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His smile pushes against my cheek.

“Two.”

He lets one hand go, the sling now pinched between my fingers. “I said stop!”

“Three.”

My fingers are pried apart, and the marble soars, up and up and up, over Milo’s head and straight out of the clearing.

His arms fall away, leaving me to collapse with relief, and the cold misty clouds hug me in his absence.

Chapter

Twenty-One

It was a nightmare. Not a dream. That’s why I woke up breathing like that. That’s why I see it all again, why I feel it when I close my eyes and try to make the image go away—lying on my mattress back home, Eli hovering over me. His strong hands were on my ribs, then my waist. Curls grazed my skin, and his lips found my belly. And slid over my hips, and lower, centering. A bite, then two more. Lower and lower. Then it faded. It darkened…to black. To nothing at all. No lips or teeth or tongue anywhere.

Shit.

I force my eyes open with my fingers. A nightmare for sure.

Never,

Thought you might want to keep this to remember our first shot. And Milo says hi.

Eli

I wrap the marble we sent soaring back inside the note, exactly how I found it a week ago—the day after the slingshot incident. Then I tuck it behind the stool with the others I just read again. I hate that I haven’t ripped them to pieces. Him taking the time to leave one every day with a change of clothes and a bar has me questioning every word, every look. I thought it was another way of getting me to behave, but the way he folds it so small, the way he tucks the corner in so it stays closed, the way every letter runs into the next, so damn carefully as if he’d spent half the morning on it—I’m not sure anymore.

Eli comes out of the bathroom, slick wet curls dripping and the outline of his knife sheath in a pocket by his knee. I can’t pry my eyes off him, not when he looks likethat—pissed at the world with a body that could tear me to shreds in more ways than one. But his invisible light is out this evening, the breeze hitting me, and I wish it didn’t because I don’t want to be pulled in again. I can smell him from here, like wind and rain in a field of mint. Fresh, unlike me.

I’m rotting in this cell, putrid and rancid behind bars. Even without coffee, my brain never stops, and three weeks of the stone walls and metal bars of this cell has that constant flow of thoughts gurgling in place like a stifled swamp.

“Elivander.” I grasp a bar with each hand and pull my face to the door.

He swivels to attention. “What now?”

I’m too defeated to snap back, but I love how easily I can annoy him with only his name—an accidental gift from him. “You said you would find Kelter.”

“After you do your part.”

I flatten my nose against one of the suffocating bars. “She’s going to kill him.” My pain multiplies.

“Your chance from Milo is up. I’ve taken you out every night for a week to pull magic, and you did nothing. Maybe getting Kelter back is not enough motivation for you. Thinking about him is holding you back.” A smirk breaks loose. “Maybe if you’d focus on all the ways I could wake things up in you, we’d get somewhere.” He sits on the couch and bends down to tie his boots.

I blush, thinking all the wrong things…and remembering his lips so close to my ear, his body up against mine. That dream—no, nightmare. Dammit.Focus. New plan. Connect with him. It’s my only chance of getting him to rescue Kelter sooner and let me go. “Haven’t you ever lost anyone?”

The fingers dancing with his laces go still. “Yes.”

“Who?”

Confliction paints across his brow, pain bleeding through his eyes. “My father.”

So the fucker has feelings.

But why is it so hard to respond to his pain? It’s all over—the way he forces a swallow, the muscles tightening in his arms.

“And didn’t it hurt?”