment he was struck confused by my honesty, I threw the chair at him and ran.
I don’t know how he beat me to the front door, but he did, and when I looked back down the slender hall to the kitchen, the dining chair I’d thrown was upright and where it belonged, pushed neatly under the table.
“How did you . . . ?” I stopped, not smelling it — the iron smell of spelltracks that gives away to witches like me when a light witch spellcasts. Only there was no smell. And no way he’d done thatwithoutmagic.
“There’s a reason they sent me,” he said, lifting the syringe in offering.
I backed up a step, only for Leland to push off the door, making it known he intended to follow. “I didn’t want to do it like this,”he said. “I promised Ash I’d look out for you. She was my friend.”
What?
What did he just say?
Ash was his friend? If Ash trusted him then — my heart realized it before I did. Ashwashis friend.
“Was?” He was only a breath away now, and I looked up into his eyes for an answer I wasn’t sure I was ready to get. “Was” meant —
“Was” was . . .
It felt as though he’d stabbed me with an ice pick, the injection sending me into immediate physical shock. I didn’t move. I couldn’t. I couldn’t feel my legs, and my arm throbbed as he pulled the needle out of it.
“I’m so sorry, Ember.”
Sorry? He’d stabbed me without my consent.
I crumpled to the ground and slipped into sleep not knowing if he was apologizing for stabbing me, or if he was sorry because something worse had happened to my sister.
CHAPTER
FOUR
EMBER
