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The breeze stills, and a shiver starts at my shoulder blades and rolls down my back with the return of his dark aura. He rises and smacks the chair out of his way, sending it crashing to the floor. I step back as his hand dives through the bars and takes hold of my dress, right over my belly. He pulls me forward until my bodyis pressed against the cell door, my dress bunched in his hand on the other side.

“One. You are not nothing.” Cloves. Earth. Musk—his aroma whisks and whirls between us. His voice deepens to the crunch of gravel. “And two. I’ll make you fucking believe.”

For a fleeting moment, I think he means hope, but that’s exactly the danger of such a thing—believing in what can’t be real. I reinflate my lungs, slowly pulling in the scented air shared with his shallow breaths.

He reaches into yet another pocket with his free hand and pulls out a tragic sprout. It flaunts a spindly stem with a kink halfway up—pocket damage, likely—and four sad leaves still wet from the rain and freckled with lint. Its scraggly roots cling to a ball of dirt which shrinks with every clump that falls to his black boots below. It’s comical really, but I don’t dare laugh.

“Do it,” he commands, holding the plant in front of me.

“Do what?”

“Whatever you did. Do it again.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I pull back against his clutch, but short of slipping out of the dress, I’m stuck.

“Godsdammit, I saw you.” He yanks again and twists his fist, tightening the fabric around my middle and flattening my breasts against the bars.

“Saw me what?” I have to look up to see his face.

“You—” A tug closer. “You touched that seedling on the way to the village. I saw it glow.” He releases my dress, reaches through the bars to my wrist and flips my hand over.

“It didn’t glow. That was…”In my head.With all the other things I can’t trust that I’ve seen.

He plops the sprout into my palm. “Do it again.”

The dirt is cool on my skin, and the roots tickle. It’s small and innocent, ripped away from everything it knew, its home. I losemy balance at the rush of irrational feelings for a plant, and grab a bar.

“What? Do you feel something?” His frantic eyes pour over me in search of answers.

“I have no fucking idea how to steal fake magic!”

“Touch it, for starters,” he growls.

He really believes I can do this, whateverthisis, and wants me to try.

“No.” I want things too.

He passes his hand through the bars again, aimed right at me. I hurtle myself back, beyond reach, and his hand retreats, inch by inch, his voice like steel. “Youwillobey me.”

I hold my chin high. “I will…” He straightens, the start of a smile at my submission. “If you rescue Kelter.”

Those brown eyes. They find mine. And they scald me. “Not a godsdamn chance.”

I crush the sprout in the creases of my hand, destroying a little piece of me along with it, a little piece of hope for Kelt that tried to climb its way to the surface. It’s effortless. It falls apart like nothing. The dirt sprinkles down with the mangled stem and limp leaves. I position the toe of my boot over the bits, drop it to the stone and twist.

Eli slams his hands flat against the bars. “Malachite!”

“Yelling at a fake god won’t help.” I simper.

That cold demeanor, that control over every limb and muscle—he lets it slip. His body shakes, and he shoves a hand into his hair. “Why do you have to be so…soyou?”

I’d really love to know too. Because it’s fucking torture.

“Maybe you should have picked a different prisoner, Elivander.”

His nostrils flare, eyes lush with hate, but there, tugging at the corner of his mouth, I swear a smile tries to surface before we both look at the hatchway. Sypher and another man blunderdown the stairs out of sync, carrying an unattractive brown couch that they plop down five feet from my cell, as if they were setting up a sitting area to observe me.

It smells like rotting leaves. Riddled with rips and tears, the cushions look as rough as the jumpsuit fabric, and fist-sized lumps bulge from it. Sypher beams proudly at the new addition and looks to Eli who throws himself onto the couch and leans back, knees spread and arms outstretched. Sypher’s light brown eyes tack on to him, a longing in them as he lets out a sigh.