Honey’s eyes narrowed for half a second and moved on.
“I need to tell you something,” she said. “About the other seeker you brought in.”
Cass went still. Riot went still in a different way—the tactical stillness of someone hearing a new piece of information entering the field.
“The Null woman,” Honey said, each word placed like a foot on a surface she wasn’t sure would hold. “The one with the green hair. I led her welcoming ceremony last night and I broke protocol by not staying near her to answer her questions.”
“Why not?” Cass asked, his eyes wide.
“Because I think I’ve—I just had a strange feeling.” Her thumb pressed against her palm hard and rubbed in a small circle.
Cass took a breath. “Honey, I came back for you. She came with us to help…this place is going to hurt you. Chrysalis —”
“I don’t know what Chrysalis is and I’m not allowed to know, Cass. You know this.”
“Then trust me when I say you don’t want to find out. Please…come with us.”
The three words hung in the air, all of Cass’s pain and discomfort compressed intocome with us.
“You want me to leave my home,” Honey said.
“I want you to be safe.”
”Iamsafe.”
“Honey—”
“You left.” It came out sharper than anything she’d said so far with an edge that felt filed down by months of waiting and just found its original shape. “You went out there and you found something. Or someone, apparently, when you were supposed to be doing your mission. A whole different life. If you are happy, then I am happy for you, but I stayed here. This is what I have. These are the people I know. You’re asking me to leave everything,Cass.”
“I’m asking you to come with me.”
“That’s the same thing.” She was looking at him with an expression that was equal parts love and hurt and the pain of someone whose best friend came back different and was now asking her to become different too, on a timeline that ended before breakfast. “I need time.”
“We don’t have—”
“Then I’ll think fast.” Her voice clipped the end off the sentence. “Give me today.”
“Okay.” Cass’s voice was small. He was trying to hide how much thenohad cost him and failing at it the way he failed at hiding everything—transparently and with his whole face. “Today.”
The quiet after that was heavy. The meditation bell rang outside—second call or third, Riot had lost count. He’d been still through most of this, letting them navigate their shared history without inserting himself into architecture he hadn’t built, but a loose thread pulled at him and he was going to see what unraveled.
“Honey,” he began. “Before his mission, Cass went through Chrysalis. You said you don’t know what it involves. But you saw him after. What was he like?”
Cass went rigid beside Honey in a full-body brace, his breath held as his hand drifted toward his temple.
Honey’s eyes moved between them. “He was sick,” she said slowly. “For weeks. He couldn’t keep food down. He barely slept. When he did, he woke up very upset…There were days he didn’t know where he was. The Elders said it was a very intense spiritual process, that even Brother Matthias had to be called in because there was so much difficu—”
Cass’s hand went to his head and he winced.
The pressure hit Riot’s skull at the same instant like a chisel behind his forehead. His vision went flat and sharp in a way that wasn’t the gold but wassomething,a rattling deep in his skull.
What the—
“Drop it,” Riot snapped at Honey. He pulled it back to soften it. “We need to stop. Now.”
Honey’s mouth opened, clearly wanting more information.
“Please.”
