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I find no security in the solidity of the wall behind me at Milo’s words, not like I do in Eli’s arms.

It takes Milo and Eli dragging the guard by his ankles to maneuver him through the doorway, leaving a guard-sized smear of blood on the marble floor. I move to follow, and as if Eli heard the sole of my boot tap the wet ground over the pouringrain, he spins around and finds my uneasy eyes. “Wait behind the door.”

Please don’t leave me here. But he turns away, not catching my rising panic over losing his protection again. I halt in place. I can’t go out there, not when the only fighting I know how to do is battle my own mind, and the sharpest thing I have is my tongue.

Eli and Milo run across the atrium and jump into a tangled mess of fighting guards in blue and black jumpsuits. I can’t keep track of the wet bodies and swinging clubs and barely catch the flashes of faces, but the equal amount of blue and black fabric has me on my toes, ready to run.We’re getting out of here.

I slide between the wall and the open door of the birthing room and watch the brutal bashing through the crack next to the doorframe. To the side of the brawl, the two Life Cycle Sphere workers huddle against the wall of the atrium, no babies in sight…and no more crying. I search for the Centress through the sheets of rain and the fist-flinging guards, but don’t find her either.

“I thought I left you dead at the lake,” Jace says to Eli, scowling up at him from her knees while Coen holds her arms behind her. Eli doesn’t bother with a response. He simply readies that knife of his.

“Put that thing away. I’ll handle this,” Sola says, swooping between them. She lowers Eli’s muscled arm and grants him a pat on the hand, then flips around and kneels before Coen’s captive. Her slender fingers brush the hair from Jace’s eyes. “I hear you weren’t very nice to Eli and his plaything.”

Jace’s face twists with rage. “She’s a Hollow, and he’s a traitor.”

“Well, unfortunately for you, I am too.” Sola cups her face, leaving Jace screeching and arching her neck in agony. When she steps back, two blue-gray handprints span Jace’s cheeks as though her skin turned to ash, or froze, or became somethingelse completely. Coen releases Jace with a disgusted shove, and she curls into a ball, holding her face and screaming.

Feet away, Eli holds a guard to the ground, stabbing limbs to pacify him. He manages to shift the guard just enough for Kaleida to jab a boot into his throat. She jumps into the air with a satisfied smile, celebrating. “Did you see that?”

Eli claps her on the shoulder and returns to the fray, hair and blood and fists and feet all over.

“Die already, you worthless shit,” Poett yells as he tackles Eli and clamps two hands around his throat, his hair like a wet tail down his back.

Sypher grabs an unclaimed club rolling over the stepping stones, and with a bellow and a leap, he whacks it into the side of Poett’s face. I turn away, but the cracking sound is worse than the sight of the impact. With the amount of blood that went flying, he’s soon to be crawling on the ground searching for his teeth. Or unconscious. The whole scene is too much like my visions. I lean into the wall at my back and close my eyes. We’ll make it out—alive—then we only need to get the babies from the carriage, return them to their mothers and look for Kelt. Simple.

The door creaks, and I lift my lashes…to see the Centress in my face.

Chapter

Thirty-Four

“Here you are.” The Centress runs the back of her deathly finger down my cheek, then kicks the door shut. Her dark green dress flutters around her.

I freeze, all the pain she put me through returning in instant waves of nausea. The rain falling through the hole in the ceiling turns to hail, forming a small mountain of white stones where I stood and held a knife to Eli’s chest minutes ago.

“I already knew you were different, but with only one session, I saw what’s inside you.” She strokes my face with her gentle touch, something much worse pulsing beneath her fingertips.

“I didn’t steal your magic.”

“Oh I know, dear. It was given to you.”

She can’t even keep her accusations straight. “Nobody gave me anything.” I take a deep breath, attempting to fill myself with courage—or anything that will keep me from passing out. “Get the fuck away from me. I know you’re taking babies from their mothers and telling them they’re dead, and you’re drugging Calderans to keep them from entering Sonnet.”

“You make it sound so awful.” She chuckles, a rare emotion on her frosty face. “Ihaveto keep the Hollows out of Sonnet. And we’re short on magic. I’m forced to take it from the babies—”

“You took the babies’ magic? How? With that necklace?”

“Where else am I going to get it? Magic is woven too tightly in adults to use the necklace on them. If I don’t take the babies’ magic and put it back into the cycle, the supply will get too low. Nobody can know the magic is dying. And the babies can’t stay here, panicking the people when they see they don’t receive a gift in the future. They have to be sent to Caldera. It’s harmless. They grow up not knowing what they’re missing.”

I can hardly breathe. “They grow up without mothers.”Like me.

“I’m simply saving the land from destruction. You think boulders of ice falling from the sky is a problem? We would see weather a hundred times more terrifying if I let the magic continue to diminish and throw nature out of balance.”

“I don’t care what bullshit reason you come up with—you’re separating infants from their mothers. There has to be another way.”

She coils her fingers beneath my chin and serves me a forced frown of sympathy. “Youare the way.”

She wants to mess with my mind, break me, but I hold myself together. “Where are you keeping my friend?” I make a sudden move, slipping out from between her and the wall, and advance a whole two steps before she grabs my arm.