You know I can’t.
WELL, YOU’RE GOING TO HAVE TO.
Tam—
NO, LINH. YOU DON’T GET IT. I LIKE IT HERE. DO YOU HEAR ME? I. LIKE. IT. HERE.
A shudder rocked Linh’s shoulders, as if she’d been physically struck. You don’t mean that.
I DO, he assured her. I REALLY, REALLY DO. I’M EVEN MAKING FRIENDS. SO FORGET YOUR PLANS AND YOUR CODES. I DON’T NEED THEM. I DON’T EVEN WANT THEM.
But—
NO! SOMEDAY YOU’LL UNDERSTAND, he told her.
I really, really won’t, Linh countered, and Sophie wondered if she was intentionally mirroring his phrasing.
WELL… THAT’S NOT MY PROBLEM! Tam insisted, and his words formed a wall, shutting out everything else Linh tried to tell him. Leaving his mind so bitingly, painfully cold that Sophie knew they couldn’t stay any longer.
Come on, Linh, Sophie thought, letting her consciousness slowly ebb away.
NO! Linh shaped her next thought into a tidal wave and slammed it into the darkness. What am I supposed to do without you?
Sophie didn’t expect Tam to answer.
But he told Linh, GO BACK TO CHORALMERE.
Tam—
GO BACK TO CHORALMERE AND STAY THERE, he thundered. AND DON’T EVER CALL FOR ME AGAIN.
Then the shadows faded and Sophie’s mind brightened and warmth poured in, like rays of dawn melting away the night—snuffing out the stirring echoes and leaving her head still and steady and silent.
“He’s gone,” Sophie said out loud, severing the final threads of the connection in case Gethen had somehow found a way to eavesdrop on that pocket of mental conversation.
“I know.” Linh’s voice sounded both watery and wobbly, and when Sophie’s eyes came into focus, she found Marella and Maruca pulling Linh into a hug.
“Are you okay?” Sophie asked, knowing it was a pointless question. “I’m sure Tam only said that stuff because he was trying to protect you. He did the same thing last time—”
“No, he meant it.” Tears streamed down Linh’s cheeks, and she let them fall as she added, “I didn’t realize how hard it would be to hear him like that.”
“Like what?” Marella asked.
“So… stubborn and hopeless.”
“Hopeless?” Sophie repeated.
Linh stared at the sky. “I think he’s giving up.”
Maruca hugged her tighter. “Didn’t he understand that you were ready to rescue him?”
“He did. But… he didn’t want me to. He told me to ‘stay out of the water,’ which wasn’t part of our code—but it’s what he said a lot when I first manifested and he knew I was about to make a mess of everything.”
She dried her tears with her sleeve, but more replaced them immediately.
“You didn’t make a mess of everything,” Sophie tried to tell her.
Linh just looked away. “We can’t reach out to him again. He won’t respond—and he’ll never cooperate. He doesn’t want me to find him.”
Sophie kept her face angled down, trying to hide her relief.
Even with Maruca’s force fields, she couldn’t see how any rescue attempt would end in anything other than disaster, nor could she imagine any possible scenario where Sandor would let them try.
“Why would he want you to go to Choralmere?” Sophie wondered, recognizing the name of the Song family’s estate.
Tam had almost as many mommy and daddy issues as Keefe did—and he’d always been very opposed to the idea of giving his parents a single second of their time, now that he and Linh were free of them.
Linh stumbled to her feet, swiping at her smudged eyeliner. “He doesn’t. That was the code.”
“The code for when he’s in danger?” Marella asked.
Linh shook her head. “No. The code for when I am.”
TWENTY-TWO
DO YOU THINK TAM WAS just trying to scare you?” Sophie asked as she watched Linh pace around Calla’s Panakes tree, taking slow, meticulous steps—as if Linh were trying to match her previous footprints with each revolution. “That way you’d abandon your rescue plan for him? Or to make sure you wouldn’t risk reaching out to him again?”
“Or maybe those things are why he thinks you’re in danger?” Maruca suggested. “And he was trying to tell you to lay off, so you’ll be safe again.”
Linh ignored Wynn and Luna as they trotted up beside her—even when they made some seriously adorable squeaky whinnies. “If any of that were Tam’s reasoning, he would’ve just reminded me of the Neverseen’s threats. Using the code means he doesn’t want the Neverseen to know he’s warning me. So I’m pretty sure that means they really are planning to come after me, either to kill me or capture me—or maybe to injure me the way they did to you and Fitz.”
She said it so matter-of-factly that Sophie