“Can’t we just head back?” I hedged.

“Annelise.” His tone told me that, no, we couldn’t.

“Fine.” I stretched up to unzip the back, and hissed as the movement tore some other part of my flesh open.

“Stop.” He snatched my elbow, halting me in midair. “What are you hiding?”

“I’m not hiding anything.”

“Then show me.” He waved his hand, ordering me to turn, so he could do my zipper.

I presented him my back, and the next sounds came loudly to me. There was the rip of Velcro, the crisp snick of the chunky, plastic zipper. The thud of my heart in my ears.

I turned back around and pulled my arms free of the suit. It was a single, fluid movement, torquing my body, but I welcomed the pain now. Anything to stop this feeling of hyper-self-awareness.

Before, Ronan had been my teacher and only my teacher. By the time our friendship had deepened, Carden was in the picture.

Carden, who loomed so large in my heart. Hell, he loomed in my bloodstream.

Carden and any breathless thoughts of Ronan were completely mutually exclusive.

But where was Carden now?

I knew where Ronan was. He was right here, helping me. Making my pulse hop in a way that had me woozy. A little woozy and a lot confused.

I still didn’t get why Ronan was here. Or where Carden had gone. Or why he’d gone.

I couldn’t wrap my mind around any of it. So I didn’t. Instead, I went through the motions, watching Ronan—and me with Ronan—as though from afar. Trying to figure out what on earth was going on. He was looking at my belly, hmming and poking. A fresh zing of pain brought me back quick enough.

I flinched away. “Easy.”

He ignored me…of course. “The salt water would be painful—”

I shifted away to give him a good glare. “You think?”

“Aye.” As he knelt closer, he tried to hide his smirk, but I spotted it. “The salt burns, but it has antibacterial properties.” He poked and prodded a bit more, testing the edges of the gash, pushing together, pressing down.

“Ow.” I hated the tone of my voice, but something about this blatant attention made me peevish. I didn’t care about my injury. I didn’t want to hear about it. I wanted him to explain what he was doing, like, in a fundamental way. “Do you have to do that?”

“It needs to close back up. How well did you clean this?”

“I cleaned it.” As best I could, stealing solitary moments in the girls’ room without anyone seeing. People seeing me with bruises was one thing, but I’d become very secretive about anything that might betray a weakness. I could’ve gone to the infirmary—there was such a thing—but seeking help was yet another way to mark yourself as vulnerable. We studied combat medicine for this very reason. We were trained to be tough. To endure extreme conditions. Extreme pain. We should be tending our wounds ourselves.

I wouldn’t need to be tending my wounds if Carden were around. I felt a flicker of resentment and snatched on to it. Anger was so much easier than loneliness or sadness. I pushed Ronan’s hand aside and felt around the wound. It was cool. Not swollen. “It’s not infected.”

“Keep direct pressure on it.” He put my hands over my belly, then took my shoulders and guided me off my seat. “Move.” He opened the bench storage and began digging through. “You need to keep it dressed.” He pulled out a first-aid kit—it looked ancient, the red plastic box faded almost pink—and fished through it till he found a yellowed roll of gauze and a sterile cotton pad. “Hands up.” His voice was devoid of emotion as he staunched the wound with the cotton and began to wind the ribbon of gauze around and around my belly.

A silence followed, and it became unbearable. With nothing more clever to say, I finally told him, “Thanks.”

Weak. Lame.

“You should’ve just told me,” he said flatly. “You didn’t have to do this today. Why do you continually insist on putting yourself in harm’s way?” His hands stilled on my belly. “Have you ever once considered telling me the truth without hesitation?”

“I tell you the truth all the time,” I protested.

He looked up and pierced me with those green eyes.

“Most of the time,” I amended. “Think about it, Ronan. If I told you I wanted to get a look at that gate, you would’ve hidden the oars and made me swim out here myself.”

He’d been fighting it, but a reluctant smile finally quirked one corner of his mouth. “Probably true.”

“And, anyway, you were right to challenge me.”

The other corner of his mouth curled until it became an actual symmetrical smile. He tied off the gauze. “Indeed?”

My eyes swept past him as I considered, taking in the vast sea. It was the color of a spilled inkpot. Or a bruise.

But not the sky. The sky was so bled of color, the white band of the horizon seemed barely able to touch down.

