don’t worry, Erik. We’ll remind you.”
“Yeah!” Cal agrees with shining eyes. He reaches me in three steps and clasps my hands in his. Despite our pretty good talk in the sector, I have to force myself not to flinch from the physical contact. “We can talk as much as we want now that you’re here. And we can work together again to take down the sectors! No one will be able to beat us with our team back together.”
My breath trips over the guilt stuck in my lungs. I try to hide it, but Ellis’s eyes narrow.
“Erik,” she says slowly. Carefully, like she’s trying not to spook a wild Feral, the vicious creatures that roam Outside. “You do know that coming back includes fighting with us, right?”
Thank the gods. She thinks I’m nervous about fighting the sector—not that I’m here as a spy. And I need to keep it that way. “Of course,” I say. “You think I’d come back just to sit around and chat?”
Ellis watches me carefully. Shadows flicker over her face from the candles, giving her an almost sinister look that doesn’t match the warring sympathy in her eyes. “Well, we can deal with that later,” she says eventually. “For now, there’s something I need you to do for me.”
I swallow, hard. She doesn’t know. She doesn’t suspect. Everything is fine. “Yeah?”
She holds out her hand, palm up. The shadows in the room shift again, and when I blink, a black butterfly is sitting in her hand. The edges are hazy like I’m looking at it through water. When Devin sees it, he smirks. Joan’s face remains neutral while Cal frowns.
“I trust you, Erik,” Ellis says in a voice that sounds more like she wants to believe that. “But I need to take precautions. You understand, don’t you?”
I nod, not trusting myself to speak.
“I’m going to put my butterfly in your shadow to keep an eye on you, make sure you’re not doing anything to betray us. It’s nothing bad—like I said, just a precaution—and it won’t hurt. I just need your permission, or my butterfly won’t be able to enter your shadow.”
Lai warned me Ellis would probably ask to monitor me as a test of loyalty—but it’s still unnerving. Knowing about it beforehand doesn’t make it any easier to say the words I know I need to. Once I agree, she’ll be able to see my every movement, hear anything I say. If I make even one mistake in getting info back to Lai and the others, Ellis will know what I’m up to. I’ll be as good as dead. But I can’t say no, or I might as well stab myself with my own sword right now.
“Yeah, sure thing.” My voice sounds steady. I think. “Do what you have to.”
Ellis smiles. Her teeth don’t show like they did before. She doesn’t move, but the butterfly takes off from her hand and flies straight for me. It lands on a section of my shadow falling across an armchair. It melts into it, but I don’t feel anything. My body doesn’t feel any different from before, either.
“That it?” I look at my hands, but there’s no change. “I thought I’d feel … something.”
Ellis laughs, and her apparent happiness from before finally returns. I try not to let out a sigh of relief. “Everyone always thinks that.”
Devin’s smirk is gone. Now he’s just glaring at me from under lowered eyebrows. “Are you sure about this, Sara? I don’t like it. I don’t trust him as far as I could throw him.”
“You can throw pretty far,” Ellis muses. Devin’s scowl deepens. “I’m sure, Devin. If Erik does anything suspicious, I’ll know about it right away.” Her eyes cut to me. She’s still smiling, but there’s an edge to it now. My heart misses a beat. “And I’m sure Erik knows what would happen if we found any reason to distrust him.”
I shrug and try to make the gesture look as careless as always. My heart pounds like crazy. “Why would I do something that stupid? Besides, it’s not like anyone back in the sector has my loyalties. Not anymore.”
“Good,” Ellis says. The edge falls away. “You’ve finally come back to us. Why don’t we catch up?”
Devin is still scowling, but I can’t read Joan’s expression. Cal is practically bouncing in place. “I’ll go make some tea,” he says. His excitement hasn’t dimmed since I got here, even though I haven’t returned his enthusiasm at all. I was expecting more