The air in the room is something brittle and fractured, a plate of glass ready to shatter. “And why would you do that?” the mayor asks him, her voice deadly calm.

I cut in. “Because this world—the fog, the Beings, the island—none of it’s real. It’s a dream, induced by alien technology. All of us have been dreaming together since the Fracture.”

“But now everyone has to wake up,” Elliott says. “Because if we don’t, we’re going to die in just a few hours, or less, now. The dream is about to end one way or the other.”

The mayor’s gaze is sharp enough to cut. “I don’t know what you’re playing at, but you need to tell me right now how you got back to the island.”

“Why?” Elliott asks. I don’t know if his mother can see the hope he’s struggling against, but I can. He knows she’s not sorry for what she did, but he can’t help hoping maybe she wants him back anyway. That maybe she’s finally realized his worth.

That maybe, this time, she might actually love him.

“So I can make sure,” she replies, her gaze pinning him like he’s a grasshopper on a display, “that you don’t do it again next time.” She draws her gun—and aims it at him.

Elliott doesn’t react. Not externally. But I can see the ice slip into him, veins of frost crystallizing over all his hopes.

He stares at the gun. “I’ll never be good enough for you,” he realizes slowly. The frost spreads and cracks as he looks back up at his mother. “Will I?”

She says nothing.

I should be refocusing on the transmitter, on our message, but I can’t look away from that desolation on Elliott’s face. I told him once that his blind loyalty to his mother made him just as bad as any dealer. It was true—how many people did he help exile, knowing how inhumane it was? But now I see just how much that loyalty has hurt him, too.

Because … he didn’t drop me over that rooftop even when he had every reason to. He accepted my fears, accepted me, instead of abandoning me for being a liability. And he came back for me when we were escaping the scorpions because he couldn’t make himself leave me to my fate, even though I’d attacked him, even though I’d gotten Braedan killed.

Elliott Ackermann is a good person.

Except when he’s trying to be good enough for his mother.

He’s still just standing there, staring at his mom, who’s pointing a gun at him. His shoulders rise and fall with a breath. He looks defenseless. Wrecked. The same way he did when he found his brother’s body.

That angry, protective thing in me rises again.