I still don’t understand what he was trying to tell me. I don’t—

You’re not like other Speakers, Six-Eight-Four. You’re not chained by the same rules. You were born different, a genetic anomaly … you are a miracle of evolution.

An idea starts taking form. Something unlikely, something impossible.

Your mind is the most powerful weapon of all.

Jeremiah called me his weapon; he said I’ve been his weapon for nearly three years.

Maybe he’s right.

Maybe I am a weapon.

But I’m not his weapon.

Not anymore.

It was n-never your words, Alyssa Scott, I hear Vanik say again. It was your th-thoughts.

I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t even know if it’s worth attempting, my hope all but nonexistent. But when Kael smirks at me and starts moving toward the refrigerator, I don’t focus on him, I don’t think about what he’s doing.

Instead, I think about the arms wrapped around me. I think about the person holding me tight enough to bruise my rib cage. I think about the other times he’s held me, to comfort me, to protect me. I think about the way he smiled at me, his dimpled grin, the laughter in his green—so green—eyes. I think about the first day I met him, when he let me sit and read with him for hours, a gift he didn’t even know he was giving me. I think about waking up in his bed, in his clothes, and the way he cared for me, treating me as though I was made of the most precious glass and one wrong word, one wrong touch, would make me shatter. I think about how even now, even controlled by someone else, he’s still in there, and he’s fighting. I know he is.

So I’m going to fight with him. For him.

Because he fought for me, even when I didn’t realize he was.

He wants to remind you of how strong you are, that you don’t need to be able to Speak for your words to be powerful. He hears you, even in your silence.

Even then, even in the holding cell while under Jeremiah’s control, Ward was trying to get a message to me. The same message Vanik tried to tell me.

It’s time that I started listening.

With my thoughts as clear as day, I envision a tether between Ward and Jeremiah, like a line of golden ribbon. I then imagine it being cut in half as I think the words, Be free, Ward.