“Don’t touch me!” Adne jerked her arm free with much more force than she intended.
Connor stared at her, disbelief washing over his features.
“I didn’t mean . . . ,” Adne began, but she couldn’t find any words sufficient to finish.
Hating herself for it but equally desperate to get away, Adne turned and hurried out of Connor’s room.
When she was in the hall, she began to run. It wasn’t Connor she wanted to flee from. It was the voice that had been whispering ever since she’d woken. Quiet but insistent, it spoke whenever she looked at Connor.
He’s not the one you belong to.
Adne reached her room and flung the door open only to find that in her absence someone else had taken up residence. The woman, who was on her hands and knees, picking through the items in a wooden box, shrieked in surprise when Adne burst into the room.
“Sarah?” Adne stared at Sarah Doran in shock. “What are you doing here?”
Sarah paled, her eyes full of panic. She looked at the open box and then at Adne.
“Please, I have to . . .” Sarah closed the box and held it to her chest. “I don’t have a choice.”
Sarah’s eyes cast wildly about the room, reminding Adne of a terrified animal caught in a snare.
Keeping her voice calm, Adne approached Sarah slowly. “Just tell me what’s going on. I’d like to help.”
Sarah laughed and it was an unnerving sound, tinged with desperation. Adne wouldn’t have been at all surprised if Sarah had suddenly attacked her. Then Adne recognized the wooden box Sarah clung to.
“Sarah,” Adne said slowly, “when you were looking through that box, did you find what you needed?”
The woman’s eyes narrowed as if she suspected Adne was trying to trick her.
Adne walked over to the bedside table and opened its drawer. She withdrew the pendant, holding it up for Sarah to see. “I wear this sometimes,” Adne said. “So I don’t keep it in the box.”
“Please.” Sarah scrambled to her feet. “Please give it to me.”
“Tell me why you need these things,” Adne said.
Shaking her head, Sarah whispered, “I can’t say. But you must give it to me.”
“You can say, if you truly want this.” Adne dropped the pendant into her palm and closed her fist around it, hiding it from view. “I’ll make it easier for you. You’re taking the box to Logan Bane, aren’t you?”
Sarah gave a little gasp.
Adne walked over to Sarah. “Have you made arrangements to meet him somewhere?”
“Yes.”
“I’m not going to betray you.” Adne took Sarah’s hand and laid the necklace in her open palm. “I won’t tell anyone about this, but I need you to do something for me.”
Sarah’s hands were trembling. “What?”
“You’re going to take me with you.”
“I can’t do that,” Sarah said.
“Yes, you can.” Adne folded her arms across her chest. “And you will. Or you’re not leaving the Academy.”
“Don’t think I won’t fight you.” Sarah tensed, as if anticipating an attack.
“I’m sure you would,” Adne said. “But that’s not what I want. I need to talk to Logan. You know where he is, or at least where he’s going to be. I’m not going to interfere with whatever your business with Logan is. I have business of my own.”
Sarah’s gaze searched Adne’s expression, seeking some means of escape. Finding none, Sarah nodded in resignation.
“Where are you meeting him?” Adne asked, trying not to show how relieved she was that convincing Sarah to take her along hadn’t been harder. It wasn’t terribly difficult to see why Sarah had conceded so soon. Beneath her veneer of strength, Adne could glimpse how broken the woman was. Sarah Doran had very little fight left and Adne guessed she was being driven mostly by desperation.
We’re not so different.
“A town house in Boston,” Sarah told Adne. “I have an address.”
“Boston?” Adne frowned. “And how are you planning to get there?”
“I hadn’t decided—” Sarah lifted her chin, defiant despite the glaring flaw in her plan. Or the lack of a plan altogether.
Desperate. We’re both desperate.
“Well.” Adne smiled sadly. “I guess it’s a good thing I’m a Weaver.”
SABINE FELT AS though she were in the middle of a demented game of hide-and-seek that had gone on for far too long. She couldn’t find Adne anywhere and she’d been looking for hours.
When Adne hadn’t shown up to guide the tour she’d been assigned, Sabine had simply stepped in and taken over. But given their misadventure the previous day at Haldis, and what Sabine had subsequently learned from Ethan about Adne’s bizarre behavior at the training session, Sabine thought it best to find Adne and make sure she was okay.
But Adne seemed to have vanished. Connor grudgingly admitted that Adne had left his bed in the middle of the night and hadn’t returned. The Striker was in as sour a mood as Sabine had ever seen. Whether he was smarting from Adne’s rejection or the debacle of the mission, which Ethan had also relayed to Sabine, Connor proved less than helpful in Sabine’s search.
After hunting through the Academy and asking all of Adne’s acquaintances if they’d seen her, Sabine came up with nothing. She even returned to Rowan Estate on the off chance that Adne had somehow ended up at the mansion or in the gardens. But Adne hadn’t made an appearance at the Keeper estate since Sabine had left earlier in the day.
Though Sabine wondered if she should just let it be, as a sullen Connor had suggested in a much less pleasant fashion, she felt somewhat responsible for Adne. Not knowing what else to do, Sabine finally went in search of Anika, despite the fact that the hour crept close to midnight. She’d considered going to Tess, but Sabine had a nagging feeling that Adne’s disappearance was a sign of things to come. Very bad things that Anika would need to know about.
When Sabine knocked on the Arrow’s door, apology ready to be delivered before her request for help, Anika answered not cross nor groggy-eyed from being woken, but fully dressed and alert.
“It’s not a good time, Sabine,” Anika said.
“I know,” Sabine replied. “But something’s happened and I need your help. I think.”