Page 65

The ground seemed to shift beneath me, just slightly, and I pressed my shoulder harder against the machine until it stopped. This was what I'd chosen. I knew that. Knowing didn't make it easier to hear.

"Well…" I took a deep breath and released it slowly. "How nice for them."

My voice sounded remarkably normal. Sissily apparently found that offensive.

"Nice? Hazel, are you even listening to me?"

"What do you want me to say?" I rubbed a hand over my face. "Danika told me yesterday what was waiting in that room. I knew this could happen and I made the choice anyway. I can't pretend to be shocked now because the consequences had the decency to show up on time."

"I know you chose it. That's not why I'm upset." The hurt in her voice made my chest tighten. "I've known you for twenty-two years. I know what you do when you're scared, and I know what you do when you think you're protecting everyone around you." She inhaled shakily. "What I still don't know is how I'm supposed to stand back and watch you set yourself on fire when you never even bothered to tell me you were about to strike a match."

That got me worse than the sanction had. My forehead came down against the warm metal, and for once there wasn't a joke waiting to save me.

"I'm sorry, girl."

"I know you are." She breathed into the mic.

Two quiet words, and somehow they hurt worse than if she'd yelled.

"I just wish you understood that we're allowed to be scared with you," she said.

Lesson number thirty: the people who love you don't need protecting from your decisions. They need to be told about them first.

I stayed there another second before forcing myself upright. "How's Alex?" The pause lasted a little too long, and every muscle in my shoulders tightened. "Sissily."

"He's been in his office since eight."

My stomach sank further. "Doing what?"

"Making calls. The door's been shut all morning." Her voice grew smaller. "He hasn't shouted at anybody, Hazel. Not once. Amber's baking again and we've officially run out of surfaces to put things on."

The floor tilted approximately four degrees beneath my feet.

I could have handled Alex furious. In fact, I'd been expecting it since Tuesday morning. He had more than a hundred people depending on him, a pack already under sanction, and a nine-year-old kid recovering from an injury that could've killed him. The last thing Alex needed was me making his life harder by ignoring a direct summons from the Council and giving them another reason to come after the people under his protection.

I could defend what I'd done. I could argue that showing up would have been worse, that I'd made the only choice that still felt right. Hell, I'd spent half the morning preparing the speech in my head.

But Alex wasn't furious. He was quiet. And somehow that frightened me more. Guilt settled heavily beneath my ribs. "Tell him I'm fine and I'll call tonight."

"No." Her refusal came so fast I pulled the phone away and stared at it. "You don't get to do that."

"Sissily…"

"No." My bestie hissed. All five feet of immovable loyalty, planting her feet in an invisible doorway exactly the way she'd been doing since we were children. "You don't get to use me as a middleman because the conversation is going to hurt. He loves you, Hazel. He's terrified, and whatever happens when you call him, he's earned the right to hear your voice instead of mine."

Guilt crawled beneath my ribs. She was right, and I hated when that happened.

"I'll call him tonight. I promise."

"Good." The sharpness eased out of her voice, but she still didn't hang up, and I knew that particular silence. "What else happened?"

"I don't know what you're talking about." Every single muscle in my body tightened. How would she know I kissed River?

"The sanction went out seven minutes ago. Full notice, your name, classification, everything." Paper rustled on her end, and somewhere behind her I could hear voices. "Four minutes later, somebody answered it."

"Answered it how?" Until that moment I had no clue you could answer a sanction.

"I thought you had something to do with it. There's a reply on the board with no coven seal. No signature, no territory, nothing anybody can trace. I've been digging since I saw it and I can't find a thing, so I thought… anyway. The whole network has been losing its collective mind because nobody can work out how it was even posted."