“I’ll think of something,” I said.

His ice-cold palms were sweating. To my surprise, he pulled me close and wrapped his arms around me. His heart beat right beside my ear.

“Thank you,” he muttered.

I returned his embrace. I was still unused to his new height, but he smelled the same and sounded the same, and my feelings for him continued unchanged, quiet and fierce and warm. Then, because it felt like the right thing to do and because no one would see, I tilted my head upwards and kissed his cheek.

“You mean the world to me,” I whispered. “You know that, don’t you?”

He buried his face in my hair.

“I can feel myself changing,” he said. “It’s happening faster now.”

“We’ll fix it.”

He gripped me tighter, like I was all that was keeping him from drowning. “What if I hurt you? Or Millie? What if—”

“It won’t come to that.”

He shuddered. I drew back from him a little, still holding his hand. The chill of his body lingered on my skin.

“Come on,” I said. “We have to keep moving.”

He breathed out shakily.

“Compulse me,” he said.

I stiffened.

“I can’t do this.” He let go of my hand, defeated. “I’m not going to be able to crawl through there. Compulse me.”

My arm burned, and I found myself shaking my head. No. No, I would never do that to him. Verje’s eyes, shining with delight. That helpless, all-consuming terror as I took the scalpel from her. For me to do that to Finn—no. Never.

“El, please.”

My voice was distant. “You don’t know what you’re asking.”

Celane, Verje, they had already hurt him. Compulses belonged to them, to the Renewal Wards.

“If it’s you, I don’t care.” He sounded broken. “The Reverends already did it to me, right? If I could handle that—”

“No.” I took another step away from him, and my back hit the wall. “I won’t.”

“If it’s you,” he repeated, softer, “then it’s okay.”

I screwed up my face. It was a violation, it was crossing a line between us. He did not understand; he could not grasp what it meant to compulse another person. Not only for him, but for me. In bending his mind to my will, in doing this to him, I would prove myself to be just as monstrous as the Resistance believed.

“I trust you,” he said, so exposed and so crushingly sincere. “Help me.”

“You don’t want this. If you understood—”

“El, I know what I’m asking for.”

Stupid, obstinate, reckless idiot! With a cry of anger, I stepped forward and stretched my lace toward him. But instead of meeting resistance, my power melted into him; he welcomed it, he let me in. We stood in the dark, and although I could see nothing, I could see him.

“Finn,” I breathed.

He was smiling. Scared, but smiling.

“Told you,” he said.