“Frex, Amy, of course I am!” I shout. She flinches from my voice. “I’m sorry.” I run my fingers through my hair. “Sorry. It’s just—yes. I’m upset.”

She reaches for my hand and opens her mouth to speak, but before I can find out whatever it was she wanted to say, a voice interrupts us.

Chapter 48

48

AMY

“OH, I’M SORRY,” LUTHOR SAYS. “I DIDN’T MEAN TO INTERRUPT.” While his face is impassive, his eyes linger on the inch of exposed skin above my waistband. I tug my tunic down with such violence I’m afraid my fingers will poke through the handwoven material.

“What do you need, Luthor?” Elder asks. I’m not sure if the impatience in his voice is because Luthor interrupted us or because Elder knows how close Luthor is to Bartie’s plans for a revolution. Elder twists around to look up at the man. “Stars, Luthor, what happened to you?!”

Now it’s my turn to smirk at his black eye and busted lip.

“Nothing of importance,” Luthor tells Elder. “Nothing I can’t . . . handle . . . myself.”

I don’t let my face betray my fear.

Luthor sneers down at me, but when Elder glares at him, he shrugs, chuckling softly to himself as he meanders down the path away from us.

“That man is a frexing nuisance,” Elder says. “The only reason he’s been helping Bartie is because he likes trouble for trouble’s sake.”

“Yeah,” I say in a hollow voice. Before Luthor interrupted, I was going to tell Elder about the stairs and everything else I’d found out this morning. But Luthor’s very good at silencing my words.

Elder turns his full attention to me. “What’s wrong?” When I don’t answer, he adds, “Amy, do you know something? About Luthor? Did Luthor do something?”

A hand wrapped around my wrist, pushing me down into the ground, cutting off the circulation in my hand, fingers digging into that little space over the blue veins under my palm. But when I look down, it’s my hand wrapped around my wrist, not Luthor’s.

I open my mouth.

“Tell me,” Elder says.

I can’t.

It’s too late. I can’t change the past, and it will only upset him. I can’t explain why I never told him before—a combination of being afraid to put what happened into words and being worried about what his reaction would be. I let too much time pass. Part of it was my fault—I shouldn’t have gone outside during the Season. And even though I know, logically, it’s not my fault, it’s his, I still can’t forget—