Conner’s lip curls and he slaps me across the face. My head whips to the side and my ears ring, but I manage not to make a sound or show him that he’s hurting me. My mouth fills with blood and I spit it toward him.

“We have lots of time, November,” Conner says with a flash of annoyance. “How painful you make this is entirely up to you.”

Conner steps behind his desk and presses on a panel. Just like Aarya said, a door behind him swings open. He watches me as Felix limps into the room, dragging Ash.

My hands grip the chair arms so hard my fingernails gouge the wood.

Ash’s hands are tied behind his back and his ankles are bound. He’s bloodied and covered with scrapes and bruises, but he’s breathing. Felix dumps him on the stone floor about ten feet away from me.

Conner chuckles and the hair on my neck stands up. “It seems Ashai betrayed us both. But judging by the concern on your face, I’m a lot less forgiving of his betrayals than you are.”

Ash told me we needed to leave the trees. He told me he had a plan to fix things. But I wouldn’t listen. I insisted on arguing with him there. My stubbornness gave Felix the opportunity he needed to ambush him, and now…

I strain against the zip ties on my ankles, but there’s no give.

“Now, this is an easy choice,” Conner says, and one side of his mouth twitches upward—the microexpression of contempt that Brendan showed in deception class. He goes to his desk and pulls open a drawer. I watch as he removes a false bottom and pulls out a small green glass bottle. Aarya’s warning. My stomach tightens nervously.

Conner returns to Ash’s limp body and takes the vial of smelling salts out of his blazer pocket. He removes the cork and waves the salts below Ash’s nose. Ash’s eyelids barely flutter.

“You’re going to have to choose a seat this time, November, with no option to make up your own,” Conner says. “The question is, are you going to watch Ashai writhe in pain, dying in slow agony? Or are you going to tell me where my brother is?” He says this last part slowly, making sure he has my full attention.

I can’t breathe and I can’t make sense of what he’s telling me. “Brother?” I choke on the word. “But. That can’t be true. I’m not…You’re not…No.”

Conner’s eyes brighten happily, like this is the moment he’s been waiting for.

“My dad doesn’t have a brother,” I say, willing it to not be true. I refuse to be related to this maniac.

For a split second Conner mirrors my confusion. “Oh, now this is just depressing.” He waves the smelling salts under Ash’s nose again and Ash’s eyes flutter slightly more than they did the first time.

Anger flashes across Conner’s face as he looks back to me. “Off he ran with that witch of a Bear after she murdered our uncle…in front of me, no less. And who do you think got blamed for not stopping her? Then he chooses her over his own brother, leaving me in the wake of destruction and ruining my reputation in our Family. And he has the nerve to pretend I don’t exist?” Conner’s voice is getting louder by the second. There’s something dangerous about the way he looks at me, like he’s seeing not me, but someone else.