Page 17 of The Art of Exiley

I hide my phone in my lap, prepared to message Izzy on every single one of her social media accounts until she finally responds. Except, for some reason, none of her profiles will load. I must have a bad internet connection. But… no, everything else seems to be working fine.

What’s going on? I reload and then reload again.

Nothing. All her profiles are gone.

She’s either deleted her accounts or blocked me.

Why would she do that? My breath feels trapped, my mind ping-ponging between worry and hurt.

I pull up the last text message Izzy sent me.

Please don’t go to Italy. I saw something I wasn’t supposed to, and now I have a really bad feeling about your trip.

When she hadn’t responded to any of my follow-up questions, I’d put her warning out of my mind and chalked it up to a drunk text. It certainly wouldn’t have been the first. But now I’m not so sure.

Kor sees the look on my face and takes my hand under the table with a comforting squeeze.

“We’re starting to talk in circles,” Kor says to the rest of the Chamber. “Let’s continue this discussion tomorrow. Ada needs to go home; she’s been through a lot.”

Alfie objects. “She’s been exposed to incredibly sensitive information. We can’t just let her go home!”

“Of course we can,” Kor says with finality. And because Kor is Kor,everyone listens and the meeting is adjourned, giving me free rein to leave.

As soon as we’re out of the Chamber, I try to ask Kor about Izzy.

“Not yet.” He shushes me and pulls me after him. He uses a bright orange keycard to exit the Families’ private archives—I’d asked for my own keycard but was denied—and leads me up the stairs into the museum.

It’s closed to the public at this late hour, and in the low light, the echoing stillness of the ancient chapels and galleries is haunting enough to give me chills.

The Cloisters—a building designed by combining different architectural elements taken from medieval abbeys, monasteries, and convents—houses a huge collection of medieval art and architecture. But only part of the collection is open to the public. Up in the tower and down below in the archives are many more pieces, including the Families’ private collection of relics tied to the existence of the exiles.

My mom texts me saying she needs to get some things from her office and will be ready to go in fifteen minutes, so I let Kor lead me through the silent, spooky halls of the Cloisters until we reach his favorite gallery, the Unicorn Tapestry Room. Seven beautifully detailed tapestries with life-size figures depict a story that has puzzled art historians for years. The tapestries are infamously mysterious; no one even knows who commissioned or made them.

I have so many questions for Kor, but my exhaustion is catching up with me. I lie down on the floor in the center of the room, arms and legs outstretched. With a loud groan, I close my eyes.

And then there’s a warm body lying next to mine, and Kor is pulling me against his chest. I blink against his soft cashmere sweater, inhaling the smell of his expensive sandalwood cologne and a hint of charcoal that tells me he’s been sketching.

I suppress the familiar tug that comes whenever Kor is sweet with me.Of course I’m a little bit in love with him—it’s impossible not to be. But he’ll never feel that way about me. It took me a few too many years to realize that. Luckily, our friendship managed to survive my painfully one-sided crush, and I came out on the other end of it relatively unscathed. Competing with an ever-increasing number of fans and groupies is excellent for crush-squashage.

Lying in his arms with our bodies pressed together is not.

Kor takes one of my hands and grazes his fingertips over the crescent scar. “I’m sorry about what happened in Italy,” he says. “It’s my fault you were there in the first place.”

I get that he’s feeling guilty that I was kidnapped, but I can’t help but bristle at the implication that he should have known I couldn’t take care of myself.

But maybe that’s the truth. Maybe Alfie is right about everything. I wasn’t ready for Italy, and I’m not ready for Genesis. I don’t have the training, and there’s no way I can pull this off.

“Out of curiosity,” I ask Kor. “If the Inner Chamber decides I should go to Genesis, would I be able to… choose to not go?”

“You’re in danger. That’s reason enough for you to go. The school can protect you from whoever abducted you.”

That may be true, but it doesn’t answer my question.

“Do the Families have any idea about who took me?” I roll myself away from Kor’s body. Now’s not the time to let him play the harp with my feelings. Izzy says he does it on purpose because he needs me to be in love with him. Kor needs everyone to be in love with him. To be obsessed with him. He was born to be adored.

“We’ve been investigating it nonstop since yesterday,” he says.

The museum floor is cold and hard beneath me. Kor and I are no longer touching, but our faces are close enough that, even in the dim light, I cansee the small scar that bisects his upper lip. The oneRolling Stonedescribed as “the wound the world wants to kiss better.” (I have not stopped teasing him about this and don’t plan to anytime soon.) I turn away and stare up at the dark museum ceiling. “Michael said there have been other Sire abductions besides me.”

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