Page 56 of Into Ember

I look over at them. None of them are looking back at me and hurt flares through me before I can stop it. I stare at them because they’d just let me go and…

No. Gunnar’s hands are still shaking at his sides. Erik is strung so tight he’s ready to snap. And then I see it. Leif’s mouth tips up just a fraction.

I don’t know why that matters, but it does.

Because they matter.

They’re everything.

The word is still hanging there in her kind old voice and my blood has gone somewhere hot and quiet, and when I speak it doesn’t sound like me. It sounds like somebody older.

“I said I’m not going without them.”

The room goes very still.

Ezra raises one brow. Looks at me for a long moment with those young eyes.

Then she sighs, the way you sigh at a toddler who insists on wearing her costume to the grocery store.

“Very well.”

The men move at once, all five, closing in around me, and the gray women turn to lead us out, and I catch Vick shifting to follow at the back of the group.

“Not you.”

I turn away and feel Gerald shift at my nape, curled into my hair, still hiding.

I’ll take that as agreement.

The doors slam behind us.

If I’m ever in that room again, it will be too soon.

Chapter 22

Elara

Their names are Anya, Neve, and Colette.

I don’t know what I was expecting. Something ancient. Something with apostrophes in it. Three women in gray leading me away from that chamber and all of its ancient staring mess, and they have the names of my high school cheerleading team.

“This way, my queen,” Anya says.

That. That’s the other thing.

“You really don’t have to call me that.”

All three of them look at me like I offered to tip them at a funeral. Neve actually puts a hand over her heart.

“It’s an honor, my queen,” she says. “We volunteered. Nearly every single female in the city volunteered. This is history we never thought we’d see in our lives.”

History. Me. I’m wearing the leggings I’ve been living in since I fell out of the sky into this realm. There’s a houseplant hiding in my hair. I am nobody’s history.

Except my own. Embarrassing, sordid, all of it.

The corridor keeps going and the farther we get from that chamber, the more the guys relax behind me. I can feel it happening without turning around, which is a thing I’ll be thinking about never. Gunnar’s boots start dragging a little. Rayner’s breathing goes slow again. The wall of them spreads back out into five separate people, and my shoulders come down with them.

“Where are we going?”