17. Chapter 17
Chapter seventeen
We’re leaving now.
The steel in Micah’s words doesn’t unsettle me, but the urgency with which he acts gleams with the heat of sunlight over a volcanic eruption. He captures my hand and starts walking toward the training room door, allowing me no room to debate or decline following.
I blink, and we’re at the exit, and he pulls me closer. “Do not talk about this anywhere but my quarters and outside of the garrison. And even then, use caution. Understand?”
The severeness of how he speaks his command gives me pause, and I nod my agreement. “I understand.”
His attention cuts through me, sharp as a blade meant to cut an enemy, as if he seeks the truth in my answer.
Seconds tick by, and he must have decided I’m either telling the truth or that I’m worth the risk, as he opens the door and motions me forward.
With my heart playing a marching band’s explosion, I step outside.
He’s instantly by my side, and he doesn’t find a reason to stand in one place.
He’s moving, and I am instinctively in step, traveling the narrow hallways toward our destination, the twists and turns of our path seemingly eternal.
My mind swims through dark shadows and sharp warnings, replaying everything that has happened and what it may or may not say about me.
No matter how I twist and turn inside my own thoughts, I land no place comfortable.
A thick breath is lodged in my throat when we reach his door, and I’m stunned as he pulls me in front of him, his big body at my back even as presses his hand to the panel.
I’m bursting in every possible way when the door clicks open.
I rush into the foyer and past the threshold, waiting on him when he joins me.
I whip around and face off with him. “Are you guarding me from them, or them from me?”
“If I knew that answer, I’d already have decided on any action other than leaving.”
His reply is salt in an open wound, and I pant out a breath. “You think I’m evil.”
He surprises me then, stepping into me, his hands settling on my shoulders, his eyes meeting mine. “No,” he says. “I do not feel darkness in you.”
Of course he doesn’t, or he wouldn’t have brought me here, but still, there is no relief in me, not even a tiny fleck of anything remotely resembling relief. “What if it’s hiding? What if—”
“Don’t do that. Don’t go there. We’ll find answers.”
“What does it mean to you?”
“The serpent is never good, but to me, it means Jeremy’s attached himself to you in some way that must be shed. Made himself your familiar.”
My mind chases the past and tracks back to the old woman. I’d just signed Jeremy. Had he marked me? Had he claimed me in some way? “I need to be rid of him. How do I get rid of him?”
“I don’t even know if he’s the problem. We need to start by leaving the garrison and seeking out someone who can help.”
“Who? Who can help?”
“No one here, that’s for damn sure. We leave in exactly twelve hours, when the community is asleep.”
“Twelve hours?! A lot could happen in twelve hours.”
“Not if we stay in the room.”
I blink in confusion. “Wait. You want us to stay in this room together for twelve hours?”
“I’ll go out to make a showing at some point. Otherwise, yes.”
“What are we going to do for twelve hours?”
“Eat and read,” he says, walking toward the kitchen. “I’m starving, and we need to find the answer to our problem sooner than later. If the books can do that for us, we’ll both be better for it.” He opens the refrigerator. “Sandwiches will have to do. It’s all I have.”
I cross to the table. “You don’t believe the answer is in those books, or you wouldn’t insist we leave.”
He plops a loaf of bread and a package of lunch meat on the table. “We both need to eat. It’s been a long time since breakfast.”
“It’s been a few hours. Talk to me.”
I’m offered his back in reply as he wrangles two plates, mustard, a knife, and bottled water before he sits down at the table. “Micah,” I plead, excruciatingly aware of him knowing more than he’s telling me.
His brow inches upward, and he simply looks at me, the glint in his eyes telling me I’m losing this battle, maybe more than I know.
I sit down. He opens the loaf of bread. For ten minutes, we sit there and go through the motions of making sandwiches and eating them while I remain ridiculously aware of his every move, and not simply because he is the Overseer and the man who appears to hold the understanding of my very self in his hands.
And this damn familiarity between us is somehow connected to whatever is happening to me.
I feel that in my bones. We’re connected. I know it. He knows it. Maybe Celine hates me because she knows it, too.