I think about how this night started—all I wanted to do was track Lily’s soul. Now I’m in the Order’s custody. Of all the things that upset me the most, it isn’t the interrogation or that I’ll now fill the role as Eurydice. It’s that Roth has my poppa’s coin and thinks to use it as a snare to keep me in Rayon.

I will get my coin back, one way or the other, but first, I have to find my lost coin and Lily’s murderer.

Once the medic is through, I follow Bastian out of the infirmary. Before he exits into the waiting room, he pauses at the door.

“Before you leave, your trainer would like to speak with you.”

“My trainer?”

Shadow knights don’t mess around. The fact that they already have someone assigned to teach me makes me think they decided this a long time ago.

“Shall I introduce you?”

I get the feeling it is one of those rhetorical questions I can’t refuse, so I nod.

He pushes through the door and steps out of the way, and I’m face-to-face with Mr. Val.

“Oh no. You’re my trainer?”

Chapter Thirty-Six

Shy and the Ritual Site

I take Anora home after the Order is finished questioning her. Now and then, I catch a glimpse of reddish-brown fur in the tree line. Anora’s hellhounds are following. I don’t think she notices as she seethes in my passenger seat, sitting as far away from me as possible. In response, I keep one of my hands clutched around the steering wheel of my Jeep and the other pressed against my chest where the thread connects us across lifetimes. It pinches and pulls. The feeling isn’t as severe as when she was in trouble, but it’s not the normal level of anxiety I’m used to with her. I want to snap at her, tell her to stop—but stop what? Feeling?

I can’t blame her for feeling right now—anger, fear, betrayal.

The Order found a way to make the Eurydice compliant. She will pay for her sins by serving them. They’d done exactly what she’d feared from the beginning—taken away her choice.

“Stop doing that!” she snaps at me, finally breaking the silence straining between us.

I jerk. I don’t like that she startled me. It means I’m not paying as much attention as I need to be, but how can I help it? I can’t shake her discomfort, and the cab of my Jeep is small and compact, thick with all her feelings and her smell. There are a million other things I’d prefer to do in this car rather than fight with her.

“What?”

“You keep rubbing your chest, and it’s making a noise, and it’s driving me crazy.”