“No,” Ridley whispered. Something solid and cold pressed in around her. The ventilation duct. She was human again, though she hadn’t consciously let go of her magical form. “Nonononono.” Her face was hot. Cold sweat dampened her palms. Her thoughts stalled, rammed into one another, like cars in a pileup. This didn’t make sense. Nothing made sense. Archer was on her side. He had helped her escape the city. Helped her escape the Shadow Society’s base. He had lived with elementals for months.
Her mind raced back to everything that had happened, every incident that proved Archer couldn’t possibly be part of the Shadow Society, but everything was becoming too tangled for her to clearly examine.
“This isn’t happening,” she whispered, pressing her cold hands against her cheeks. They had spent hours—hours upon hours upon hours—talking, daydreaming, kissing, planning. He cared about her. She knew it. She’d felt it in the depths of her being. And yet there he was, dropping casually into a seat right beside the director of the organization that wanted to slaughter her kind, his dark gaze utterly devoid of the gentle warmth she’d become accustomed to seeing whenever his eyes found hers.
He was supposed to be on her side! But he had somehow avoided capture when she, Callie and Malachi ended up inside a cell in the Shadow Society’s base. He was the only one who’d been ‘taken’ when the Shadow Society attacked the reserve. An attack that happened now, mere weeks after Archer had joined them, when their location had remained hidden for years.
Ridley’s wild thoughts stilled, leaving a cold, empty space for the horrible truth to finally settle into place. She had always known what an excellent act Archer Davenport could put on. But somehow, she’d been foolish enough to fall for it anyway.
I warned you not to throw yourself at my brother’s feet.
“First,” Alastair Davenport said to the room, “there’s something I need to address.”
What excellent timing you have.
“A question of loyalty.”
They’re going to catch you.
Lilah had not been talking about the cops. She knew what Ridley was. She knew about elementals and the Shadow Society. The whole Davenport family obviously knew. It made sense now that the button Lilah pressed had produced no sound. It probably wasn’t an alarm. She wouldn’t have wanted to alert security. She didn’t want the cops to catch Ridley. She wanted the Shadow Society to catch her. That button was probably what had released arxium into the air.
“My son’s loyalty, to be specific,” Alastair Davenport continued. “Some of you have been spreading rumors about betrayal—” his hard gaze fell on Jude Madson for a moment “—but Archer has proven himself time and again. He has remained close to the elemental girl who revealed herself at a party several weeks ago. Pretended to assist in her escape so he could travel with her to one of the elemental communities further north. You fools already screwed things up once when you went after them in the wastelands after you were told to let them go—”
“That was because my son discovered—”
“—and now you’ve further messed things up,” Alastair said loudly, speaking over the mayor as if he were a child, “by convincing us to act too soon. If you want to talk about betrayal, Jude, then perhaps we should be looking at you.”
The mayor’s face reddened. “How dare you.”
“Well, either your informant fed you misinformation, or you’re secretly acting against us. Which is it?”
“My loyalty lies with the society,” the mayor growled.
“As does Archer’s,” Alastair replied. “But you seem to have forgotten that while he’s been busy with his long-term undercover operation. This isn’t about finding a handful of communities and getting rid of them. This is about learning their plans to fight back and taking them all out before—”
“Information your son was taking far too long to pass on,” the mayor interrupted. “If I hadn’t heard from that other—”
“You’re aware communication is a little difficult when there are no networks out in the wastelands, Jude,” Archer said to the mayor, speaking up for the first time. Part of Ridley had been desperate to hear his voice, but now his disrespectful drawl sent another crack running through her barely held-together composure.
“Clearly not impossible, since I heard from someone else,” Jude Madson answered.
“Forgive me for waiting until I had all the information we required before acting. You convinced the rest of the society to attack all those communities, and where did that get us? Nowhere. Clearly someone warned them what was coming, and most of them got away. You should have let me go too. Now you have no one on the inside.”
“Because I believed you had betrayed us. I still think you’ve turned. You were certainly convincing,” the mayor sneered, “when you broke into our base, attacked your fellow society members, and freed those elementals.”
“Of course I was convincing. That was the point. And I’m ready to be convincing again if I have to be.”
The mayor shook his head. “I don’t buy it. Lawrence gathered plenty of evidence of your betrayal before he was murdered. That evidence was mysteriously destroyed soon afterwards, but my wife will happily sit here and tell you all about it. Lawrence told her—”
“The evidence that all points to the fact that I was doing what I was asked to do?” Archer demanded, leaning forward as he raised his voice. “We want to wipe them out, don’t we? All of them—and their disgusting, unnatural magic. If a few of us end up as casualties along the way, so be it.”
Ridley physically recoiled from his words, almost banging her head on the ventilation duct surface just above her. Archer was so callous, so cold. So full of hate. How had he hidden this from her? How had she been so blind?
Something seemed to tighten around her throat, making it harder to breathe. She felt smothered, suffocated. The gas mask was too uncomfortable. The backpack was too heavy. The metal tunnel she hunched inside was too small.
She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t stay and listen. Couldn’t be still. Couldn’t be silent. She had to move, had to get out, had to get OUT! She managed to focus enough to become air once more, and then, in a desperate rush, she was gone.