He studies me like a father watching a child come down from a tantrum. Patient. Calm.
“You’ll feel better soon,” he murmurs. “Once you stop resisting.”
My heart kicks into high gear.
I swallow, slow, deliberate.
“So that’s it?” I say, hoarse. “Mind control via mushroom?”
He chuckles—chuckles—and sits on the stool across from me.
“It’s not mind control,” he says. “It’s harmony.”
He gestures around. “You think chaos is freedom. But freedom isnoise, Jillian. We’re giving the world a chance to breathe. To beone thing, for once. A chorus instead of a million screaming solos.”
“You’re insane.”
He nods. “Once, yes. But not anymore.”
I feel it again.
Thatpull.
The song—not just sound now, but a sensation. Like tendrils brushing the edge of my thoughts, testing them. The parts of me that are frayed—the worry, the fear, the ache for Maug—they’re the places it presses hardest.
But Icount. Like Maug taught me.
Heartbeat. Breath. Thought.
One, two, three. Breathe.
“Where’s Darwin?” I ask.
“Preparing the cargo.”
Ciampa’s voice is almost affectionate. “He’s very devoted. All of them are. Except you.”
He touches a crystal blooming from his wrist. It shifts color faintly, pulsing with a dull pink light.
“You should feel proud,” he says. “Your body’s strong. It resisted longer than any of us expected. Whatever you were exposed to in the wild, it’s… intriguing. But not unassailable.”
I glare. “I’ll fight it until I die.”
He smiles. “No. You won’t. You’ll sing. Eventually.”
I fight the bile in my throat.
“Let me go,” I snap. “You have no idea what’s coming.”
He leans forward, amused. “You mean your Odexian lover?”
He says it like a joke. Like it’s just a footnote.
And it hits me harder than anything else—that heknows. That he’s not afraid.
“You think he can save you?” he whispers. “He’s just another war machine. And war machines break.”
He stands, brushing imaginary dust off his sleeve.
