“I heard something break,” I noted.
“You heard somethingshift.I was able to disturb the crystal, but I couldn’t shatter it like the ones inside the cuffs,” Charlie said. “Those crystals are a lot bigger than the ones inside our cuffs.”
I frowned. “Looks like we only have enough magic to break minimal amounts of inferichite. What’s buried under the fence is still too overpowering. The Warden must’ve put whole inferichite bricks under the property and lined the entire fence.”
“It doesn’t matter. We’ve proven we can do it,” Charlie insisted. “This is a huge breakthrough. If we can learn how to break small amounts of inferichite, eventually, we can become strong enough to get through the fence line.”
“Then we’re home free,” I whispered.
Charlie drew me closer to him as he kissed my head. “I love you, pidge.”
“I love you too, Charlie.” I let my head fall back on his chest. “Someday we’ll get out of here.”
That someday was soon. Hopefully the Warden didn’t have any plans for us before then.
Though I knew whatever he wanted to do with us would come when we were least expecting it. When it did, we had to be ready.
CHAPTERSEVEN
CHARLIE
We’d broken our inferichite bracelets. It was progress.
But breaking the inferichite was just the first step. We still had to learn our demigod powers if we had any hope of getting out of here. We knew Ava had healing magic and Kallie could manipulate time. But me? I didn’t even know where to start. And Marcus? Well, he had to break his inferichite first if we wanted to learn what his demigod powers were.
At the very least, Ava was with us again, and she’d only been back for a short while before making a huge breakthrough. Ava was such a vital part of our team, and that became increasingly apparent during her time in the hospital. We were already halfway through the semester, and we hadn’t gotten anywhere investigating the keys on our own. I had the thought that if Avahaddied in the Underground, we’d all be totally fucked, because we weren’t finding those keys and saving the Blessed Haven without her.
The bed beside me was empty when I woke on Saturday. My heart gave a start, until I heard Ava humming from the next room. Oberi clacked her beak. I didn’t know what was going on, but they both sounded content.
I rolled out of bed and walked over to the dresser to pick out clothes for the day. It was the weekend, so I could wear whatever I wanted, thank the ancestors. That scratchy uniform had been nice at first, but nothing could compare to the soft t-shirts Ava’s mom had brought me over winter break.
My knee slammed into something hard. I tripped and toppled over.
“Everything all right in there?” Ava called.
I felt for what I’d run into and realized it was the middle drawer of our dresser. Ava must’ve left it open when she was looking for clothes this morning.
“You forgot to shut the dresser drawer,” I told her.
“Oh, sorry. Whoops,” she said.
I frowned as I shoved the drawer back into place. As I got up, the top of my head slammed into something hard. I cursed and felt outward. The top drawer was open, too. As I felt around, I realized all our clothes were tangled in a big heap.
My stomach lurched, because I was always careful to arrange my clothes perfectly.Ava…
This was one of the big struggles about living together, because I was a neat freak, and— there was really no nice way to say this— Ava was a slob. She threw stuff everywhere, and wherever it landed, that’s where it stayed. Which was annoying, because that made it difficult for me to find things. It’d gotten a little better, because we’d worked on it a lot, but sometimes I still tripped on random shit she left lying around.
Not to mention she had a bad habit of wearing my shirts to bed— which was fine, I didn’t care— except that she never quite put them back.
I pulled the clothes out of the drawer and spread them out on the bed, folding them into neat piles and placing them back into the drawer. Once I felt better that things were back in order, I slipped on a t-shirt and jeans. I wiped the blood on my knee away— there wasn’t much— and put on my socks and shoes. I reached for my comb in my shower caddy… but it was gone. I frantically ran my fingers over the top of the dresser, but there was nothing.
“Uh, pidge?” I asked.
Ava stopped humming. “Yeah?”
“Where’s my shower caddy?”
“I’m using it.”
