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His gaze flicks toward the chaos surrounding us. “Not here.”
A disbelieving laugh tears out of me. “No. Fuck that. Right here.”
“Sage.”
“No.” my voice cracks, but I don’t care. I look between the three of them. Well… two. Rhett is somewhere in this fucking nightmare trying to find my friends because apparently this is my life now. And these two know something. I can see it in the way they look at each other. In every loaded silence they’ve shared tonight. Every warning. Every question they refused to answer. “You know what’s happening.”
Neither of them respond.
My pulse pounds harder. “Both of you.”
They remain silent as fear twists into anger so quickly, it almost makes me dizzy. “You knew something was wrong before this happened.”
“Yes,” Malakai says quietly.
Ezra’s head snaps toward him. “Stop fucking doing that.”
Malakai looks at him. “Doing what?”
“Answering her.”
I stare at Ezra. For one stunned second, I’m not even sure I heard him correctly. Then something inside me fucking snaps. “Oh, we’re going to have a problem.”
“We already have one.” He spits.
“You told me to leave.”
“Yes.”
“You tried to take my ribbon.”
“Yes.”
“You freaked out when I drank that shit.”
“Yes.”
“Stop saying yes like that!”
His expression hardens, whatever control he’s been clinging to all night finally begins to crack. “You want answers?”
“I’ve been asking for them all fucking night!”
“Fine.” He steps closer and points toward my wrist. “That ribbon was never supposed to be in the barrel.”
My anger stutters. “What?”
“There were no red ribbons.”
I look down. The satin glows almost unnaturally bright beneath the firelight, a slash of red against my skin. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“I filled the barrel myself.”
“Then someone else put it in.”
“No.”
“You have employees.”
