“I’ve been doing this awhile.”
“Indeed.” Mist leaned farther forward, her gaze intense. “Where can we find them, Cobalt? Tell me exactly where they are.”
“You’ll never find them,” I slurred, smiling up at her with the knowledge. “If I disappear, Wes will give the signal for everyone to move. They’ll be gone before Talon ever gets there.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Mist said. “Once we have them on the run, they’ll be easy to track down. You’re only delaying the inevitable.” Her voice dropped, became soothing again. “Stop fighting, Cobalt. Where are they? Tell me the closest safe house from here.”
Fighting. Why was I fighting? That seemed hard right now, too much work. “The closest safe house from here?” I shrugged. “That’s easy. I have one right in the city.”
Mist frowned. “Here?” she asked. “In Las Vegas?”
“Yep.” I nodded, tilting my head back. The inside of my skull felt full of cotton; a weird sensation. “We were just there a few days ago, in fact.”
“Who was there?”
“All of us. Me, Wes, the soldier of St. George, Ember…”
Ember.
Deep inside, the dragon stirred, rousing sluggishly at her name. It struggled into consciousness, growling defiantly, before sleep overcame it and it sank into the void again. But that brief rush of heat and fire burned away the fog and, for just a moment, my thoughts were clear.
“Was there anyone else in that safe house?” Mist went on, her voice closer now, not seeming to come from a great distance away. “Any hatchlings that could still be there, right now?”
I clenched my fist, curling my fingers around the item in my palm. It bit into my skin, and I exhaled in relief. Still there. I hadn’t dropped it. “No,” I muttered, almost before I knew what I was saying, and winced. The damn truth serum was still in full effect. “There was no one else. Just us.”
“All right.” Mist slid off the table, coming to stand in front of me. “Enough of this,” she said, and a note of impatience had crept into her voice. “You know what we want, Cobalt. You know you cannot hide them from Talon any longer. I will make this as clear as I possibly can. Where—”
“Before you ask,” I interrupted, making her frown in surprise, “there’s something you should probably know. Well, a couple things, really. One, you’re either very inexperienced at this, or overconfident. Or both. You realize you left that second dose of Dractylpromazine sitting on the table there, right?”
“Yes,” Mist said, glancing at the syringe. Her brow furrowed in wary confusion as she turned back. “But I’m in no danger. The dose I gave you is good for another hour, at least. Why?”
“No reason.” I shrugged. “Only, you forgot one of the prime rules of interrogation training. Never leave possible weapons like that lying within the prisoner’s reach. Because if they ever escape their plastic cuffs, that’s the first thing they’ll go for.”
Mist jerked back, eyes widening…as I surged to my feet, snapping the weakened plastic restraints, and lunged for the syringe.
Ember
“Dante?”
The flames within sputtered and died as I sucked in a horrified breath. Faith smiled, looking pleased, and I clenched my fist, glaring at the other hatchling. “Where is he?” I demanded. “What have they done to him?”
“He’s safe with Talon,” Faith went on. “For the moment, at least.” She paused to let that sink in, before continuing, “You don’t quite realize what’s at stake here, do you? This isn’t only your final exam. It’s also Dante’s. The organization is testing him, making sure they can trust him, the brother of a rogue and a traitor. This plan, well, most of it anyway, was his idea. If you fail and refuse to return to the organization, he fails, as well.” Faith smiled evilly. “And you know how Talon feels about failures.”
I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach. Dante was in charge of this. He’d sent Mist and Faith after us. He was responsible for Riley’s disappearance and, if things continued down this road, Garret’s death. Did he know what he was doing? Was Talon coercing him, forcing my brother to go along with their plans? If I didn’t return to the organization tonight, Dante would fail. I might never see him again. But to go back, to make sure my brother would be safe…Garret had to die.
“So, you have to ask yourself—” Faith’s voice was a croon, low and dangerous “—who is more important to you? Who are you going to save? The soldier of St. George? The greatest enemy of our kind? The human whose pitiful life span will be over in the blink of an eye?” She glanced at the kneeling soldier, a look of contempt crossing her face, before turning to me again. “Or will you choose Dante, the twin you’ve known all your life? The dragon whose only concern, from the moment you ran away from Talon, has been your safety? He’s waiting for you, Ember. Everyone is. We all want you to come home.”
I was suffocating, struggling to breathe, to make an impossible choice that wasn’t really a choice at all. I couldn’t shoot Garret—there was no way I could do that. But if I didn’t, they would kill us both anyway. And who knew what Talon would do to Dante.
I looked down at the weapon in my hand, then back to Garret, kneeling on the floor in front of the firing squad. His expression was blank, carefully guarded, though his eyes were bleak as they met mine.
Faith eased closer, her dark gaze burning the side of my face, as her voice dropped to a soothing murmur. “You can start over,” she said. “Everything you’ve done will be erased, all your crimes against Talon will be forgiven. You belong with your own kind. But, if you don’t pass this test, you will die. And Dante will suffer for your failure.” She leaned back, her expression confident, as if everything had already been decided. “I think you know what you have to do.”
And suddenly, I did.
I shivered and closed my eyes, willing my hands to stop shaking. “If…if I do this,” I whispered, “can you promise that Dante will be safe? That none of this will impact his place in the organization? And that we’ll be able to see each other again, without consequence?”
Faith’s voice was full of triumph. “You have our word.”
“Okay.” My voice came out choked. Raising my head, I met the gaze of the soldier in front of me, knowing he hadn’t glanced away from us the whole time. Garret watched me, gray eyes resigned, the look of someone who expected to die.