“Who?” Cabe asked quietly. “Silas? You… you saw him? You…” He frowned, walking to the base of the painting I had just done on the ground.
It wasn’t exact—a result of all the spilt paint and my less-than-refined technique of spreading the paint around with my hands—but the hang of the head, the strong line of the shoulders, the muscles bunched up in pain… it was all unmistakably Silas. Cabe’s mouth dropped open and recognition sparked in his golden eyes, lighting up something that rebelled against belief, flocked toward hope, and shrank from reality all at once. I knew the look; it was one I wore often. He turned back to the walls that he and Noah had been in the process of covering and his eyes grew even wider, the dread inside him seeming to win against his other emotions. Noah didn’t move closer, but I could tell that he wasn’t far behind Cabe in his understanding of the situation. His pale eyes moved slowly from my still-shaking legs to the red box on the ground and to the wounds on the walls before settling on my paint-splattered hands.
“You’re bonded to them,” he spoke faintly, but his jaw was set. He didn’t need convincing. He knew.
I turned toward Quillan and found him staring at me, instead of Noah. This seemed to be the real reason that he had brought Cabe and Noah in. He wanted them to start seeing things and realising things for themselves. We had both underestimated their inability to go against the false beliefs that had been planted inside their heads, so the only way to get them to discern the truth was by playing on their emotions and allowing them to naturally come around to the conclusions we needed them to. Unfortunately, I wasn’t convinced that this conclusion would help us, because it had the potential to put an even bigger barrier between them and me. If they knew that I was bonded to their brothers, they would try even harder to stay away from me out of respect for their family.
“How did we not see this earlier?” Cabe asked. “How did we not even consider this as a possibility?”
His expression had turned completely inscrutable. That wasn’t a good sign. Cabe was absurdly good at hiding his emotions—so good, in fact, that he never appeared to hide anything at all. His true feelings were always carefully tucked behind whatever emotion he wanted to display, so when there was no emotion on his face whatsoever, it hinted at the immensity of what he was hiding.
“Only you can answer that,” Quillan replied, casting me one last look before walking out of the room. Again.
I watched him, flabbergasted, as he disappeared. Not wanting to be left alone with Noah and Cabe while Quillan’s words still hung heavily in the room, I quickly hastened to the doorway.
Almost there… almost…
“Where do you think you’re going?” Noah asked, side-stepping until he was blocking my path.
Cabe seemed hesitant to join his brother, which was a first, but he eventually stood beside the other, notching their shoulders together as though I might actually attempt to squeeze between them.
“I’m late,” I said, my eyes cast downward. “I need to… to… damn, I’m covered in paint.”
“Tariq said I should carry this around.” Cabe extracted a cloth bundle from his bag and handed it to me. “So that’s one mystery solved.”
“It sucks, not knowing everything, doesn’t it?” I pulled on the drawstring of the cloth bag, peeking at the change of clothes inside. “Thanks.”
The change of clothes was actually a precaution that we had started taking after one of Amber’s pranks the year before, but I didn’t bother correcting him.
“You’re welcome. How long have you been bonded to Miro and Silas?”
You should know, you were there. “A while.”
“Why wouldn’t they tell us?” Cabe was clearly troubled. He didn’t like the idea that he and Noah had potentially handed their brothers’ Atmá over to the very people they should have been protecting her from. “Seriously, why didn’t we figure it out earlier? And what about your boyfriend? Why does the Klovoda think that you’re bonded to someone else?”
“Only you can answer that.” I borrowed Quillan’s line, seeing the sense in his reply.
“Prove it,” Noah retorted harshly, the light blue of his eyes growing cloudy with temper. He wanted me to show him the mark that I shared with Quillan and Silas, but I couldn’t do that without revealing the second mark.
“When you’re ready. You’re not ready to see it yet.” And there was a good chance that they wouldn’t be the only ones to see, since wherever I was, there was bound to be a camera not far away, waiting to capture something suspicious. Not that the messenger hadn’t already seen my second mark. He had been aware of it ever since the car accident. I could still hear his ghostly words as I woke up on a steel table in one of Dominic’s properties, completely naked.
“We’re cut from the same cloth, Lela, don’t forget that… and now… now I know your secret…”