I offer him a twisted smile. “This world’s Elodie hid it well, didn’t she? You know what it’s like. Bad enough even when you have an esteemed history behind you. Mom managed to get me into Luminary, but to everyone there I was a mutt who didn’t belong, whose unhinged mother had tried to scam one of the most prominent families in the lucent community.”
Salvatore eyes me hesitantly. “You still knew us, in your… reality? We were there?”
I shrug as well as I’m able to in my bindings. “You and Byron didn’t really pay attention to me, definitely never in agood way. Cole was a prick as soon as he started teaching, just like here it sounds like.”
My smile sharpens as I aim it at our professor. “My only real friend, my best friend, was Asher, because he was the only one at Luminary in a similar position to me. And even you thought I was beneath him.”
Cole sputters a guffaw. “Okay, now it’s obvious you’re spinning fables. If my brother was your best friend, why are you acting like he’s dirt under your shoe? You’ve either ignored him or lashed out at him every time he’s been near you in the past several weeks, even after our bond sparked.”
The words snag in my throat. My whole body balks.
But I have to admit this part too, don’t I?
The only person this secret protects is me. They deserve to know.
My voice comes out rougher than before. I compel myself to seek out Asher’s gaze. “I’m sorry. This version of you—you don’t know me, and I didn’t want you to, because I was scared…” I have to drag my eyes away before they start to burn.
I focus on Cole and his smoldering animosity instead. He’ll probably like this part, if only because it’ll give him an actual reason to resent me.
“When I was seventeen, sometimes I’d go over to your neighborhood to meet up with Asher. One evening I had to stay at school late but I was hoping to catch him anyway—I got to the parking lot by the bank and the library, and while I was heading across it… someone tackled me and started stabbing me. They ran off, and I would have died, but Asher found me. He was trying so hard to heal me… He took off his gloves to work the ephemera better and accidentally touched my skin.”
“The match sparked,” Byron fills in, his tone unreadable.
“Yeah.” My gaze drops to my lap. “And so did my glim. Ididn’t tell you what it is because Ihateit; I wish I could erase it…”
Salvatore makes a noise that sounds way too eager. “You do know! What is it?”
I grimace. “The best I’ve been able to determine, it heals anything that’s wrong with me physically… by drawing energy from someone else nearby. And in the process of drawing the energy it needs, it inflicts whatever problems it’s healing in me on the person it’s stealing from.”
My throat closes up completely. My matches remain silent as I gather myself. “So that… that happened. All of a sudden, I had all this magical energy rushing into me, and the pain went away—and then I realized the stab wounds had appeared all over Asher’s back instead, and he was bleeding out, and…”
I pause to blink hard at the tears that are welling up. The final part of my explanation sounds feeble to my ears. “By the time I’d recovered enough to understand what was going on, he was dead. I killed him. I never wanted—I never would have—but I did.”
Cole stares at me, totally rigid. Apparently I’ve shocked the snark right out of him.
“Fuck,” Salvatore mutters, which about sums up the situation.
It doesn’t feel right to leave my explanation there. “I’ve been trying to avoidallof you the entire time I’ve been here. I hurt Asher the worst, but I screwed up all of your lives—Salvatore and Byron got cut off by their families when they decided to keep an outcast as a match, and Cole, obviously losing Asher was horrible… I didn’t want to mess up anything here. The only reason I sparked our bond was that Salvatore would have died otherwise.”
When I look at the mafia heir, his lips have parted, but it takes a moment before any sound comes out. “You knew.”
“I knew we were matches. I knew what your glim is andthat it’d probably help us get out of the river when it kicked in.” My gaze slides to Byron. “I knew yours too, which is why I knew it’d be safe to wake it up as long as we had some shelter overhead and no one else around.”
“You also knew,” Salvatore says abruptly, “about—when we were sparring—and…”
He trails off with a scowl at the men around us. The things I shouldn’t have known about him he doesn’t wantthemknowing either.
Byron’s fingers flex at his side. “Yes. There’ve been other things you’ve said…”
Cole throws his hands in the air. “This is completely ridiculous. I can’t believe any of you are accepting this pack of lies?—”
“I can show you the scars on my back,” I break in. “If you’ll let me move. My glim can’t eliminate every trace of the worst injuries.”
He sneers at me. “I’m even less inclined to set you loose after you pulled out that absolute delusion of a?—”
“It’s not just up to you,” Byron snaps, and jerks his arm.
A wallop of ephemera hits me—and shatters the layer of magic that was binding me. Before Cole can whip another restraint into place, I scramble up, twist around, and yank up the back of my blouse and undershirt together.