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“I can’t wear this. I need pants.”

He folds his arms, his back still to me, and stares at the shelf full of clothes. Including pants. “It’s that or nothing.”

My body heats at his heartlessness. I slide the cold, dripping underwear down my legs. “I’m not wearing it.”

His shoulders push back, and he flips around, eyes flaring.

“I thought you’d seen enough,” I say, having just pulled dry underwear into place.

He marches up to me, deep breaths commanding his chest. “You’re misbehaving again.” But even as his jaw clenches and wrenches to the side, lightness tugs at me, the gentlest wind coiling around my body. His brown eyes follow the mountain path and waterfall across my chest, then trace down my belly.

That shift in him, the one that’s not real, the missing feel of darkness—it whips my emotions back and forth. “What’s wrong with you?” I say those words I’ve heard my whole life. “Do younot give a fuck about anyone but yourself? You haven’t even asked for my name.”

He looks away. “I already know it.”

What?I give in and pull the hideous ruby red dress over my head, my necklace tucked safely inside. “You talked to Kelter? Where the fuck is he? Is he okay?”

“Kelter?” He backs up. “Shut that fiery little mouth before I wash it out. And hurry up.”

I grumble and try not to imagine what might happen in the village. Sitting on the marble floor, I finish lacing a pair of black boots, not made with rubber and fake leather like the ones he took from me, but from a thick, flexible plant material. “Is everything here made from plants?”

Pulling something from his pocket, he drops to one knee before me, smirking ever so slightly. “No. These are made from steel.” He slips a cuff over each of my wrists and tightens them, pinching my bones hard enough to elicit a groan, then slaps another pair on my ankles and admires the metal pressing into my skin.

Chapter

Seven

Elivander drags me down the hallway and out into the courtyard with my hands cuffed at my front. I schlep myself along under the dark clouds, the ankle cuffs only offering six inches of slack chain for each step. That lightness I felt in the shower room traces around him, walking with us.

The morning air is sharp across my face, but the ankle-length dress is oddly warm, the long sleeves like shields despite the thinness. I should feel the wind hurrying over my skin right through it, but I don’t—and I still hate it. My shape is revealed. Seamless fabric as soft and delicate as new skin clings to my breasts and belly and hips and sprawls out around my legs in silky folds. I get the feeling nature has me in its grasp, thatI’m wrapped up in a giant satiny petal that will wilt and shrivel before the day is done.

The loathing eyes of guards in blue and black jumpsuits rove over me as we make our way to the center of the courtyard, ratherElivander’sway—I go whichever way he pulls me, which is right back to the helplessness and pain of my first day in Sonnet. The water. The knife. The boot in my gut. I lift the heavy cuffs, my fingers finding the soggy scab on my neck.

Then I see Kelter approaching, hands cuffed, ankles bound, shuffling along next to a guard in a blue jumpsuit. I dive for him, forgetting about the cuffs.

“Kelt!”

But two hands snap around my waist. “No touching.” The gravelly voice comes straight from Elivander’s chest.

Kelter’s scowl at him could slice through steel. He looks at me next, inspecting the cuffs and foreign dress before landing his gaze on mine. Warmth seeps into his features, a soft smile pressing across his tan face.

“Ever,” he chokes out.

He looks clean too, unharmed and like himself except for the overgrown stubble and black pants and T-shirt. I’ve never seen him in anything but jeans and plaid pajamas.

“Look, Eli. The Hollows are reuniting.” Kelter’s guard squeals and claps her hands, jiggling the curly pile of brown hair atop her head. She throws a dark brown hand onto Kelter’s shoulder, and though the tightness around her eyes tells me she’s fierce and hardened by life, she wears a wide grin on her freckle-covered face.

“Don’t get attached, Kaleida. They’re Hollows,” Elivander says from behind me, still keeping me from Kelter. “Would you at least contain him?”

The guard—Kaleida, as he called her—rolls her eyes and takes hold of Kelter’s cuffs.

“I thought your name was Elivander.” I twist to look at him.

Fingers graze the back of my neck. His grip tightens on my hips. “Only my mother called me that.”

“You gave her your full name?” Kaleida gawks at him, a smile eventually putting her jaw back in place.

“I was distracted by her incessant questioning.” He turns me to grab my cuffs instead and grumbles down at me. “It’s Eli.”