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“But no one will believe us,” Coen continues. “And even if they do believe she’s taking babies from their mothers, they’ll also believe whatever lie she feeds them to justify it.”

Kaleida massages a dislocated finger as if she is trying to slip it back into place. “I swear this all has to do with the Centress’ missing lover. The stories say he showed up out of nowhere anddisappeared just as suddenly. Why else would she risk turning Vaile against her? Everything comes back to love.”

“Maybe, but we still need to get them back.” Sola looks warily at the carriage.

“Maybe she killed him,” Sypher offers.

“I said love, not murder.” Kaleida gives him a soft shove.

Coen reaches for Sola, taking her waist. “We can’t simply walk back into the Ring and hand the babies over. Or walk anywhere after dawn. No one is out searching for the Hollow because they know she was caught at the lake, and the Centress only sent her guards to track down Eli, Sypher and Kaleida. But we need to be well hidden by the time the next shift of Life Cycle workers arrives at the Ring in the morning.”

“I shouldn’t have listened to you and left them alive,” Eli mutters, then looks up at Coen and Sola, each a head taller than him. “You can stay at the castle. It’s protected. No one can find us there.”

“But what happens after that? None of us are safe since you were seen at the lake withher. We can’t go back to our shifts,” Coen snaps.

Or their lives. I drop my head. I know what that’s like.

Kaleida squeezes my shoulder.

“Calm the fuck down. I’ll figure it out,” Eli says. He pulls my back against his stomach, sliding his arm around my neck and locking me in place as if I might try to run away. I don’t fight him, not when I can feel every muscle down his front pressing into me.

“What’s she doing with the babies?” Sola asks quietly, her hand finding Coen’s and making me wonder if she’s been in the Ring before. In one of those bloody beds. Forced to drink tea.

“She must be drugging them.” Milo gestures toward the noiseless carriage, and no one has a response. The syringes prickback to mind. They were for the babies, to subdue them like their mothers, like Calderans.

I take in the solemn faces around me, raise my hands to Eli’s arm and tug it down over my chest. Then I repeat what the Centress told me about using her necklace to take magic from the babies and sending them to Caldera because they won’t ever get a gift, all to make sure the supply of magic doesn’t get too low and cause even more extreme weather—everything she told me thinking my memories would be gone.

Except the part about her being my mother…and the lie they’ve been fed their whole lives about Hollows taking magic from plants. I can’t risk them blaming me or thinking I’m like her. Or risk revealing to Eli that I’m not a Hollow. Would he still want my magic if he knew? Have a reason to keep me alive?

“But why is the magic diminishing to begin with? What’s changed in the cycle after hundreds of thousands of years?” Sypher asks after I’ve answered a dozen other questions, all with unhelpful responses.

Milo steeples his fingers below his chin, looking at me instead of Sypher. “Our gifts of magic are returned to the plants when we die, and the gods pass them on to the newborn Vaile. It doesn’t make sense. Stealing it from the babies doesn’t create more magic. It can’t replace what’s been lost. She’s taking it from one part of the cycle and moving it to another.”

“It’s a temporary fix,” Kaleida adds.

But no one can answer Sypher’s questions.

Eli tightens his arm around me and changes the subject. “Find a tree and rest while Milo patches up wounds. Coen brought supplies. Sleep a couple hours if you can.”

He takes command with such ease, and despite his guarded nature and dubious decisions, he cares for his friends, guides them.

“Then we’ll take the runts and leave them in the village before dawn,” he adds, sabotaging my positive thoughts of him.

“You can’t abandon babies,” I argue as Eli drags me away, leaving behind the others already following his order. He doesn’t understand. MaybeIwas one of those babies long ago.

“Better the village than alone in the woods. We’re not going back to the Ring.”

“Iam.”

He stops in a small clearing a few minutes later and turns to face me. “I’m starting to think youwantto see what happens if you misbehave. You’ve run away twice now. I’m not letting your little ass out of my sight again.” With a stern look and a press of my shoulders, he sits me down in front of a smooth-trunked tree, the smell of soggy leaves intensifying in the still night air, the ground cold and wet.

I pull my knees to my chest. “I don’t see how that’s going to work.” I glare up at his tall frame, even as I imagine us locked inside his room, his bed ramming into those slanted walls with every violent thrust. I’m so conflicted.

He drops to a kneel in front of me, his hands finding the sides of my thighs. The touch sends warmth rushing to my legs despite the cold of his skin passing through the fabric. He leans in close, a tempting smile on his face. “You’re right. You never shut your mouth. I’ll lose my damn mind.”

Fuck him—he smells better than coffee. I don’t want to endure the pain that comes with my thoughts, only remember his arms around me, his lips pressed so forcefully into mine…to feel that again. “You didn’t seem to mind my mouth earlier.”

He moves fast, snatching my face in his hand, a vicious smile surfacing. I wince and stretch my jaw against his fingers.