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He goes on anyway. “He wanted me to thank you.”

Surprise sends my head whipping in his direction. So much for disinterest.

“For last night.”

For what?It almost slips off my tongue.

“And he says next time…” Milo stretches his endless arms above his head. “He’d like to be on top.”

I didn’t—we never—the words roll up on my tongue like the crest of a wave, and they try to crash, to deny, to set right the claim, but I swallow them up.

He almost got me.

Milo tosses his head back, his laugh high and loud and free, like how a sunflower might sound if it were to laugh at your expense. “You’re good,” he says to my sealed lips and scowl. “He said you’d never last.” He wipes away a crystal tear of jester’s joy. “I don’t know if I’d rather see him be wrong or see you break.”

He reaches through the bars and tousles my unwashed hair. Pulling away, his laughter dissolves like the words I held on my tongue. Night falls on his ocean eyes. “If you drag him up there, then it’s on you to watch after him.”

I spend the rest of the afternoon stewing over the jerks I’m stuck with…and Milo’s final words. Why would I need to watch after Eli? In his own home?

I’m so deep in thought when he stomps down the stairs in cobalt blue—pockets plinking with treasures and cuffs, and a pack on his shoulder—that I almost say something about the racket he makes.Almost.

He struts right up to the cell door and opens it, carrying the scent of wet trees and afternoon showers. “Let’s get this over with.”

He pinches my ear and tugs me along by it, guiding me as if he were holding my hand. He takes me from the castle hatchway, around to the front of the house and up the steps of the wooden porch. I tiptoe, avoiding the gaping holes lined with jaggedwooden teeth. We reach the top step and land on a narrow deck with a leaning railing that skirts the house, and it groans, the planks of the deck flexing and stretching and yawning under my boots. I throw my hands out to steady myself.

Eli frees my ear and loops his hand around my wrist, pulling us off the grumbling deck and spinning me around until we stand face-to-face in front of the door. The deck lets loose a sleepy sigh and settles its planks down to rest.

My blood redistributes inside me, shifting to shock. My mouth goes dry, my breath shallow. What the fuck kind of magic is that? Terror clenches my existence, but quickly—much too quickly for my denial—curiosity presses in, subduing the panic pulsing in my veins.

“It likes you,” Eli says, his voice gruff, and tosses me back my wrist.

I’d ask whatitis and why he would say that, but I can’t. The door hinges screech as they’re spread wide open, and I take one look back at the deck and follow him inside.

Chapter

Twenty-Two

It’s ancient. I thought the outside looked old, but inside—the inside is older than time. Not in the way that the exterior is falling apart and wears its years in its cracks and rotting wood. No, it’s old in the way that the breath of the past lifts me from the present, opening eyes I didn’t know I had and spilling years of memories and tears and laughter into the air. It pulls me the same way Eli does, toward things I can’t understand.

It’s nothing like the castle below. Decked in warm brown and bronze, maroon and gold, three walls are busy and buzzing with gadgets on crooked shelves, wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling. The red wood of the shallow shelves matches the crimson carpet with fibers so long that I sink with each step. And coming up through the carpet are stumps of trees situated around a table with a sofaand chairs nearby. Apart from the strange choice of stumps for seating, the furniture is similar to what I’ve seen in Caldera, but fancier, almost antique. Hanging on the fourth wall are swords and bows and daggers, and I stare long enough to wonder why they weren’t destroyed with the rest of the forbidden weapons after the Separation.

Four doors are among the knicknacks on the walls, all closed, leaving one giant entry room for my eyes to explore. No kitchen, not even windows, but a spiral staircase claims the right side of the room, railless and open, the golden steps practically floating.

Eli twitches at my side, his dark aura making its way to me. I look right at him, and the look he gives back is harsher and more blistering than I’ve ever seen—and daunted. He glistens with sweat in the old, cold house as if it’s an effort to simply stand there. Maybe it is. I could ask…if I hadn’t dealt away my voice.

Fingers scrape down the back of my head, my neck, my back, pulling away when they reach the bottom of my spine.

“Time to go.” His temples pulse, one foot stepping toward the door. “I’ll find a different trigger.”

I slide in front of him, rebelling with my silence. This house. It’s as though its roots grow up instead of down, driving through the soles of my feet and up through my body, twinging every nerve and twining around every muscle.

I need more.

He takes a step past me, closer to the door. The walls shudder, the trinkets clinking and pinging on the shelves.

“I got it,” he barks at the house, and the walls snap into place, unmoving with an air of defiance.

I follow him, and the house purrs. The walls and shelves and floor, they hum, and my feet tingle. He turns to face me, nostrils flaring and teeth chattering with mine as the vibration builds. The purple stone of my necklace heats on my chest. I grab it in my fist, right through my shirt, a perfect fit in my palm.