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I shook my head—could it be? Because it didn’t sound very possible.

“Except I wasn’t thinking about giving you theRainbowspecifically—just my magic so you wouldn’t turn Mud. So you would survive. I thought you…” I closed my eyes, unable to finish that sentence. “You looked on the brink of collapse while you carried me.”

“I was,” he confirmed with a nod, and he was smiling, the asshole, while my eyes filled up with tears at the memory of his face, skin white, eyes dark, the way he’d rocked to the sides as he walked but never once let go of me.

“Here I thought you betrayed me and put me in prison.” He chuckled. “To realize I can be this big of a fool is quite…humbling.”

I smiled—how could I not? But a couple of tears still escaped, and he caught them both with his thumbs. “I’m a very good actress. I made it believable.”

He laughed. “You’re a lot of things, baby, buta good actressis not one of them. Your eyes have subtitles on them.”

Laughter burst out of me.Subtitles,he said. “Only toyou.My ability to play a rock was what got me in this mess in the first place. Poppy was supposed to be chosen for that mission, not me. But then my face…”

My voice trailed off and I was right back in Madeline’s office again, looking at disturbing images moving on a screen made of magic.

“Who’s Poppy?” Taland asked.

“My cousin.” And she was not going to like my choosing to become a fugitive at all. If I ever saw her again, she was going to make sure I knew it.

At the thought of her, my heart ached.

“She’s, uhm…she’s two months younger than me. Our mothers were sisters. Our grandmother was sort ofgroomingher to become a spy, andshewas supposed to come to that school to spy on you. But then she showed too much emotion, I guess, and I didn’t. So, despite Madeline’s insistence, he picked me.”

Taland moved us, put me down on the bed, and rose on his elbow right over me. “Sweetness,whopicked you? Who gave you that mission?”

A lump in my throat. “David Hill, the director of the IDD.”

No expression on his face when he said, “Impossible.”

And I knew exactly how it sounded, but he had to believe me. He had to because it was the truth.

“He…he always comes to my grandmother for a lot of things still. She was his mentor, in a way. And that night when they came to her office, I was supposed to be there just as a sign of respect, but then he sat down with Poppy and he made this large screen out of thin air and began to show us these…disturbingthings. There was a man jumping off the rooftop of a very tall building, and a woman being eaten by a large snake slowly—stuff like that. I looked because I couldn’t help it, and Poppy reacted. I didn’t. When he was done, Hill said thatIwas the one, thatIwould make the perfect agent.”

My eyes closed—those damn tears, angry ones now.

“Madeline accepted for me, but I had no complaints when I found out I’d be away from her for six months. It was…it was a dream come true, actually. I never knew…”

I never knew that I would end up costing Taland his freedom. If I had, I’d have run away before they took me to that school.

“Yousawhim,” said Taland, taking me by surprise for a moment because he was so pale, and he wasn’t smiling or hugging me or telling me that it was okay. Instead, he looked at me with a new urgency.

“Hill?” He nodded. “Yes, of course I did. A few times before I came to the school, and then I spoke to him every month while I was there. I had a special phone just for it.”

Hands on my face, Taland came closer. “Sweetness, are you absolutely sure it was David Hill who sent you on that mission?”

Now I was downright scared. The way he was looking at me…

“Yes,” I whispered. “It was Hill who sent me on the mission. It was Hill I spoke to on that phone every month. It was Hill who told me that you’d make a move at the Feast of Hope, and I think…” My eyes closed, squeezed tightly. “I think it was Hill who gave that agent the order to shoot the moment you walked into the Strongroom.”

Taland sat up.

Cold settled everywhere on my skin where he’d been touching me. I sat up, too, holding the cover to my chest.

“Taland, what’s wrong?”

“Impossible,” he repeated, shaking his head over and over.

“I swear, I’m not lying.” I was already thinking abouthowI could prove it to him, but Taland wrapped an arm around my shoulders the next second.

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