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“I know.” He gives me a shaky smile, as unfamiliar as his borrowed black clothes. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

“It’s not.”

“We’re done, let’s go,” the other man says, his crooked jaw clocked to the side.

“Just a minute.” The brown-haired one rubs his wet hands over the chest of his jumpsuit. A perfect smile breaks across his face. “It’s the Hollows. I won’t have another chance.”

Gray eyes glazed, tongue sliding over his bottom lip, he closes in on us. “You think you can come into our realm and steal from us?”

Kelter shields me with his arm.

The man laughs, and I hate that it sounds good coming from his threatening face. “You can’t protect her. Or yourself.” He kicks Kelter in the ribs, then drives his boot into my thigh. Therough tread, icy and wet, tears through the delicate fabric of my dress.

“Holy fuck.” I grasp my leg and fold myself into the corner, kneeling with one side pressed to the wall and huddled next to Kelter’s trembling body.

The initial shock fades, and pain crawls over me, taking me into a vision.

I’m thrown flat to the ground. The man jams his boot into my throat. I try to lift it to breathe, but it’s wet. My hands slip. Everything spins, head exploding, ears ringing, black spots floating. I only want it to end. My last thought is of cursing at the stars with Kelt back home. He crushes down harder, and my last sensation is warm blood seeping from my ears.

“Just wait, Hollows. You’ll get what’s coming for you.” The man’s voice is a distant whisper, pulling me from the vision.

They leave, their cackles hanging behind, stuck in the pain-soaked air.

I can’t quite make my limbs move despite the life pumping back into me. Can’t find the connection between mind and body, as though it’s been severed to protect myself from the hurt. But Kelter finds me. His quaking hands land in my lap. I flinch, expecting more pain. His touch is soft, surreal…apologetic. Only the burn of tears falling from my eyes lets me open them.

“Kelt,” I force out past the torrent of emotion.

He looks back at me, eyes red and searching, cheeks flushed.

“I want to go home,” I whisper.

“Home,” he repeats, as though the concept were foreign. His gaze wanders the room. Distant cries filter in through the open door, competing with the whistle of wind over the remaining roof planks.

Why isn’t he saying he wants to go home too? Has he given up? I lift my cuffed hands and lay one on each of his unshaven cheeks. “Don’t you want to escape?”

His brows lift like a lazy sunrise. The fall of his eyes from mine to the puddled floor tortures me. He traps the corner of his lip between his teeth and lets it slip out so slowly that it could drive even the most patient soul to madness. “Of course.”

“Then what—it doesn’t look like you do.” My palms slide from his face.

“I do. It’s that…” He raises his hands, and with the slowest motion and the clink of metal, pulls my curtain of hair to the side with a single finger, tracing to my temple. “I have nothing to go home to.” He runs his finger down my cheek and under my chin, giving it the lightest lift and forcing our eyes to meet. “And neither do you.”

My insides wind up tight, tourniquets constricting every dying organ. Too tight to gasp, to scream, to draw a simple breath.

“What?!” I yell, finally unraveling. He shushes me, so I yell louder. “I don’t care if you live in a damn box in Caldera, it’s better than this.”

Anything is better than this.

“And you’re wrong. I have plenty to go home to. So do you. Things were finally okay.Youmade them okay. We can go back and pretend this never happened.” Go back to coffee and sunrises on the roof. To the safety and the known. I can go back to mapping my way through the forest and find a path to my parents. I could.

But not without him.

He swallows, meeting my yell with a whisper. “You don’t know what it was like for me.”

Tighter and tighter. His words rip me in two. Or three. Or four.

Worse than being a waste of space? Worse than over sixty homes? And Reggie Junior?But he can’t know about that. “Then tell me, Kelt.”

He tugs at an ornery strand of hair in my face and pulls away from me. “Not today, Ever. Not like this.”