In the very next moment, Charisma enters the room with clothes piled in her arms. Her eyes shift from me to Giffen. We both look primed to kill each other. She hurriedly comes to me, getting between us in an attempt to shield me from him. “I brought the clothes,” she says in a voice that’s an octave higher than normal due to fear. I rise from the chair, ready to get on with this. She turns toward Giffen, “Please excuse us while she changes.”
His handsome jaw hardly unlocks as his mutters, “I’m not letting her out of my sight.” He crosses his arms over his chest, leaning against the wall.
With reddening cheeks, Charisma faces me. “It’s okay,” I murmur to her. I shrug off the black jacket, exposing my silver crested starcross armband Trey gave me. Giffen is at my side immediately, lifting my arm and tugging it off me.
“What’s this?” he asks.
“It’s mine!” I try to grab it back from him. He moves it out of my reach above my head.
He backs away from me and studies the starcross in his hands. “I can’t let you keep this,” he replies.
“You can’t keep it! It’s mine!” I retort with a thread of desperation in my tone. “It doesn’t belong to you.” My stomach churns. I’ll never get it back now that I’ve shown that it means something to me. I know better.
Giffen surprises me. “I’ll keep it for you.” There’s honesty in his high handedness. “You’ll get it back. I promise. Now hurry. We’re running out of time.”
Taking the tight legginglike pants from Charisma, I slip them on underneath the lilac dress. I turn away from Giffen, ready to pull the dress over my head, when I feel his hand on my back. I shy away from his touch, looking over my shoulder. He’s staring at my back. I try to see what has caught his attention. Long, deep scratches are almost entirely scabbed over and rapidly healing themselves. I must’ve gotten them when Giffen hit me with his telekinetic energy. It had lifted me off my feet and I’d landed on my back, skidding across the ground.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you like that.” He’s not lying.
I turn away from him, lifting the ruined silky fabric over my head so that my entire back is exposed to his remorseful gaze. Stew in it, lost boy, I think, while putting the black blouse over my head. I grab the dirty, black jacket from the chair, easing it on gingerly. As I turn around, I gather up the front of my shirt, wiping it with the sweat, dirt, and blood from my face. It makes a disgusting pattern. “There,” I say to myself, letting my shirt drop down again. “Now I look like I’ve been through something.”
“We have to go,” Giffen growls. He’s angry with himself for showing me emotions he shouldn’t have in the first place.
Hurriedly, I turn to Charisma. “Will you do something for me?”
Her violet eyes brim with tears. “Anything. I will do anything for you,” she assures me, not even knowing what it is I’ll ask her to do.
“Will you give Trey one of your Crystal Clear Moments? The saer?”
She nods her head in confusion. “Of course,” she whispers.
“And will you tell him it’s from Kitten?”
“Yes. Anything else?”
“Yes,” I lean near her ear and whisper, “Please tell him that I’ll take care of his soul until he finds us. I’ll be expecting him soon.”
Charisma starts to cry. She hugs me, forgetting about my hurt back. I endure it, returning her hug.
“Take care of Victus and the family,” I whisper to her.
“I will,” she whispers back.
When I straighten, I look at Giffen and nod. He takes me by my arms, pulling them behind my back once more and cuffing me. “Let’s go.”
He takes me outside toward the falconlike ship. Ground sconces illuminate the pathways leading to it. There are also floating orb lights hovering several feet above us, casting a soft phosphorus glow all around. It’s nearly dawn; the spectral light is shining on the horizon by the ridge. As I pass through the courtyard, armed men in Comantre uniforms clutching machine-gun-like weapons crowd nearer, trying to get a look at me. One of them hurries over to Giffen, matching our steps. “You shouldn’t do this,” he says sternly, staring at Giffen’s profile. “It’s not right. He didn’t authorize this.”
“It’s the only way to get Astrid back,” Giffen says, looking straight ahead, never missing a step. “We need someone on the inside with eyes on the Brotherhood. She’s perfect for the job.”