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I stepped into Fletcher’s embrace when I crossed the barrier to him. He whisked us away to Aldris’s house and laid me on the bed. In seconds, he was atop me and lowering his head to entangle his lips with mine. “I’ve missed you,” he growled.

“I missed you too,” I said against his mouth before he shushed me and deepened the kiss. I couldn’t help but smile and let out a giggle. He smiled too and pulled away to look at me. His wavy bangs hung toward me, darkening the lust in his eyes. “I like your laugh.”

I cocked a brow and teased, “I like your everything.”

He kissed my cheek before pulling me up to a sitting position and asking, “How’d it go?”

Dread fell upon me. I took a deep inhale and let my head fall back.

“That bad?”

A lock of golden hair fell to the middle of my face when I straightened. I blew it away with pursed lips as my shoulders slackened. “No. It was actually great.”

When the lock of hair fell back to the center of my face, Fletcher guided me to the ground where I sat between his spread legs for him to braid my hair.

“It’s just…” I continued, loving the feeling of him gently parting my hair in thirds, French braiding each.

“Tell me,” he coaxed.

“You’re not going to like it.”

He remained quiet, and since I wasn’t looking at him, I couldn’t read his expression. When the silence began thickening, I whispered, “I recruited Rosanne.”

In a low baritone, he said, “Why?”

I went to turn to him, but he tugged my hair the opposite direction, keeping my head straight .

“Stay still.”

I resumed staring at the black-railed banister that overlooked the rest of the house as Fletcher began working on the middle section. “She will not be a distraction. I promise. I’ve set it aside.”

He gulped hard.

“You said you trust her,” I reminded.

“I did not.”

I narrowed my eyes, not wanting to rehash past conversations because I’d already brought her on board. “Then, I trust her.”

He lightly pushed my head forward so that I was looking down at the hardwood floor as he braided near the nape of my neck. “Go on,” he said with a flat tone, as if he was accepting orders from his princess.

His lack of faith in Rosaanne suddenly constricted around my throat. “Have I made a mistake?”

Fletcher remained quietly breathing as he began the last section of hair. When he reached the end, he sighed. “I guess we shall see.”

Anxiety roiled in my stomach at Fletcher’s passive disapproval. “I trust her,” I repeated again, more to convince myself than him.

Again, there was a long stretch of silence, but I could hear Fletcher thinking loudly.

After he braided the tails of the three sections together, tying it off with a thin silver ribbon, he helped me to my feet and turned me to face him.

He moved his hand under my ear and stroked my cheek with his thumb. “If you trust her, then I do too.”

A half grin was all I could give him as I stepped into his comforting gravity. “For this to work, I need to give blood. A lot of it.”

His face hardened, disapproval brushing across his stone-cold expression.

“I know. But I cannot use my magic because of the split. You need more. Rosaanne needs some to practice with. We need to make these glass tiles as indestructible as the ones at the facility.” I wrapped my arms around his waist, hoping it would soften his seriousness.

It didn’t. “And, Mirin. Plus, there’s Aldris.

And anyone else who we invite on our team will need my blood to practice breaking the magic around glass tiles.

Then there needs to be enough for the day we decide to attack. ”

His face paled as I watched him take a hard swallow. “The idea of you giving blood— sharing your blood makes me ill. We’ll think of another way. ”

I shook my head and held him tighter. “There isn’t another way. This will work. It’ll be fast and inconspicuous and quiet.”

His hands came down on my shoulders as he pushed me away to look in my eyes. “Your blood can be addictive, even to Elizians. What if Aldris has some serious side effects.”

“Then we’ll give him a little at first and monitor him.”

When a hand scrubbed down his face, I released him.

“It’ll be okay, Fletcher. We are so close to ending this. This means everything to me. We have to do this. I have to save them.”

He exhaled loudly. “It’s too many people to save and not enough blood you could give to make it happen.”

Annoyed that he wasn’t budging, I knew where my confidence lay. With myself. “It’s not your choice. I’m doing it with or without you. I will burn that place to ashes.”

He huffed and took a step away, like the distance was supposed to help him disconnect from what he felt for me .

With his response of silence, I decided I’d share what had been rolling through my mind since Mirin suggested it. “I think that might mean involving Graff, Jarvy, and Decksin. They are loyal to me.”

His face scrunched with disgust. “Hard pass.” That intoxicating aura of his hate dripped in darkness scattered around him, enveloping me.

