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Eli pulls out of Milo’s grasp and faces him. “She won’t.”

“I won’t what? Fall from the rope?” I ask, trying to pull away from Eli. “What’s happening at Caldera Falls?”

They look at one another, then back at me, Eli’s face crimped with indecision.

“It’s not like she can go back home after all this and say something,” Milo says.

I nearly faint. Of course I’ve seen too much, but hearing him say it, knowing I’ll never be allowed to return to Caldera, never find my parents, that I’ll probably end up dead within a month—it’s too much for my cracking mind.

Eli tugs up on my arm to keep me from collapsing and gives Milo a nod of permission.

He paces in circles around us. “The Centress is going to replace the current elixir used in the falls with my invention of a freewill sedative made from the core of teva flowers. It was supposed to be an elixir for emergency medical procedures only, but she’s having us produce much more than that.”

I can barely process his words. “What current elixir?”

“We’ve used a simple elixir in the Calderan water supply since the Separation. The dose is sent to the falls every day in a carriage to keep the level high enough. It dulls Hollows’ curiosity and promotes ignorant obedience, the usual, but this new elixir is something else. There won’t be any awareness left.”

My past slips out from under me as I choke out words. “You’ve been drugging us through our water supply for hundreds of years?”

“Not us.” Milo holds up his hands in innocence. “The centresses over the years, to keep Hollows from getting curious enough to wander across the border and drain Sonnet of its magic.”

I turn to Eli. “Like me?”

“I suppose.”

Hesupposes? “Do you realize how fucking terrible that is? I’ve been drugged into complacency my whole life and forced to cooperate with whatever the Centress wants?”

Eli raises two dark brows at me from beneath his ringlets. “You are anything but cooperative.”

“And it’s the same as the rolls? You gave it to me to control me?”

Milo gives me a big smile on his way by, still circling. “No, no. The rolls are made with teva petals, not the core.”

“And now she’s going to give us something even stronger? What for?” I ask, dizzied by Milo’s incessant pacing.

“I’ve heard rumors that they’re changing it because the Centress doesn’t want this happening again, but the stockpiling started before the intrusion,” Milo says.

“You mean my abduction and imprisonment in a foreign realm?” Neither of them respond. “Doesn’t the Calderan water make it back to Sonnet?”

“So many questions. You must love that.” Milo slaps Eli on the shoulder.

A smile hides behind his scowl. “It does make it back to Sonnet, but it would take more than twenty times the potency to even start to have an effect on Vaile.”

“That’s why it’s for emergency use,” Milo adds. “It takes an extremely concentrated dose to work on us because of the magic we hold. We’re almost resistant.”

I try to speak, but the thought of me and everyone I’ve ever known living behind a facade my entire life pulls me under, along with the realization that Kelter and I still drink that tainted water, even here in Sonnet.

Is every action I take controlled by the elixir? Not a fate of my own? I feel like I’m choosing, but how much more could I have done if my mind were fully mine?

Or maybe it doesn’t work on my vision-afflicted, broken mind. Maybe this is why I was the only foster child interested in finding my parents, why I couldn’t stay away from the forest, curious enough to question what lies beyond Caldera.

Chapter

Thirty

I’ve never seen a lake. I told Kelter a million times how I plan to explore beyond the forest and find the edges of the land, and he promised I would one day. I made it out of Caldera, but now I’m stuck here. Kaleida, Sypher and Milo swim in the lake I face, splashing and laughing and dunking each other’s heads beneath the dark surface, as if they didn’t live here…where everything is forbidden and nothing is their choice.

I pull my arm from Eli’s grasp, unsuccessfully. “Are you going to tote me around like an appendage all night?”