And her energy uplifts me. “Dance on his grave,” I say.

“Dance on his grave,” Ash echoes, and we all fall into silence, Jag’s order to bring us upstairs looming over our heads.

As the seconds tick by, bringing us closer to whatever Jag has in store for us, my dream comes flashing back to me—all my friends dead on the floor and me holding the poison that killed them. “I have to tell you guys something, something I probably should have mentioned before,” I say, and they turn to look at me. “Right before we left the Academy I had this dream, and I think it foretold our deaths—”

“Lucky for you it was a dream and you’re not a goddamn fortune-teller,” Aarya replies.

“It felt real, so real,” I say. “And that big room upstairs—”

“Are we really spending our final moments analyzing your dream?” Aarya says with a bit of amazement. But after a second of thought, she shrugs. “I guess there are worse topics. Go ahead, Ember, dazzle us with your weird brain.”

“I’m serious,” I say, not able to shake the feeling that I owe them so much more than an apology. “The big room upstairs was in my dream, and you were all lying on the ground choking on poison, poison I was holding in my hand. And…I know this is my fault. That you’ve all come here because of me and now Jag will kill you because of me.”

Aarya cocks her head. “By ‘big room’ you mean the great hall? The one that looks remarkably like the dining hall at the Academy, which your subconscious could have plucked it from? And by ‘poison,’ do you mean something similar to what Dr. Conner used on Ash to traumatize you only days earlier?”

“You didn’t make anyone come here—to the UK or to this estate,” Ash says, picking up where Aarya left off. “We all knew exactly what we were doing when we left the Academy. We wanted to be here. And if we all go out together fighting Jag, so be it. It’s no fault of yours and it certainly doesn’t have anything to do with some ominous dream.”

Ash’s and Aarya’s words hit me hard. Even now, chained in a dungeon, they don’t blame me. They’re not the cuddly feel-good type of friends I was used to in Pembrook, but they are every bit as dependable and supportive.

“Don’t spoil my fun,” Aarya says. “I’m enjoying watching her grovel because she’s had one very obvious vision that told her we would be in danger and now feels like she’s psychic.”

Ines laughs and for a moment I just stare at her. But then Aarya laughs, too.