He only half tries to hold back a laugh. “The lightweight came in his pants around the corner from your place. Controlling you wasn’t the only thing he was mad about.”
His words reach my bones. I whisper, “You didn’t tell me we weren’t alone.”
“Whispering doesn’t hide anything from him. He’s always there. Our souls and thoughts are merged together and spread between two bodies. He’s almost like another me, only pathetic.”
“You’re two different people.”
“We are. We’re completely different.” He puts a hand atop his head and runs it down to his eyes, smashing his curls along the way. “But with all the overlap, there’s so much of each of us in the other that it’s getting blurry. Of course he’s going to want you. He sees you throughmyeyes.”
“I don’t want him to be part of you!” I scream.
“Me either!”
I try to stop my harsh breaths with a hand on my chest. “He’s really your brother? How could you not know that? Is that why you merged together?”
“I don’t know exactly why yet. But it’s common for kids in Sonnet not to know their siblings because we’re sent away to school at a year old, and most of us don’t have them anyway because of the high death rate.”
“Stolen rate. The babies weren’t dying. They were stolen from their mothers and sent to Caldera after the magic was drained from them,” I remind him, as if he weren’t there for it all. But letting that old lie continue, even by habit, is worse than saying the words and dragging up the feelings.
“Yeah, that. Milo only knows about his sisters because his mom’s gift was passing knowledge. She was a teacher at the school and used her hands to teach our history.” He places a hand on his cheek, as if remembering it. “Which was mostly lies she’d been told.”
He drops his hand, and I can tell there’s more. He’s sharing things he’d never bother explaining… he’s stalling.
“How do you know he’s really your brother?” I ask.
“He shared a memory with me as he ran off.” He blinks, long and slow, as if pulling it from the dark corners of his mind, already deeply hidden. “It was of my mother—ourmother—when he was sent to Caldera. She told him we were half-brothers, and no one could find out, including me, or they’d think I was like him.”
“In what way?”
“He didn’t share that part.”
Of course not.“You were friends?” I toy around with the idea in my head.
“No. I found him in Caldera because I had to. He’s only ever seen my dark side. So I hated him back.”
I inspect his dewy eyes, never wanting to look away. “That’s not his fault.”
“The little shit screwed everything up and let you guys get caught after I brought you into Sonnet.”
“After youabductedme from my forest.”
“I made you mine. Is that a problem?”
By the smug look on his face, I know he feels my heart jump. “But you can’t be mine?”
“No.”
A master of rejection. Hand over my heart, easing the ache, I shove it all aside. “Where’s Kelter? You have to know where he went by now if he’s in your head.”
“He finally let me see,” he says quietly. “He’s going to Zandrite’s Underbroke.”
“Where?”
“An underground community below the teva fields. It’s where the Half Links go. If someone’s link dies before they do, it’s not worth living anymore. They lose who they are and suffer side effects, so all the Half Links end up in the Underbroke because Zandrite promises he can numb the pain of losing a link.”
That’s all beyond my ability to take in at this moment. “He’s not linked. And who’s Zandrite?”
“The god of love—Ametrine’s first love… until he killed her and she got trapped in her death stone.”
