Page 65 of Anchor

Why are you lying?I asked myself.

I had no answer.

So, I spoke again, “Actually, I just don’t give a fuck about society.”

I turned around and left, and strangely there was a huge smile on my face as they gasped and whispered and some giggled before I was too far away to hear them anymore.

Fuck, that felt great.

Cassie laughed and laughed when I told her where I’d been and what I’d said to the Redfire girls I grew up with.

She hi-fived me at least a dozen times, and though the guilt was still there because of Poppy, I felt relieved. I feltfree,just like when I first went to the Iridian School of Chromatic Magics. And Cassie was muchbetter company than those girls any day, so I had no regrets whatsoever. I’d driven like crazy to get here on time.

“So, what have you been up to this week?” Cassie asked, and I found I had nothing to tell her that I hadn’t before.

“Same, same. Nobody wants me on their team. Jim and Jam lied to my face. Everything’s just…the same.”

She turned and looked around us at the other agents and IDD staff in the cafeteria. “Wanna go get some air?”

“Actually, yes,” I said because the weather was nice and also there wouldn’t be people outside, at least not close to us. We could talk more freely.

With our coffees in hand, we walked all the way to the back of the building, and outside in the dark where we could only make out the guards in the front. Cassie had found me not far from this very door that night she saved my life, actually.

“Okay—you gotta tell me what’s going on because I’m gonna fucking lose it soon,” she said in a hushed whisper as she pulled her wand from under her sleeve, then whispered a spell just as fast. Blue flames burst out the tip of her wand, illuminating theblue ink on her knuckles—the strangest, most beautiful tattoos I’d ever seen.

“Nothing. Nothing’s going on,” I tried because I really hadn’t noticed thatshe’dnoticed something off. And now that we were outside and she’d locked us in a soundproof spell, she didn’t bother to keep her voice down.

“Don’t be bullshitting me, woman! You’ve been glued to that screen all day watching surveillance footage and snooping into archives—you’re looking for something. And what are the twins lying about? Don’t you dare tell meabout that catfairieagain because I will smack you.” She raised her wand at my face. “It is not beneath me, smacking. On the contrary—I quite enjoy it.”

Laughter burst out of me for a moment—she really meant every word she said. She was going to force the truth out of me, and I found that hilarious, mostly because she really didn’t need to. The only reason I hadn’t told her was because I didn’t want her involved. I’d already risked her plenty of times, but if she wanted to know so badly, I’d tell her the whole story.

“Erid and Michael had orders from someone to kill me in the catfairie forest that day. They made me Mud. Erid mostly, I suspect. She had a lot of magic, and I was wide open. Jim and Jam were there, and they saw the whole thing. They also saw how, before Michael could finish me off, the big catfairie just jumped from a tree and killed both him and Erid, then came for me. He came to kill me, too, but I passed out before he could. The only thing I remember before I shut down was this noise that the catfairie turned his head to look at, and then nothing. When I woke up, he was dead on the ground and the twins insist thatIkilled him. That they saw me pull his heart out,afterhe turned me Mud.” I spoke so fast my jaw was going to fall off me. “They’re lying about the whole thing and they won’t tell me why.”

The look on Cassie’s face.

We were in the shadows, but I saw enough to know that she was pissed, her eyes glossy and bloodshot, her teeth gritted.

“They…they juststoodthere? The twins—they just watched those fuckers trying to kill you?”

Oh, boy. That didn’t sound so good.

“Yes. But then they saved my life in the infirmary. They came to get you, as well, so?—”

“I don’t give a shit,” she cut me off. “They chose to sit back and do nothing in the forest. They can’tundothat no matter how many times they save your life now.”

“Cassie, it’s fine. Michael was our team leader. They couldn’t disobey his order.”And why the hell are you trying to defend the twins? said a voice in my head. “They…they saved my life after, okay? It’s fine. They’re fine.”

Because I couldn’t hold it against themwas the answer. Because I was afraid that in their shoes, I’d have done the same thing.

Or maybe not, but it didn’t matter. I still owed them my life.

Cassie closed her eyes and took in a deep breath. “They’re lucky I don’t send my cousins after them right this second. So damn lucky…”

I raised my brows. “Cousins?”

“The Mergenbach siblings—I told you about them, remember?” Cassie paused for a moment, watching me intently as if she was expecting me to start laughing or something.

But I did remember everything she told me about those cousins—she mentioned them a lot. And I wasn’t going to laugh about it, obviously. “Yeah, please don’t,” I said instead. “The twins are good. I know it—I feel it. They’re good, they’re just scared. Eventually they’re going to tell me the truth.”

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