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“I need to take away your memories first. We’ll start over,” she says.

I pant, blood surging through me with no direction as I look up at the Centress—my mother. Her tight mouth andemotionless expression look back at me. She’s the definition of composure, of control.

She’s everything I’m not.

“Don’t touch me.” I rip my hand from hers and fall into a vision.

Instead of my mother’s vacant black eyes looking down at Kelter fighting and thrashing in her lap, they’re warm and fierce, tormented and questioning—my own indigo eyes. Full of tears. She slips her hands around his neck…and snaps it. Then he’s still. So sickeningly still. Until his neck cracks back into place, and his hazel eyes flash at me, green and gold and honey, throwing me out of the vision.

I gasp, my head pounding like the rain outside, the plain room now vibrant and overwhelming with detail, with life—so much life after death.

I’m not like her. I’m not…but I’m a killer. And so is she.

Her jaw muscles spasm under her cloak of self-control. “Can’t you pay attention?” she scolds, like so many before her.

I cover my face with my arms, trying to escape my overactive senses—and reality.

“You may not be pleased about it yet, but there are perks to being my daughter.” She lowers my arms and tips my chin up to her. “I’m going to let one of your lovers live.” Panic cracks through me as her dark eyes dance with delight. “And you get to pick which one.”

Chapter

Fifty-Four

My mother tows me across the birthing room and out into the atrium, under the gray sky, into the rain. We stop just feet away from Kelter and Eli, each held by a guard. I’m not sure I really see them. My mind is fogged, my body weak, my heart in pieces.

Only denial slips out of my mouth, unfeeling words. “They’re not my lovers.”

“Call them what you wish,” she says.

Kelter. It’s actually him. Alive.

Brown hair slicked back in a low tail, lips folded in determination and a club in hand, Poett holds Kelter’s arms behind his back. The patter of rain gushes through my ears, consuming all my thoughts until a woman wails in pain frombehind a closed door. Another baby on the way to be stolen from its mother.

“Give that woman tea,” the Centress yells. “Give them all tea. I don’t need any distractions.” Two workers enter the atrium from one of the rooms, bow their heads and run off, one toward the room with the tea carts and another toward the woman’s suite. “And take this one, Jace.”

Jace runs up, yanks me from the Centress and bends my wet arms behind me.

“Ever, what are you doing here?” Kelter asks, snapping out of his shock and sweeping his gaze over my fist-sized welts and the sliced skin showing through my ripped clothes. His honey-tinged hair is longer now, his body thinner, cheeks sunken. Freckles hide beneath layers of rain-streaked dirt and an inch long beard.

“I came foryou,” I say, still taking in Kelter as though I haven’t seen him in years. He’s wearing black pants like mine and a white shirt that’s torn and stained brown and gray, as if he’d been wearing it for weeks. His gauntness makes his protruding ears even more obvious despite the hair that hides the tops of them, and more than ever before, I want to reach out and grab them to know he’s real. “Are you okay?”

My mother speaks before Kelter can answer. “Which one gets to live?”

She’s violent and twisted and heartless. I want to believe she wouldn’t kill one of them, but I can’t—because she would.

I pry my eyes from Kelter to inspect Eli. I don’t want to look at him, to be pulled in by his dark eyes and perfect amount of stubble, not when my heart fractures at the sight of him like this. Rayde holds him in his crushing arms. The bits of his forehead visible through his wet curls are bruised, and his knuckles are purple and swollen, as if he’d been punching a wall…or pounding on one. Over and over. Trying to get to me.

“Never—” Eli says, endless regret lining his forehead. “Fight.”

“Shut up, traitor.” Rayde jabs the end of his club into Eli’s cheek, silencing him.

I flinch. I want it all to be a vision. I want to open my eyes and everything to be better again. I look at my mother. “You can’t do this.”

“I’m the Centress.” She rests a hand on her hip.

I fight the acid rising in my throat. “I’m not choosing.”

“Alright then, they both die.” She runs her fingers over her sheet of dark brown hair and bends the wet tips to inspect them, not bothering to glance at the two guards standing behind Kelter and Eli, positioning clubs under their chins. Terror streaks across Kelter’s face, his hazel eyes round, his mouth gaping. Eli simply lifts his chin, nostrils flaring.