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My heart lunges after him, trying to prevent the distance he puts between us. My pain, my fury, my fears, they coalesce into one, rioting inside me. I open my mouth to argue, beg, whine—I don’t know which, definitely nothing respectable—but the splash of boots in a melted puddle of ice stops me.

“You’re all wet.” Kaleida runs to me and pulls on my arms to lift me up, setting sight on the ripped dress. “What happened?”

Kelter and I struggle up. “The guys that came to melt the ice,” he says.

The image comes back, reminding me of my slipping sanity.

“I can’t believe those guys.” She sets to work on releasing the cuffs from the grate with the wave of a stone—another magnetic lock. “You know, we lost so much with the Separation, even with all we gained. Almost no one believes it anymore. They think my stories are made up.”

I note her misting eyes as she rises with the spare cuffs and pockets them. She leads us back toward the main foyer, our ankle chains dragging. Kelter reaches over, his cuffed hand finding mine, fingers locking. It should be a comfort, but I’m not sure I know who he is anymore.

“We have to take you back to your rooms,” Kaleida says. “The Centress won’t be able to see you until a temporary school location is set up.”

I could faint with relief…though it’s only a delay of the inevitable.

Once inside the grand entry room, I don’t see the speckled granite walls or the droves of sobbing children with sodden shoes. I don’t see the gray jumpsuit wearers melting boulder after boulder of ice, or the ones in black, wading through debris. Or Kaleida biting her lip and shaking her head. I don’t hear the perpetual drip, or my own breath catch.

My senses don’t waste time on those things.

The quietest song commands the sweeping room. Eli kneels on the floor, axis of anguish. He holds a little girl’s hand in his. She’s a flower. Her skin is milky white against the light brown cradle of his hand, and her yellow hair drapes his lap, wilting petals radiating around her head.

As though she’s turning toward the sun, she strains her neck to find the source of the song, then slumps back down into the surrounding puddle, letting out a final huff of air that mixes with his hushed notes. I pretend she’s taken by the gods I don’t believe in, and I mark my mental map. With a flower.

I try not to think about how beautiful a death it was, or how great an ice boulder it must have been to take a life and leave a puddle that size.

A polished blue stone embedded with swirls of metal calls to me from the growing pond at my feet. I let go of Kelt to pick it up. Though it’s a bit of a struggle with the cuffs and my bruised body, I tuck it into my bra. That’s where all my acquired treasures go—tiny things I make mine, pressed against my skin and held in place by the fabric. I don’t even feel them anymore, only the calm they bring.

Kelt eyes me but says nothing as he takes my hand back. My heart beats behind the blue stone, centering me, but not enough to stop the pain, the doubt, the panic…and the confusion. How can the man holding that girl be the same one who curdles my blood? Where I expect coldness, there’s sorrow. Where I expect darkness, there’s pain.

It’s an act. It has to be.

A woman in a gray jumpsuit enters the room and lifts the girl from his lap, and Eli splashes over to us. He looks up and down my soaked and torn dress, a flash of fury in his eyes, then smacks his hand between mine and Kelter’s, tearing our fingers apart—as though he simply can’t stand another man’s hands on me.

Chapter

Eleven

It’s been a week since the trip to the village, a week back inside the black walls day and night. The chafed skin on my wrists and ankles finally stopped stinging, and my boot-sized bruise has turned a sickly, mottled green and still hurts with every motion. But much worse is the pain that slides down and lodges in my throat every time I think of Kelter…which leads me to hands melting boulders of ice.

Magic.

That’s what the Centress said they have, what she thinks we stole. Magic.

A hallucination, a profound disruption of the senses, a dream—anything is a more comforting explanation than actual magic…even insanity. So I keep denying. I convince myself I didn’t seewhat I saw. I hide it from myself like I hide the visions from others and slip away into the hallways of my past, searching for an escape.

I held hands with Cam, walking up to my fourth new home in my third-grade year, the one with the yellow door and broken mailbox. The other social worker stood on the porch, talking to my new foster parents. Maybe he was warning them about me. I squeezed Cam’s hand tight.

Now don’t you fret, Everielle, you’ll be great.She let go of my hand and crouched down to my level, tucking waves of black hair behind her ear and smiling sweetly.

What if they don’t want to keep me?Like all the rest.

You make them want to, hun.

How do I do that?I gripped the hanging straps of my backpack.

Another smile, a brush of my cheek.Well, you start with keeping all those special thoughts up in your head. Don’t go telling people those things, you see. That ends with me. Then you control it. You stop it.

Cam?I glanced warily at the worker coming for me.