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"I did. My man reached her house eleven minutes after Mr. Thorne called. Two Council Wardens were already inside."

My stomach turned. "He saw them?"

"He saw enough to know that forcing his way in would have put her in the middle of a fight. He followed when they moved her, but their vehicle entered a secured Council transfer yard. By the time he found another way to track them, she was gone."

"So we never had a chance."

"Not once they were inside her house." Oda's voice sharpened. "The false leave was arranged because they wanted both of you."

"This is because of me." My voice broke despite everything I did to hold it steady. "They couldn't take me yesterday, so they took her instead."

Oda didn't contradict me. She didn't soften the answer or try to turn it into something easier to hear.

"Yes," she said.

I swallowed. "Can you find out where she is?"

Oda looked back through the east window toward the mainland.

"I have people trying."

I waited, because there was something else in her expression.

"She is leverage," Oda said after a moment. "That is what matters now. They are unlikely to hurt her while she is more useful to them unharmed, and she is much more useful to them that way. They will contact you soon enough and tell you what they want in exchange for her."

By dinner, I thought they had.

They hadn't sent a letter. They had sent Kaelen.

I spent the entire day barely aware of what was happening around me. I sat through lessons without hearing most of what was said and answered Tamsin with whatever words came to mind, whether they made sense or not. Mostly I thought about Marion sitting somewhere in a gray Council room with no windows. I thought about the house with the blue door standing empty, the heat eventually going off, and the mail beginning to collect on the mat.

By the time I sat down at the end of the Saltmere table that evening, my hands felt numb. The Great Hall looked exactly as it always did on a Monday night. It was crowded and loud and warm, the fire was burning high, and steam rose from the tureens of stew running down the center of the tables. Tamsin was trying so hard to get me to eat that I finally picked up my spoon just so she would stop watching me.

Then the sound around the Fenhall table changed.

Conversations died away one after another, starting near the head of the table and spreading through the Hall until almost everyone had gone quiet. When I looked up, Kaelen Vance was standing.

He remained at the head of the Fenhall table in his black jacket and waited until three hundred people had stopped talking. He was paler than I had ever seen him, almost colorless beneath the firelight, and a dark bruise marked the line of his jaw. It hadn't been there in the car the night before.

His father had sailed away days ago, and I found myself wondering who on Ironmoor would dare to strike the heir of Fenhall. The first person who came to mind was the squat Council man with the wide grin and the pin on his lapel, and the thought made my stomach tighten.

"At Bond Night," Kaelen said, his voice carrying easily through the Hall, "on the eve of the Solstice, before the envoys of the Council, I will perform a Severing. The rejection I made on the first morning of term will be completed in full, according to the old form." The silence deepened. "And on the same night, I will announce my match to Delphine Marrow of Skyreach, as our families have long intended."

Beside him, Delphine sat perfectly straight with her slender hands folded on the table in front of her. She stared ahead without reacting. I couldn't tell what she was thinking.

Kaelen sat down.

Only yesterday, he had driven his claws through his father’s men to keep them from dragging me into a Council van. He had gotten me away from the trap, watched me with Silas and Jax with hunger written plainly across his face, and left the harbor so shaken that I had spent the rest of the night trying to understand what I had seen in him.

Now he had stood in front of the entire school, promised to sever whatever existed between us, and announced that he was going to marry Delphine.

I could not make sense of how both things could be true.

Before I had any chance to understand what had changed, the ache beneath my breastbone shifted.

That place inside me had been hurting since the courtyard. I had felt it through the walls of the tower at night, during the Proving, and again only a few hours ago when I caught sight of him in the rearview mirror. But this was different. The pain deepened so suddenly that my breath stopped, and for a moment I could not move at all.

The whispering began almost immediately.