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I know what it’s like to put up walls to keep yourself safe from people so they can’t hurt you. Hers just might look different from mine.
What else didsheneed when she went looking for help? In a way, she already told me.
She needed to be able to refuse.
“I don’t know about that,” I say softly. “And I was a little unfair in what I said. I know they mattered to you.”
Julita seems to gather herself.Well, it hardly makes a difference now. You’ve done a lot more than just step into my shoes, Ivy. They should respect that and you.
I’m less comfortable with this subject the more it turns back toward me. There’s one very large reason the men should never respectmejust as myself.
I grasp for a change of subject. “What happened to your locket?”
Oh. I… When I first found myself in you, I managed to get you to slip off my bracelet. Your hand was already resting by my arm. But before I could prompt anything else, you took over again. It would have been in my pouch.
To either be snatched up by scavengers or disposed of by the outer-ward criminal kingpins.
It’s hard for me to be angry about her admission when we didn’t know each other at all in that moment. But thinking about it reminds me of the other unnerving intrusion in my head.
“After I was stabbed, before the men found me,” I say. “Did you hear the other voice?”
The voice?
“Someone else speaking to me. Trying to get me to help myself.”
I can hear Julita’s puzzled frown in her response.I felt the villain who attacked you hurt you more and then leave, but they didn’t say anything. There was no one else, and then you must have blacked out, because I did without trying to. Didyouhear someone else?
“I—I don’t know.” Did I only imagine that overwhelming voice and its urging? Was it some new trick of my riven power to encourage me to use it?
But as far as I can tell, I didn’t even do that. Not in the way it’s worked before.
I rub my eyes and sit up again to grab the glass of water Casimir left with my food. I could simply be going mad with all the chaos that’s been whirling around me.
The cool liquid coursing down my parched throat only leaves me restless. A third tremor nudges me out of the bed.
I test my legs on the floor, pacing the room in the knee-length shift the medics left me in. Stavros’s wardrobe isn’t particularly interesting, but there’s a small bookcase tucked away next to the bed that holds several volumes that look like fictional adventures rather than the dry texts he keeps in the main room.
Resisting the urge to peek through them, I walk to the window next. The view only shows me a squad of blue-uniformed soldiers marching past.
I jerk back from the glass with a hitch of my heart.
I haven’t really resolved anything. I’ve only got more problems now. How can I lie in bed hoping those will somehow solve themselves?
I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I’m not going to figure it out while napping.
Someone—probably Casimir—has left two gowns spread over the back of the sofa in case I want to get properly dressed: my favorite turquoise one and a new one that’s a pale green. My knives and the straps I use to hold them beneath my clothes lie on the cushions, a pair of slippers on the floor.
I reach for the green dress, since it’s less flashy. Right now, I don’t particularly feel like drawing attention.
But even in that one, as I fiddle with the laces behind my back, the layers of light silk weigh on my limbs like bindings.
I’ve been trapped from the first moment I stepped into the college. From the moment I ran to try to save Julita, really.
Fixing a knife in place on each of my thighs should make me feel better, but the constricting sensation doesn’t ease. I ignore the slippers in favor of my old leather boots that I shoved under the sofa and tuck my favorite knife into the left one.
Are you going somewhere?Julita asks.We should wait until one of the men—
“I don’t need a guardian,” I interrupt, but I do go back into the bedroom to grab the locket. Just in case. I’m not throwing caution completely to the wind.
