I have to lie down and press my forehead against the cold, hard ground just to ease the churning in my stomach and calm the screaming in my mind.

Everyone. Is. Lying. To. You.

Too much.

It’s too much.

Ward has provided so many answers, but now I have even more questions.

And yet … even with everything he said, with all that I should be prioritizing, I can’t move past what he said about Riley:

… he was genuinely shell-shocked—all he would say was, “She’s alive. My sister is alive.”

It’s one thing for Riley to have tried to mess with me, even if I still can’t fathom why. But for him to have claimed as much to Ward when there was no strategic reason for him to do so, no guarantee that I would ever hear about their conversation … it doesn’t make sense.

I don’t have a brother.

I’ve never had a brother.

Even Kael said so.

It’s always been just my mum, my dad, and me. The three of us, a completely normal family.

Only … that’s not entirely true. Because we weren’t “normal.”

My parents were Speakers.

Are Speakers.

Powerful ones, according to Kael. He wasn’t able to tell me anything about my dad’s ability, but my mum—

I gasp and sit upright so fast that I see flashing lights at the edges of my vision.

Your mum had the most powerful ability for suggestion I’ve ever heard of.

That’s what Kael told me when I first awoke in the catacombs four days ago.

She could suggest an idea that would take root and grow, making people believe whatever the idea was.

When he shared that, he theorized that my mum might have used her ability to make me think that I’d killed both her and my dad. But what if it was more than that? What if she didn’t just plant the idea of their deaths … but also the idea that I’m an only child?

What if she made me forget Riley?

What if he is my brother?

I THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD!

His words echo around my mind again, and this time the nausea hits me so powerfully that I can’t keep my dinner down any longer. Tears stream from my eyes as I lean over and retch, tears prompted by the violence of purging my stomach combined with the horror of what I might have just discovered. The horror of wondering if my mum not only used her ability on me, but also on Riley, on Kael, on whoever else might have known the real truth of what happened to my family—whatever that truth is.

But … why?

Why would she have done something so extreme?

What possible motive could she have had?

Why?

Why?

Why?