Glaring, I finally said exactly what I wanted to say to him. “That’s not your decision.”

“You don’t think so?” His crazed green eyes made me want to flinch and I did a little, but it didn’t make him go away. “I’ll have to show you otherwise.”

He’d blown so far past unhinged. He was going to torture Tair and make me watch. Or was he going to torture me and make Tair watch?

Or both?

I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t swallow. “Don’t hurt him. I’ll tell you anything. Just don’t do this.”

“You’ll tell me everything.” Darren ran a finger down my cheek, pressing so hard my jaw cracked. “You’ll both tell me everything.”

My skin started to prickle underneath the drug patch and my muscles relaxed bit by bit, going lethargic. It’d been a couple years but I hadn’t forgotten the feel of this chemical cocktail: truth serum with a kick of paralysis to make me all loose and talkative.

And Tair was getting the same.

It didn’t matter. I could reverse this. Make it so it never happened…

But not if I couldn’t get to Tair. The glass wall between us may as well have been steel. Both of us were tied down. If we got loose, there were locked doors to get through and guards in the halls.

Hopeless.

Even if I got to him, we could only wind time back to Darren’s lab with all those twisted things that were me but not me. Then we’d relive the same awful seconds until we got torn apart and interrogated again. And again.

And again.

“Don’t do this.” I hated myself for begging, but I’d beg and beg and beg if it would help us get out of this. “Please, Darren.”

“If you wanted to please me, you shouldn’t have kissed him.” Darren pinched my chin, drawing my face up and scanning my features from centimeters away.

“I’ll never do it again. I’ll tell you where to find Eva and the Ravens and the Reds and whoever you want. Just don’t hurt him.” The truth serum hadn’t settled in yet, so I could still lie, but I wondered if I was really telling the truth. This time, I might actually sell them out.

Muddled futures I couldn’t make out blobbed around Darren’s shoulders. I still couldn’t see what was coming, but I knew I’d said the wrong thing.

All these years, and I’d never offered half as much to save myself. That wasn’t lost on Darren.

“Where did this sudden devotion come from?” He pressed my head back until my skull throbbed. “You’ve never cared about your pawns before.”

“He’s not a pawn.” The words came out hot and fierce before I could help them.

Wrong thing. I’d said the wrong thing again.