“What did she do?” Vista asked.

“I don’t know. But she did use her power on me. Tell me how long I was gone?”

“Not that long. When we last checked in, you were still getting stitched up forty minutes ago. She wasn’t there then.”

My thoughts were a messy, tangled-wire storm of calculations, dropping one number as I tried to pick up another and arrange events into some kind of sequence.

So hard to gauge time.

I wouldn’t have been out for long. Accounting for the time before our ‘fifteen minutes’ of conversation, the break when she’d left the room, the time to come back…

I couldn’t imagine she’d had time to do anything big. There was only a gap, a big question mark on my brain and my body.

“I want to see Sveta, make sure she’s okay.”

“Can’t. Not until ten minutes after Theo gets back,” Vista said.

“We won’t even be here that long,” Tristan said. “Then we’ve got to figure out what we’re doing.”

“Doing?” I asked.

“About the raid on Teacher.”

The word was an alarm bell in my head. I shot him an alarmed look. He’d said it outright, in a place Teacher could overhear.

“Don’t,” Ashley said, but she didn’t say it like it was a condemnation or a warning. “Victoria doesn’t need that right now.”

“I really need it. Information, distractions,” I said. When I swallowed I found my throat dry. “Please.”

Tristan answered, “The attack was mounted, while our thinkers thought he was distracted. Citrine said they’re gathering troops and allies for a second phase assault, because not enough of the first group are reporting back. We’d be going as late arrivals, stragglers.”

Against an enemy Amy had called unbeatable.

Breaking 14.11

The guards escorted me to Sveta’s holding cell. The setup wasn’t so different than the room we’d met Citrine in—walls that looked like concrete, with high windows and textured glass that, I was assuming, let them look in from one side, while distorting our view looking at them from our side. Diagonal bars separated Sveta’s side of the cell from me, but the room was long, and two-thirds of it were devoted to Sveta’s side. Once I seated myself on the stool and a female guard stood between Sveta and I, the setup of the room made me feel like I was the prisoner in the cell.