She stalks toward the door, snatching up the dress as she goes.
“Wait for me,” calls Asher, setting his stick against the wall. “I’ll walk you back.”
“Don’t bother,” she snaps. “I know the way.”
She slams the door behind her before anyone can chime in otherwise, her anger blistering beneath her skin. With the dress draped over one arm, she heads back toward Poppy’s room. She doesn’t make it far. Rounding the corner toward the main stairs, she finds Tristan there waiting. He looks apologetic.
“Seriously?”
He lifts his shoulder in a tired shrug. “Orders are orders.”
She sniffs and takes off, veering out from the narrow conduit of stone and heading up the stairs, quick as she can. Tristan follows at a brisk walk, his hands stuffed into his pockets. For a while, he leaves well enough alone, letting her stew in silence. He doesn’t speak at all until they’ve nearly reached her room.
“I’m sick,” he says, from somewhere behind her. “That’s why I pledged.”
She stutters to a stop, peering back at him. He hovers by a narrow cantilever window, staring out at the trees.
“You didn’t ask,” he says, when he feels her looking. “But that’s the reason. I’m not just a runaway, I’m—”
He falters, his voice sticking in his throat, and she wonders what kinds of promises the forest made him. If it dangled a cure in front of him like a carrot, or if he went looking for forever his own. She keeps quiet and waits to see if he’ll say anything more. He does, his knuckles white against the sill.
“We found out over winter break last year. It was my leg—I woke up one day and I could barely put weight on it. My parents brought me to see this bone doctor down in New York. Turns out, it was a sarcoma. The doctor recommended some hospital down south.”
“Gridley’s,” she says, and his eyes pull to hers. “It’s not a hospital, it’s a halfway house. It’s where they put people like us when they’re waiting for them to die.”
“Not for free,” says Tristan ruefully.
“Nothing is.”
He nods, grim. “I saw the bill. The cost alone would have broken my parents. Do you know what they do to debtors? When they can’t pay?”
She does. She remembers hiding in the cupboard in the dead of night, watching her parents roll change at the kitchen table. Losing sleep. Missing meals. Prying themselves to pieces for her sake. For her ears. For her ingratitude.
“We can take out a loan,” she remembers her father saying.
“And if we can’t pay it back?” Her mother’s reply had been voiceless, the words shaped by her lips. “I can’t lose you. Not like that. We’ll find the money. We’ll talk to my father if we have to. We’ll figure it out.”
In the window, Tristan has fallen to tracing the mullions, staring down ghosts of his own.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I had no idea.”
His breath blooms along the glass. But Tristan doesn’t appear to have heard her. “He promised me that this was the better alternative. Turning, I mean. Instead of being slowly killed from the inside out, I’d become the killer. He made it sound like there were no strings attached, and I believed him.”
The hairs rise on the back of her neck. “What do you mean? What strings?”
He turns to face her, apologetic. “I just wanted to tell you, because we’ve known each other our whole lives, and I don’t want to hurt you.”
Too late, she realizes she’s cornered. The stairs are behind him. The door to the presidential wing is a few feet ahead, shut tight. They’re in a narrow alcove, with nowhere to run.
“We’re not talking about Lys,” she asks, “are we?”
“Lysander?” Tristan frowns over at her, hunger twisting into his skin in a grid of deep blue. “I’m talking about Paris Keeling. He’s the one who told me to pledge. He told me to get close to Lysander. To wait. Tonight, a package was delivered to you. I accepted it. The courier who delivered it had orders for me.”
“Orders to kill me,” confirms Shea.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he says again. “I just need you to scream.”
Shea ducks just as he lunges, feinting out from the wallpapered recess. She’s fast, but Tristan is faster. Jutting out his palm, he slams Shea hard into the wall. Poppy’s knitting needle snaps in her back pocket just as her head knocks against the plaster. Starlight glimmers along her periphery.
