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Eli returns with a knife to his jaw and clears his throat loudly. “Consorting with the enemy, Milo?” Short angled strokes of the blade send stubble trimmings raining to the floor. His face looks worse today, the bruises darker.

“She’s a harmless Hollow. What’s she going to do while locked up?”

Eli scrapes the metal against his neck, studying Milo. “I wouldnotcall her harmless.” He sheaths the knife and slips it away into a jumpsuit pocket.

A light wind ripples over me, and I’m pulled toward the scents of mint and rain. Glancing first at my uncombed hair, he rakes his gaze down to the baggy clothes and the cuts on my bare arms, not bothering to keep the smirk off his freshly shaven, black-and-blue face. “And my blanket…”

Asshole. How could he take it back? I’ll freeze at night.

“You can keep it,” he says as he unlocks the door. My jaw drops, and he lifts it back into place and whispers in my ear, “I’m keeping your panties.”

I have to calm my sprinting heart as he hauls me across the room. We go no farther than the clearing next to the house again. After spending the day in a cell, it’s a relief to feel the evening air whipping at my too big clothes, even though it’s cold and almost dark and I’m stuck with Eli’s hand latched around my upper arm.

Sypher pulls fist-sized stones out of a beige sack, the same size as the ones used for lighting in that room…with Mallace. I clutch my stomach.

Sypher bangs two of the stones together—and they light up, gray turning to soft white.

“How do they work?” I reach for one.

Sypher moves beyond my grasp with a swift step back. “They’re imbued.”

“With what?”

“Light,” Milo says, walking in a circle and rubbing his palms together. “Imbuing stones is one of the most common gifts someone can get. Light stones are all over the place.”

My eyes follow Milo’s circles as I try to process his words. I can’t. “What are these gifts you keep mentioning?”

Milo wheels to a sudden stop in front of Eli. “You spent all that time guarding her and told hernothing?”

“Why the fuck would I?” Eli throws back.

Milo closes his eyes, centering himself before responding. “Because it’s scary not to know what’s going on around you.”

He paces in figure eights as he speaks to me. “We receive gifts from the gods, usually something common like imbuing stones. Each stone is assigned a purpose—light stone, fire stone, lock stone—lots of things. Or someone might get a different common gift, like heat in their hands for glass shaping, or stone manipulation for building. And some people get a rare gift, like the Centress’ painful memory stealing or imbuing something with protection. Or movement, like the carriages that take the elixir to—”

Eli groans. “She doesn’t need to know anything. She only has to obey me.”

I can’t keep up.

Milo side-eyes him. “You could at least tell her what’s about to happen and why.”

Another groan from Eli, and he tightens his grasp on me. “It’s simple. Magic and emotions are connected. We’re—

“There is no—”

“Thereismagic.” Eli releases my arm and snags my chin between his fingers, forcing me to face him. He talks fast, his voice as harsh as the wind trying to knock me down. “And we’re going to make you feel whatever it takes to get you to do what I want with it. Get it?” He moves his hand back to my arm, sinking his fingers into my thin layer of muscle.

I reach for his hand, prying away those fingers. He startles at my touch, then his own, and softens his hold on me.

“And how might you do that?” I ask.

“A series of triggers to try and wake up your Hollow ability—pain, fear, isolation, starvation—things like that,” Sypher says, glaring at Eli’s hand on my arm.

Pain? Like from crushing, skin-splitting rocks?

I take ragged breaths. “So you’re going to do the same thing as the Centress?” My mind tells me to run, but my body is nothing but tingles inside a sack of skin, held up by bones. It won’t move.

“Not quite,” Eli says. “We’ll start with fear.”