What am I even doing here? This plan of ours doesn’t necessitate us becoming friends. “I’ve been in here long enough for all the necessary tongues to wag. I should leave.” I shift off the bench and stand.

He doesn’t walk me to the door.

26

For the next week, I do my best to avoid Rafe while still pretending to date him. But our fraternization has drawn just about as much attention as I figured it would. Which is to say, quite a lot.

“So, I hear you’ve been spending time with Vanguard now?” Sebastian pries as all the members of our team soak in a hot spring after a particularly intense early-morning hoverjoust practice. The opening games are fast approaching, and practices have amped up.

“Um, kind of, just seeing where things go.” I breathe in the thick geothermal mist. The hot springs are one of the sources of the fog that blankets the island. It should smell like sulfur, but as with so much else, the Makers have improved upon nature, and it smells more like French toast.

“That’s all we’re gonna get?” Sebastian, always a sponge for gossip, looks terribly disappointed. “This is the same princeling who laughed at you while you were in the dust? Our biggest competition, who notoriously spent every night in a different bed until you came along… and that’s all we’re gonna get?”

Carlota comes to my defense. “Have you set your eyes upon him? Can you really blame her?” She flicks water into Sebastian’s green hair.

He laughs. “You’re right. I’d do the same. Oh, wouldn’t I do the same.”

After showering, I use Georgie’s computer to call Kor. I haven’t been in touch with anyone since the kidnapping revelation. I’m angry at my mom and unsure how to interact with Kor without confronting him, but I need to confirm that they for sure have Hypatia, and if so, where they might be keeping her.

I know that the Families have many facilities around the city—connections with the Met, Columbia University, and the United Nations, but Mom specifically said that Hypatia is at a medical facility. I need more leads.

Except the call is a whopping failure. Kor debriefs me, like usual. But I awkwardly freeze up and neglect to ask any of the questions I need to ask. Instead I stare at him, fixated on wondering how this person that I thought I knew so well could possibly be capable of abducting a helpless preteen girl.

The worst part is that it doesn’t seem impossible. Kor has always been so single-minded in pursuing what he wants.

I’m barely paying attention as he tells me about a performance he did for a children’s cancer charity. “It was weird doing a show without you,” he tells me, and there’s so much tenderness in his familiar eyes.