I don’t bother hiding my saucy smirk from her. “Irrelevant and that didn’t answer my question.”
Yemi laughs, then covers her mouth as the passing Guider shushes her. “I’m not sure you can do anything to really get him mad. His mad isn’t anything like your mad.”
I scoff. “You say that,but you didn’t see him throw Jeremiah out of a flying carriage.”
She sighs. “I wish I did, though.”
I elbow her out of her dreamy look and turn back to the books. “Looky there, book number four. We’ve got this. Will you grab that one for me?”
“I wonder why he wants these particular books,” she comments as she slides it from its place.
“There’s no tell—Yemi!”
White powder explodes in her face and she stumbles back, waving the dust away as a cough tears from her chest.
The books in my hand clatter to the ground as I rush to ease her to the floor before she collapses.
“What the hell is that?” She doesn’t respond to me as her eyes flutter and her body sways. She attempts to lift her hand, but it falls fast to the ground like it weighs hundreds of pounds. “Shit, hold on, Yemi. I’ll go get someone.”
A scream gets lodged in my throat when I collide with a body right behind me. I spin around, drawing my fist back, but choke as the masked fucker blows white powder in my face.
My hand wraps around my throat as the fine, dry texture gags me. It has no smell, yet it’s all I can smell. My vision of the asshole doubles and I swing out at both figures. All that does is knock me off balance and I stagger back, tripping over Yemi’s prone form.
Everything I touch and grab disappears from beneath my fingers. I crumble to the floor, but I don’t feel a thing.
Crash after crash booms behind me.
That asshole picks Yemi up.
Then it’s dark.
“Yemi,” I shriek, forcing my numb body to roll over. “Gods damn it, Yem—”
The air in my lungs rushes out of me as I come face-to-face with her peaceful, snoring self, pressed right next to me.
I grip her hands as panic seizes my chest.
Fuck.
The immediate thought that something happened to her felt crushing. My heart is trying to crawl out of my throat right now.
This is a good damn reason why I never made friends.
This petrifying-ass feeling right here.
What if she weren’t here? What if whoever did this had taken her somewhere else or worse?
“Yemi, I need you to wake up now. Wake up and look at me.”
My raspy voice cuts through the silence around us. The metal of our chains clanks together as I shake her hands and move her hair out of her face.
Every move I make becomes more frantic. Pins and needles shoot through me as feeling returns to the rest of my body.
“Please wake up.”
She lets out a gruff groan and her eyes squint tightly as though she’s fighting to keep them closed. “Stop it, Thayla. Why are you in my room right now?”
“I so wish we were in your room.”
