“There,” I blurted, my mouth running away from my brain.
My finger was pointing at the bed and I had no idea why. I definitely hadn’t told it to do that. Siret followed the line of my arm to the bed, and then his eyes snapped back to my face. For just a moment, heat flared in his gaze—but he seemed to wrangle it back, replacing it with confusion.
“What?”
Blame it on a seizure! I pleaded with myself, as I opened my mouth again. “Appropriate surface!”
He set the bowl aside, his hand coming up to my forehead. “Shit,” he muttered. “Did I just break you? Calm down, Soldier. Deep breaths.”
I sucked in air at his command, filling up my lungs and blowing it out into his face. There was a ghost of a smile on his lips and a strange tension at the corners of his eyes. His expression, for once, was completely shuttered.
“That was weird,” I choked out.
His hand slipped from my forehead, tracing a line down my cheek with his thumb, until my chin was supported by his grip. He applied the smallest amount of pressure and I found my face being tilted up. He was so close. When did he move so close?
“Who’s close?” a deep voice asked, as the door to Siret’s room flew open, hitting the wall with a jarring crash. “Whoops.”
I turned around, spotting Rome wincing at the wall. He jerked his head back in the direction of the hallway. “Dweller-Emmy is waiting to see you, Rocks.”
“It’s just Emmy.” I pulled to my feet, casting a glance down at Siret—who was busy digging through the food again. I would have thought nothing had just happened except I could see the cut lines of the muscles in his arms, the stiffness in his shoulders. He was not immune.
“Exactly.” Rome’s eyes were on the food, and he was already moving to the boundaries of the rug, his attention completely captured. “That’s what I said. Dweller-Emmy.”
I shook my head, reaching into the pile for two of the cheesy-rolls—or whatever they were called. I also snatched up the bowl of pasta that sat by Siret’s knee, since he seemed to have forgotten about it. I took my haul outside with me, glancing down to the far end of the hallway. It was completely deserted. I frowned, trying to dig the silver fork into the pasta while holding the two rolls and walking. An easy enough task for normal people, but borderline sorcery was needed for me to pull it off. Halfway there, I paused, bracing myself against the fissure of pain that shot through my chest. With the pain gnawing at me, I dropped the fork back into the pasta and shoved one of the rolls into my mouth, groaning out loud because I had been even hungrier than I thought. With my mouth now full, I continued on, stretching out my ability to exist independently of the Abcurses until not even the cheesy-bread could distract me anymore. I took a single step back, hovering on the line between HOLY CRAP THIS HURTS and mild, nauseating pain.
“Emmy!” I shouted out. “Where’d you go? I can’t walk any further.”
She appeared almost instantly, at the end of the hall, her expression holding up a smile that seemed … odd.
“Hey.” She started walking toward me, her hands tucked into the folds of her modest skirt.
“What’s going on?” I ignored her greeting, my eyes narrowing on her. She was acting weird. She had said ‘hey.’ She wasn’t lecturing me, or hugging me, or stealing my bowl of pasta. Something was definitely wrong. “Was it Atti? Did he—”
“There’s nothing going on.” Her smile widened a little, and I blurted the first thing that popped into my head.
“Oh my god. You’re pregnant.”
Her step faltered, her eyes blinking. “What?” She looked down, as if expecting to see a protruding belly, and her brows drew together. “What, Willa?”
Willa, not Will.
“You’re freaking me out.” I pointed a cheesy roll at her and she started walking toward me again.
I took a step back instinctively.
She stopped walking, blowing out a frustrated breath. “Why are you backing away from me?”
“Because you’re freaking me out!” I waved the roll in the air. “I just told you that!”
“Well could you stop for a click? It’s annoying.”
“Stop … being freaked out? My being freaked out by your downright unnatural behaviour is annoying for you?” I backed up another step, tossing the remaining roll into the bowl of pasta.
I still couldn’t put my finger on what was wrong, but Emmy rarely ever complained about me being annoying. Not that I wasn’t annoying—I was almost always getting on her nerves, and I knew that, because I was usually doing it deliberately. But she still never complained. She fought back, or ignored me, or bribed me. She never asked me to stop being me.
Maybe things had changed between us. Maybe she was trying to break up with me as a faux-sister. Shit—was this a breakup? I stopped backing up immediately, and she rolled her eyes in a way that said finally, before flicking her hand out from between the folds of her skirt.
There was a knife in her hand.
I paused at that strange sight, before comprehension clicked in. Always prepared was my Emmy. I held out the bowl of pasta, bread still balanced on top of it. “You should have just said you wanted some. No need to go all weird on me.”
She looked at the bowl, and then back at me, coming to a stop right in front of me.
“You have got to be the dumbest dweller I think I have ever met,” she said, enunciating each of the words.
And then she stabbed me. Or, she would have, if I hadn’t moved the bowl at the very moment that she moved her arm. The force of her knife slipped against the rim and slammed into the side of the bowl, sending the spaghetti contents spilling out all over her. We both looked down, and then back at each other. I was sure that my expression was painted in shock and horror. Hers was just plain annoyed.
She made a disgusted sound, pulled the knife back, and made to stab me again. I quickly lifted the bowl, a shout catching in my throat. I had intended to shield her blow again, but she seemed to have dived forward, and her head collided with the bowl. It cracked, and the knife toppled from her fingers as she wavered on her feet. I had a moment where I couldn’t actually figure out what had happened—had I smashed a bowl over her head? Or had she head-butted my bowl? Either way, I didn’t hold onto the conundrum, because she was crumpling. I dropped to my knees beside her, catching her just before she hit the ground.
“Crap.” I set her down. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean—” I paused, my hands raised to check her head.
It was changing shape right before my eyes. The silver-blond hair was darkening to onyx, the skin growing more bronze, the eyes tilting and the mouth widening.
Karyn. Fakey.