I brushed his hand away. “No one can help me. Just stay here, Isaak.”

He scoffed. “Yeah, right. I’m not going to just sit around and be their lab rat, Nadin. I’ll take my chances with the Liberator any day. Come on, we can figure this out together. Won’t you please trust me?”

“N’elytherios tou shenos,” I said, not listening to him. “Begin where we began, the answer is in plain sight…” My mind was a whirling wreck of the last day’s sights and sounds, fire in the sky, Gitrin’s ruined apartment, Ceilos’ hands on my skin in the dark classroom.

The classroom. I stopped midstep, Isaak colliding with me, nearly knocking me over. I gripped his arm, steadying myself, and hissed, “Begin where we began.”

Isaak blinked. “What does that mean?”

Still holding his arm, I launched forward, dragging Isaak behind me. “It means I think I finally know where I need to look.”

Chapter 23

The villa was deserted. Melusin and Antos would still be with the gerotus for several more hours, and with Ceilos gone, there was no sign of life apart from myself and Isaak. Our footsteps echoed through the empty passageway. But I still had the unsettling feeling that someone was following us, watching our every move. Unseen eyes made goosebumps rise on the back of my neck. Knowing that the Liberator had been able to tap into my private evaluation, not to mention the gerotus, made it feel like he was everywhere—always watching, missing nothing.

I hurried into the classroom once more, Isaak following closely behind me. This time I activated the artificial lighting. Something about the dim phosphorescent glow made me uneasy—and reminded me of last night. I didn’t want to think about that again, and certainly not now.

“Gitrin told me to begin where we began,” I said.

“When did she tell you that?”

I hesitated. “She had… left a message for me in her apartment.”

Isaak’s eyes widened. “And you didn’t feel the need to share that with Ceilos and me because…?”

I looked away. “She told me not to tell anyone. I shouldn’t be telling you, honestly. But it feels too late, now. Anyway, she said, ‘begin where we began,’ and I realized”—I strode over to the antique globe—“that that was here. My first lesson, years ago, was memorizing the regions of Iamos.”

Isaak came up beside me, running his fingers over the globe, the hills and valleys in gentle relief. It was old, almost a hundred years. The planet looked so different now, it was almost impossible to imagine. There was so much blue—oceans and rivers that were now almost completely dry. The continents were green and gray. The rust-red ground that covered the world now, oxidized by the violent changes in the climate, was nowhere to be seen on the globe.