I wondered then if this was what the bond to me would feel like if I had access to it. Perhaps I just knew him well, but I didn’t like sensing his ire. “Fletcher…” I stepped forward, reaching out for his arms to comfort him.

“I may be able to get on board with Graff, but Jarvy and Decksin, no. I have known them for a very long time. I don’t trust a hair on their bodies. They are selfish and reckless and immature. They cannot handle a mission of this caliber.”

I gulped.

“This is already getting too big. The more people who know, the more likely there will be a leak to the Cidris. This plan hinges on the element of surprise and me finding out when those halls are the least active.”

“Okay then. We just keep it between you, me, Aldris, Mirin, Rosaanne. ”

His arms wrap around me with tension, like it was the only way for him to accept the idea.

But as he gained confidence in me, I lost some in myself.

Fletcher may be right. Maybe getting Rosaanne on board was a bad idea.

I had gone rogue and we were a team. Something twisted in my gut.

Guiding Fletcher to follow my lead for once was far more nerve-racking than I could have imagined.

My skin grew sticky with sweat and achy where the needles were plunged into my veins.

They burned and itched as my arms lay on a set of pillows by my sides.

Short strands of inky hair fell like a curtain in front of my face.

My head hung forward and that nasty headache I hadn’t felt since the cages throbbed.

“We’re done, Ripley,” Fletcher urged while sitting on the chair across from me, his hand on my thigh for the last three hours.

“No,” I grumbled in a breath. “I can give more.”

“I don’t care. That’s enough,” he ordered as he moved, reaching for my arms .

“No!” I screamed. The effort sent my head falling to the left as my head filled with a heat so light in weight that I thought it would fly away. “Your magic hasn’t appeared in my palm yet. That’s when I’ll stop.”

His hand hesitated before he dropped it back to my thigh. “Ripley, you are wrecked. I can feel it. Please. I can’t stand seeing you like this. And the berries aren’t balancing you out fast enough. You have to stop for them to be effective.”

My mouth was so dry that it took a minute for me to gather enough saliva to swallow and wet my vocal cords. “Five more minutes.”

He huffed, moving his hand to my icy cold ones hanging off my chair’s arm rests.

In a fast spurt of motion, Fletcher stood and turned, making himself a protective wall between me and something that had just entered the room.

“What the hell is happening here?” a familiar voice spoke, but with my woozy head, I was unable to place it. “I can feel she’s not okay.”

“Graff,” Fletcher gritted out. There was a beat of silence before he took a short step to his right, blocking my body even more.

“Oh my god, Ripley!” Graff called. “What the hell are you doing to her?” Graff’s heavy footsteps charged, but there was a flash of bright aqua and violet smoke colliding together.

The conflict urged me to lift my head and see what was happening. But my stiff muscles weren’t reacting correctly, and I couldn’t get them to respond.

“This is what she wants,” Fletcher asserted before the light of their magic petered out.

“Like hell it is, you thief. What are you doing? Stealing her blood? To give to the Cidris?”

“Tell him,” I breathed out to Fletcher while my head drifted to the left.

“Ripley.”

Graff’s voice ground out a loud, “Tell me what?”

“Tell him,” I repeated.

Fletcher’s body twisted to mine, hand gently supporting my head and securing it against his hip. “Fine. She’s giving her blood because we plan on taking down the Cidris.”

“With her blood?”

Fletcher took control of the conversation as he got on his haunches and undid my needles.

“No,” I protested.

“You’re done,” Fletcher insisted with a disapproving hardness in his tone that I didn’t appreciate .

While he freed me, he did a marvelous job at persuading Graff to join our mission and expressed how it was of the utmost importance to keep it a secret. It was a much more serious tone than the one I had used with Rosaanne. Should I have been as elaborate about explaining this to her?

Fletcher scooped me in his arms and sat on the couch, holding me while speaking to Graff.

Graff brought over the bowl of ocaberries, and when he tried to feed me, Fletcher growled at him, snatching the food from his hands so he could do it himself.

Within the hour, I had started to stabilize, and I could see the excitement in Graff’s eyes over taking down the Cidris.

I sat with my feet on Mirin’s couch, watching Graff and Rosaanne take sips of my blood. My aqua magic spiraled down their arms as each of them held onto a glass tile and tried different things to get it to be indestructible .

“Good gracious, your magic is kickass,” Rosaanne said with a large smile, golden eyes darting to me. “This shit is addicting.”