“We can’t leave them,” I argue.
Ican’t leave them. Not again.
“Bringing them will put them in even more danger.”
His voice is calm, and his words are reasonable, and that’s making things even fucking worse. My Mark is on fire, a furnace consuming me from the inside out, and I can barely think, let alone worry about that.
“I can protect them,” I say. Iplead. That’s my job as their older sister. I’m supposed to be able to keep them safe.
Pure, agonizing silence stretches between us for several long moments. Each is more painful than the last, until it feels like every breath is drawing shards of glass into my lungs.
“Can you?” Gabriel’s words are so quiet, I almost miss them.
I wish I hadn’t heard the question, since it slams into me like a punch to the gut. I stagger back, gasping for breath that won’t come. “I... I...”
The suns only know how much I want to do anything for the girls, give anything up.
But this . . .
Gabriel’s question . . .
Ropes wrap around my chest and squeeze. Tighter, tighter, tighter.
I can’t . . .
I don’t . . .
“I’ll take good care of them,” Maia says softly. Pityingly. “I have powders to temporarily color their hair so they can blend in, and they can come work for me. My father is a very busy man who won’t blink twice at my adding a couple ladies’ maids.”
“But... why can’t we go home?” Violet asks, her voice so quiet that I have to strain to hear it. “Why do we have to do this?”
“I’m sorry, but you can’t go back.” Gabriel grimaces, shaking his head. “Not right now, and possibly not ever again.”
My breath stutters, and an ache fills my chest. I’d already reached that same conclusion, but I was going to tell the girls in a different way. Ease them into it, so they wouldn’t panic. How could Gabriel make this life-altering proclamation so casually?
“What?” Marie bursts into sobs, her shoulders shaking. I cling to her, glaring at the Hunter over her head, but Violet pulls out of my grasp.
“Is that true?” Violet stares at me. “Birdie, are we on the run, too?”
My heart lurches. How do I explain to them that their lives as they knew them ended the moment the king chose them to be his so-called honored guests?
“Violet—”
“Tell me.” Her voice is hard. “Don’t sugarcoat it or baby us. We’re fifteen, we can handle it.”
Can they? I thought I could handle a lot, too, right up until the moment I watched my best friend’s throat get slit. But Violet is the strong twin, the more outspoken one. She’s always been a rock for them both.
“I’m not babying you, Vi,” I whisper. “I just hate that this is happening to you.”
Over the past day, the twins have been exposed to things they never should’ve seen. Their innocence was stripped away the moment Kadyn took the king’s fatal blow and bled out before them.
“Tell me,” she repeats. “Are we on the run?”
Those bands tighten around my chest. Constricting. Stealing air I don’t have, reminding me of all the ways I failed my sisters.
I trusted that feeling deep inside myself telling me the twins were in danger, that the king had nefarious intentions in bringing them to the ball, and now I’ve gotten them into this situation.
This is all my fault.
