I shake my head. Stupid thing to ask. I rummage under my bed and pull out a duffel bag. Setting it on the bed, I unzip it. “I need to pack some things. Just get out, Abel.” I open a drawer and take out a few sweaters.

“You won’t be needing any of that,” he says, walking toward me and catching my wrist. “Someone will clear out the apartment, but there’s no time for that now.”

I look down at where he’s holding me. His grip isn’t hard, but he’s crossing a line. I shift my gaze up to his. His eyes are dark and empty. Ever since I was a little girl, the look of soullessness inside them has always scared me.

“Let go of me.”

He doesn’t. Instead, he checks the time on his other wrist. “We need to go.”

“I’m not going with you. I have my own car. I can—”

“I said we need to go.”

A feeling of dread comes over me. A familiar anxiety. And I process what he said a moment ago. That someone will come to clear out the apartment.

“Let go.”

“You didn’t hear the good news, Ivy,” he says, his tone serious. “The time has come for you to fulfill your duty to the family.”

I’m going to be sick.

“You’ve been chosen,” he adds almost formally.

My heartbeat accelerates, a wave of nausea making me clutch my stomach.

Chosen.

It was always a possibility, if not a probability. But our family, we’re not very high on The Society’s social scale. Not as desirable as either my mother or father would have liked. And after what happened with Hazel, the chances of any of the Sovereign Sons choosing either my sister or me narrowed even more.

“What do you mean?” I ask him, my throat dry.

With an exhale, he releases my wrist and grips my jaw instead, turning my head so I have to look up at him. He brushes my hair back from my face, my right eye.

I lower my lashes and shift my gaze away. A cold, clammy sweat creeps along my skin. Abel squeezes my jaw. I know what he wants, so I do it. I force myself to look at him.

He focuses on my right eye. The one with what my mother considers a deformity. It’s just pigment. It doesn’t impact my vision. It would probably go unnoticed if my eyes were darker. There was actually a period when I was younger that my mother made me wear dark contact lenses to hide what looks like an elongated pupil, almost like a cat’s eye. My great-grandmother on my father’s side had it too, and I took after my dad’s side of the family with olive skin and dark hair. Light green eyes are all I inherited from my mother, and they only amplify the flaw.