Page 139

Sixty

“Don’t fucking do it.” Eli steps into the room, heavy boots thudding on the carpet. I taste blood, and those cursed fingers slide down my back. “It’s bad enough that you slit my throat.”

My eyes go to the light green patch stretched across his neck, a bandage of sorts, made from plants.

“Deal’s off, man. You broke it.” Kelter glances at me, hurt flashing across his pleated brow, his upper lip rising in disgust.

“What deal?” I shove Kelter away as Eli meets us in the center of the room. “What are you talking about?”

“I mean it,” Eli says, tilting his head in warning.

Kelter balls up his hands and presses his knuckles together. “Yeah, I feel that. And I don’t give a shit.” He turns to me, his face crimson and seething. “You want to know? For starters,your precious Elivander doesn’t want you to know that you’re his personal guest in Sonnet.”

Precious?I set a soothing hand on Kelt’s arm, imagining all he must have been through in the last two months. “I know he was the one who brought us to the stone room. He probably wishes it was a different guard that saw us that day, especially after yesterday.” I’m sure getting his throat cut open wasn’t an expected outcome of doing his job.

Kelter snorts, letting out a dry laugh. “No, I mean he planned the whole thing.”

Eli’s body ripples, hardening from head to toe. I hate that I notice every muscle under his shirt, every ridge down his arms, even as that familiar crushing weight on my chest builds.

“What whole thing?” I ask.

“And you brought her straight to me,” Eli lashes back.

“What?” I might as well be invisible. These two are made from the same material, both ignoring me, caught up in their hot tempers.

“Because you asked me to! You offered me a deal I couldn’t turn down,” Kelter spits.

Eli stomps nearer, pointing a finger at him. “And you forced me to agree to keep my hands off of her.”

I look at Kelter. “You what? When?” I can’t keep up.

“Which you failed miserably at,” Kelter accuses. “Just because you can’t keep your dick in your fucking pants doesn’t mean you can go back on your word.”

“Stop and tell me what the fuck is going on!” I yell.

Kelter cocks his head at me. “Lover boy showed up in Caldera asking me to find you then meet him at the border in exactly one year. I knew nothing about the crazy plan with the sack, and we were never supposed to be seen by anyone else. After you passed out in the courtyard, he came to my cell and begged me not to tell you, so I took the obvious opportunity to protect youfrom a total asshole and made him agree not to touch you.” His shoulders rise and fall with his livid breaths.

“I didn’t beg. I threatened to cut off your dick and shove it down your throat. We couldn’t risk her telling someone.” Eli pushes Kelter in the chest, right where he was stabbed. “I gave you a year to find her because I thought you’d need it, not so you could make a fucking friend. I couldn’t take you straight to the castle because of the night guards. You guys were supposed to wait for me in the stone room so I could sneak you out during the morning briefing. I looked through the ceiling grate and you were gone. You never would have been in the Centress’ hands if you had just waited.”

“I tried to get her to wait!” Kelter yells back, somehow not doubling over in pain. “You know how stubborn she is.”

“You could have had some fucking balls and stopped her.”

I search Kelter’s face. “That’s why we’re friends? That’s why you didn’t push me away like everyone else? Because Eli asked you to find me? Did you even—” I bury the pain with all the rest and try to stop the tears—the ones I cried every time Cam walked me away from another home. “Why you? Out of everyone in Caldera? Why would he ask you?”

Eli answers for him, his glare slicing. “He was the only one I knew. We grew up together.”

I swear the walls crash down around me, clouds of dust billowing as I swallow down the feelings I can’t handle. “You grew up in Caldera?”

“No.” Eli looks at me warily, as though maybe he doesn’t truly want to deconstruct reality as brutally as my own mind does. “Kelter grew up in Sonnet.”

“Only until I was eight,” Kelter says. “That’s why I agreed to the deal with Eli. He offered to get me back across the border and hide me.”

I gasp for air, forcing it through the narrowed tunnel in my throat. “You were here…in Sonnet.” This is why he didn’t want to go back to Caldera. It wasn’t really his home. “You’re a Vaile? Everyone knows you? That’s why Kaleida was so nice?”

“No one recognized me.” He bites his lip, letting it slowly slip from between his teeth. “And Kelter’s not my real name.”

His words strike like venom, spreading and destroying me, choking the life from that ignorant, blind part of me that let deception in with open arms. Endless questions spin through my mind, but there’s one I can’t let go.