Then he reaches for my plate and slides it across the crate until it’s close enough that the warmth rises against my chin.
“Eat.”
That’s it. One word.
A sound escapes me that might be a laugh or might be a sob. I can’t tell the difference anymore. My eyes are burning, my throat is tight, and this man just sat through me voicing the worst thought I’ve ever had, and his response is to promise violence and then push fish at me like I’m a first-year who forgot to eat lunch.
So, I pick up the fish and take a bite.
I hate fish. I’ve always hated fish. It tastes like protein, salt, and the absence of everything that makes food worth eating. It’s nothing like the meals Oliver enhanced with his flavor fire, warming each bite to the perfect temperature, making even the first-year food at Blaze Academy feel like a gift.
I swallow anyway.
Kieran watches me eat like he’s standing guard. It’s like the fish on my plate is a perimeter he’s defending, and my chewing is a tactical operation he needs to oversee.
I take another bite. Then another. The protein hits my bloodstream, a system I didn’t realize was failing until it’s sputtering back to life.
“We’ll reach the Pillars soon,” Kieran says, cutting through the silence. “When we’re back in the mortal realm, we’ll have more resources. More ways to find answers.”
The mortal realm. Where libraries exist. Where my family’s publishing house has archives dating back centuries. Where there are people who might have crucial information, records that might help me figure out what could have happened on the Crown that night.
Although from the way Kieran’s fingers brush the hilt of his dagger, I suspect thatgetting answersis a very different activity for him than it is for me. Blood over books, which is somewhat but not totally similar to steel before spells.
“What if the answers are the worst ones?” I ask, sounding smaller than I want to. “What if we find out he’s really…”
The glass-shard feeling is back in my throat, and I can’t finish.
“Then the person who did this is already dead.” Kieran holds my gaze, and there’s a heat behind his eyes that my detection ability doesn’t need to register. “They just don’t know it yet.”
His words settle into the fractured place in my chest. They don’t fix anything. They can’t. Because nothing can bring Oliverback, or undo what I saw on the Crown, or erase the growing certainty that the blast pattern meant exactly what I think it did.
But they make the next bite easier to swallow.
Eat the fish.
Survive the Pillars.
Find out the truth about Oliver.
And try very, very hard not to think about the way Kieran saidwhoever did this will bleed for itlike it was a vow he’d ink onto his skin.
12
JADE
I can’t sleep.
Logan’s beside me, his breathing slow and even, one arm draped across my waist. It should be soothing.
It’s not.
Because my brain won’t shut off. Every time I close my eyes, I see the Lotus Eaters standing on that beach with their empty smiles, and the woman waving goodbye like we were leaving a dinner party instead of abandoning her to an eternity of drugged oblivion.
Logan shifts in his sleep, pulling me closer. The hard line of his jaw has softened, the tension that lives permanently between his brows smoothed out in a way that makes him look younger and more human.
I take a few seconds to memorize the rare, unguarded softness of Logan Ashford asleep, because when he’s awake, this face doesn’t exist.
Then, not wanting my restlessness to disturb him, I lift his arm off my waist and slide out from under the blankets. The air hits my bare legs, and I shiver, grabbing Logan’s shirt from thefloor and pulling it over my head. It smells like cedar and smoke,and for a second I just stand there, breathing it in.
