“The demon who bloodmarked me, what if he saw…. He could come,” I say weakly.

“He has not come for you yet,” Sel says. “And he may not today. If he does, we will meet him.”

My hands ball into fists, pressing into my eye sockets. “I just got so, so angry.”

“I know,” he whispers. “Look at me.” I peer up at him through the flames of my fingers. “No one is mad at you. No one. We all saw what happened, we know how disappointing this is to you.”

I shake my head. “I fucked up. Ruined this barrier, this place.”

I sob into my hands for long moments, wishing I had chosen a different response. Wishing I hadn’t come to Volition at all. Wishing… God… wishing my hope had not been thrown back in my face.

Exhausted finally, I sniff, and rest my head against the bark. “I don’t even know if Vera will ever come to me again.”

Sel’s voice is quiet. Patient. “You are harder on yourself than anyone else around you, Bree. You excel at so very many things, punishing yourself is a great example.”

At that, I look up to find him watching my root with wary eyes, as if he wants to reach out, but worries it will burn him.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” I mutter, and I rub the heel of my hand over my nose, “so I don’t think the flames will, either. Like last time.”

“I had hoped that would be the case.” Something sad in his voice brings my eyes to his. “As for ‘last time,’ that is what I am afraid of.”

“Afraid?”

“Yes.” He moves to a cross-legged position, our knees inches apart. “Touching you when you’re like this…” He laughs quietly. “Dangerous in more ways than one. Burning is the least of my worries.”

“Oh,” I whisper.

“ ‘Oh’ is right.” He sighs. “Maybe it is because I am mid-descent, not quite myself and not quite the demon, or maybe it is because your root is like no other form of aether I have ever encountered, but it took the entire time you were recovering at Hazel’s for your scent to leave me. Those three days, and then some.”

My eyes widen. “Oh.”

He chuckles. “Again?”

“You didn’t tell me,” I whisper.

His golden eyes follow the flames as they dance across the backs of my hands. “I didn’t know how to. Was ashamed, really.”

“Why?” I shake my head. “Like William said, aether—or root—affects you differently, but it’s nothing shameful.”