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Eli removes his hand from my back and circles around to squat in front of me. I lift my head, trying to read his expression beneath the bruises, but my focus is on the crawling sensation down my neck. He pushes the hair from my face, his fingers trailing down my cheek, cold determination in his eyes. “Nothing she can’t handle.”

Chapter

Fifteen

My last day in Caldera, Kelter woke me up while it was still dark, rapping on my door and whisper-yelling through it. I tried to send him away, chucking pillows at his head when he used his key to get in. But once he hauled me out of bed and threw a change of clothes at my face, we went downstairs to the coffee shop, lingering long enough to inhale the scent of a fresh brew, then balanced our sloshing cups as we climbed the ladder to the flat roof above my room to savor my day off. Kelter lived off his savings and was always around, stopping by before work, hovering throughout the day and waiting for me after my shift.

We sat on the edge of the two-story building and sipped through sunrise, watching people pack the sidewalks while remaining a safe distance from the crowds I hate. Then Kelterdragged me to all his favorite spots in the city, and even after that, he refused to let the day be done. He packed our bags for a hike in the forest, which I almost never turn down, but when I did—out of pure exhaustion—he picked me up, laughing and screaming, and carried me out the door, insisting fresh air was all I needed. It was one of the few times he didn’t back down. We’d still be together if I’d fought harder, safe at home.

Daylight breaks through the two barred windows of the now quiet basement. I curse at myself for waking up. I’m still sore all over from the penetrating stones Mallace strapped to me, and no closer to escape. I slept deeper than I have any other night in the last two weeks—maybe from having Eli’s blanket cocooned around me, softening the stone and curbing the cold. I don’t even care that it smells like him.

I sit up, stretch my dress across my folded legs and pull closer a pile of things that weren’t here before I fell asleep last night. A fresh canteen. I gulp the entire thing down, giving myself an instant stomach ache. A bar. I press it to my nose. Lentils?

And a note.

I drop the bar into my lap and unfold the paper, trembling slightly, maybe at the unknown, or because I’ve never been left a note before. Or maybe because the handwriting is so elegant that it looks like an artifact plucked straight out of the past.

Never,

Do I get my blanket back for this?

Eli

It’sEver, jerk,I lash out at the empty basement. Castle. Whatever the fuck it is.

Get his blanket back for what? I fold the note and pick up the last and largest item in the pile. Fresh clothes—black pants and a shirt, identical to what he had on last night.

He gave me his clothes.

I smile even though I don’t want to and pull them into a hug against my chest. I’m so sick of this thing. Pulling the ripped and blood-stained dress over my head, I feel for the stone in my bra—a bit of security—and inspect the cuts and bruises on my front where the rocks forced my skin open, then slip on the soft shirt. It reaches more than halfway down my thighs.

But it’s not a dress.

I work the gathered ankles of the too long, baggy pants up over my boots. And the pockets—side pockets, back pockets, thigh pockets, knee pockets. Endless pockets. Who knows what for. Oh right…for knives and stones to lock me up, for linty bars and dying sprouts, for underwear…and amber brown hands tucked out of sight.

No, you may not have your blanket back.

I eat the bar and curl up on the stone floor. Pants don’t fix anything. I’m locked in a cell in the basement of a morally questionable man in a foreign realm where people believe in magic and want to kill me, and my friend is somewhere out there, without me. My eyes close. I stroke the fabric covering my legs, and the thoughts pour in.

I’m wound up tight, strangled by my thoughts and worn out from visions by the time Eli returns with Milo and Sypher. Each wears a jumpsuit, two cobalt blue and Milo in cerulean.

They close themselves behind the first door, and the scent of cloves makes its way to the cell, convincing me it’s coming from something in that room. A half hour later the door opens, and Eli clomps down the hall and out of sight again. Sypher and Milo sit on the couch, one glaring, arms folded over broad shoulders, and one smiling, feet tapping and fingers rapping.

I avoid Sypher’s perpetual pout and address Milo and his ever-moving body. He agrees with locking me up, but at least he doesn’t want me dead. That’s my new standard, I guess, and enough to get me to talk to him. “How come your jumpsuit is a different color?”

Milo’s smile grows brighter. “Only guards wear the dark blue or black. Blue for border guards and black for regular guards. Everyone else in the Service Sphere gets this.” He pinches the fabric and tugs it away from his chest.

“What’s the Service Sphere?”

“It’s our job after finishing school at sixteen. We’re assigned to an area, and that’s what we have to do. If we resist, we’re dead.” He pauses to take in his own words. “I was assigned to make medicines and elixirs all day.”

And serums that burn and take my voice?

“Evenings at home are the only chance we have to do what we want, as long as it’s not forbidden,” he adds.

“What about the tall people in the gray jumpsuits?”

“They already have gifts. We get one sometime while we’re twenty-three, then leave the Service Sphere and get assigned to one of the other spheres based on our gift. We’re forced to use it for the good of Sonnet until death. The other spheres mostly work in the northside of the village and—”