My gaze returned to Ronan. Drawn to him, as I’d been drawn on that first day we met. He’d been an anchor for me since I’d arrived. “I needed this now more than ever,” I told him.

Little did he know, my words referred to so much more than swimming.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

I needed to get into that sea gate. Tom had said boats pull up to unload. Surely it wasn’t just vampires and Trainees who used it. I doubted those vampires did anything so banal as unload cargo. I had a great big picture in my head of Master Dagursson hauling crates like a dockworker.

Not.

Surely they had cooks and maids and scullions and whomever else people employed in castles. I thought of the vampires I’d seen on the other island. They had an army of servants. I didn’t believe these vamps mopped their own floors. Someone did it for us girls; someone had to be doing it for them, too. And that vampires’ keep was way bigger than any Acari dorm—they had to employ dozens of someones.

Villagers. It had to be villagers.

I thought of the few I’d met. It was village men who managed the airstrip. Villagers who’d ferried us to the other island. They had to have villagers who helped in the castle, too. How did they enter? I doubted they sashayed through the front door.

Good old Tom. He’d know. Which is how I ended up poking around the Draug pens, but he was nowhere to be seen. The Draug were there, though, snarling and moaning in their cages as I neared. It must’ve been the scent of my healing wound. I pulled off my gloves, and something about winter’s bite helped me clear my head. Staved off the fear. It must’ve worked, because the Draug made no more than those basic complaints.

My feet crunched through day-old snow as I searched all over, but there was no sign of Tom. Could he be out feeding the animals? He had goats—apparently, their blood was enough to keep the Draug sated—and he kept a paddock of them behind his cottage. I didn’t know what was involved in keeping livestock. Did he have to exercise them? Take them someplace for milking? I’d grown up in suburban Florida—how should I know?

I wandered to the paddock, climbing onto the fence for a bird’s-eye view, but there was no sign of anyone.

No sign, that is, until Toby appeared. I hopped down and instinctively grabbed a long-handled tool that’d been leaning against the fence. “Hey.”

My farm boy. Toby-the-Trainee. My assignment. He looked as perplexed as I felt. “What are you doing here?” he asked.

“I could ask the same of you.” I tightened my grip on the wooden handle, grateful I’d already removed my gloves. My hands were growing numb, but if it came to a fight, numbed fingers were a lot more nimble than gloved ones.

He didn’t attack, though. He just gave me a dopey smile. “You look like a witch.”

“Huh?” I glanced at my impromptu weapon. It was an old pitchfork, with three long, thin, rusted prongs.

“Holding that dung fork,” he said. “You look like a witch.” His tone was easy, not aggressive at all. Was this a trick? Was my dim farmhand actually a conniving supergenius who was fooling me into dropping my guard?

“Actually, I feel more Amish,” I said, playing along. I hefted the fork high, trying to read his expression. We were alone. How was this going to play out? But then his words registered and I gave an involuntary smile. “Wait. What did you call this? I thought it was a pitchfork.”

“Nah, that there’s a dung fork.” Then he nodded to the paddock, which upon closer inspection, did appear rather dung-y. “You know, scoop it up, spread it out. Makes good fertilizer.”

“Oh. Ew.”

This was the guy I was supposed to kill? Mr. Dung Fork? I probably could take him down pretty easily. He had a good hundred pounds on me, but in this case, all that mattered was who had more IQ points.

“You never seen a dung fork?”

I shook my head. No, but I’ve met a boy dim as one.

My thoughts were churning. I had to “assassinate” him. “I still say it’s a pitchfork.”

Toby laughed and kicked a muddy patch into the slushy ground. The guy wasn’t acting like he was about to attack. In fact, he wasn’t acting combative in the slightest bit.

But Alcántara’s words rang in my head. In our last class, he’d been furious with me. How serious are you, querida? And, I’m beginning to think you’ve lost heart. He’d never take me on as his assistant if I couldn’t complete the semester’s only assignment.

A snow flurry hit my cheek. One landed in my eye. I wiped my face, clearing my head. I couldn’t think of him as Toby. He was homework.

He gazed past me. “Looks like weather is coming.”

Weather is coming. It was exactly what a farm boy would say. Like something Emma would’ve said. Suddenly, this felt too normal. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t deal with this chitchat.

“Where are you from, anyway? Because where I’m from in Nebras—”

“Guess what?” I snapped. “I don’t care where you’re from. I don’t care where you were born. Because guess what? This is where we’ll all die.”