Everything inside me pinches and recoils, twists and tightens, until it feels like my entire body is a knot made of lead, heavy and poisonous. A low, pained whine escapes me, ending in a choking sob. I can only nod in answer.

Sel reaches for me, but I squeeze my eyes shut. After that, he doesn’t try to touch me again. “I’m sorry, Bree.”

“That’s it,” I say wearily, a strange numbness flooding my body. A humorless laugh leaves me in a low huff, and I open my eyes. “Now I know.”

I thought that once I had the truth, it would get better. That things would feel right. But they don’t. Everything’s just as wrong, all over again.

I stand and start toward the door.

“Bree, wait.” Sel follows me. “You can sense aether, you can see it, feel it, but you also resist illusion. If mesmer doesn’t work on you, maybe it didn’t work on your mother, either.”

“Yeah.” My throat is tight. “Already thought of that.”

“And?”

“And?” I whip around, fighting back tears. “Don’t you get it? She did the smart thing. The thing I should have done in the first place. She hid. She hid every time one of those Scions or Squires pretended to be her friend and ‘tested’ her. She hid what she knew from everyone for twenty-five years, so this medieval boys’ club, this feudalist fever dream, this whole… fucked-up world of yours could never find her!”

Sel looks like he wants to say something but thinks better of it. Good. Nothing he could say could make this moment better.

My chest feels like it’s imploding. “She hid it from me. Or she tried to. But it didn’t work, because I’m a selfish daughter and I had to come here and dig.”

“Bree, you’re not—” Sel starts, but I don’t let him finish.

The words spill out of my mouth in an angry, sobbing rush. “She didn’t want me to find the Order”—I turn, snarling at Sel—“because she didn’t want me to become your target, but I did anyway.” He flinches, but I don’t care. I tug my shirt down to the still-healing purple bruise on my collarbone from tonight’s trial. “Didn’t want me to get hurt, but I did anyway. I had to barge in with the barest shadow of a plan and no clue what I was doing—” My voice breaks off.

I see words of comfort and repair hovering uselessly on his lips. He wants to help me, but he doesn’t know how.

I do.

The idea unfurls in my mind like a matted, frayed rope thrown down a well. I know, logically, that climbing that rope is a mistake, but in this moment, anything is better than staying here. Anything.

The words fall from my mouth in a desperate whisper. “Take her away.”

Sel looks bewildered. “Who?”