Surely she wasn’t a good enough actress to make us believe such a convincing display of naïveté. Surely no one was that good....

Kori huffed. “You have no idea. You gonna show us your arm?”

Sera tossed her head, throwing long, brown hair back from her face. “Let me up and I’ll show you. I’m not one of them. I’ll never be one of them.” There was something new behind her eyes. Something strong and resolute. “But I’m not convinced you’re much better than they are, so let’s let your Reader friend do her thing, so I can get the hell out of here.”

“We’re not like them,” I insisted as I unbuckled the belt securing her to the chair. “I know you have no reason to believe me, but we’re nothing like them.”

“Right. You kidnapped me and tied me up, and now you’re ready to kill me. From my perspective, the distinction between you psychos and the Tower psychos isn’t exactly glaringly clear.”

“We’re not ready to kill you,” Kori said. “We’re willing to kill you. There’s a big difference.”

Sera sat straighter when I pulled the belt loose and laid it on the bed behind me. “And that difference would be?”

I slid my pocketknife between her wrists and the zip tie, and she stiffened the moment the metal touched her skin. I used my free hand to brace hers, so she wouldn’t get cut.

Her skin was soft and warm. I hesitated for just a second, so I’d have a reason to keep touching her. Then I severed the plastic with my blade and let the cut zip tie fall to the floor. I closed my knife and slid it into my pocket, and when I spun the chair around so that she faced me, she was rubbing the red marks on her wrists. And waiting for my answer.

I gripped the chair seat on either side of her legs and rolled her closer. My gaze met hers from inches away and she gasped at whatever she saw in mine, then bit her lip. “The difference is that if the Towers think you’re a threat, they will have you beaten, raped and tortured in front of an audience—they’ll call it an object lesson—before they finally give you conflicting orders and watch your body tear itself apart trying to follow both commands at once.”

She’d stopped breathing, but her gaze had only intensified. Sharpened. “You’re trying to scare me.”

“Yes. But I’m scaring you with the truth.” I tried not to think about how close she was and how badly I wanted to touch her. And how much she would hate that.

I hated knowing she’d recoil from my touch.

“They are bad people who do bad things for sport and for profit. We are good people who do bad things to protect people who can’t protect themselves from the Julia Towers of the world.” I should have let her go. I should have pushed her chair back so she could stand, but I didn’t want to let her go, and I didn’t feel particularly guilty about that.

“You’ll do bad things, too, eventually,” I said, and when she shifted in the chair, her jeans brushed my thumb. “In our world, there’s no way around that, and the fact that I met you in Julia Tower’s office tells me that you’re in that world now, for better or worse. The only thing you have left to decide is which side you want to fight for. Because you will fight, or you will die.”

Kori shrugged. “Or maybe you’ll fight, then you’ll die. That happens here, too.”

Neither of us acknowledged her. Sera’s gaze was locked in mine. At least, that’s what I thought until I tried to look away and discovered I was as trapped by the look in her eyes as she was by the doors I’d screwed shut.

The difference was that I didn’t want to escape.

I should have moved my hand, but Sera hadn’t moved her leg, so I left my hand where it was and let the heat bleeding through her denim warm one side of my thumb. “Take off your scarf,” I said, and my voice was lower than I’d meant for it to be. Deeper. I didn’t think she’d comply, but her gaze held mine while she unwound the thin material from her neck and shoulders. She handed it to me and I held it for a second, stunned by the realization that the yellow scarf from my notebook weighed nothing.

And that it smelled just like her. Clean, and vaguely sweet and enticing, in a way I could never have put into words, but would never, ever forget.

Kori cleared her throat and I blinked in surprise, then realized I was still staring at Sera from less than a foot away, and now I was fingering her silk scarf like some kind of pervert with an accessories fetish.

I rocked back onto my heels and draped her scarf over the foot of my grandmother’s bed, hoping my face wasn’t as red as it felt.

“We still need to see your arm.” I stood and Sera stared up at me, and I wished I knew her well enough to understand the intense blend of strength, fear and anger warring behind her eyes. “You want me to step outside?”

Her fingers found the hem of her shirt and her gaze hardened. “I don’t care what you do.”

But that was a lie. Women who don’t care what you do have no reason to tell you that.

I started to turn, to give her some privacy, but she turned faster. She pulled her left arm out of its long sleeve, then lifted that side of her shirt to her shoulder, revealing half of a slim, almost delicate waist above the denim clinging to the swell of her hip.

My throat felt tight. I tried not to stare. When that didn’t work, I tried not to look like I was staring. If Kori noticed, I couldn’t tell. She was fixated on Sera’s arm, as I should have been.