“Where are we?” Lily yawned, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

“Touching down. We should be there any minute now.” I pulled my hair back in a ponytail, already gearing up for a fight. Her volatile moodswings had been the only thing predictable about her these past months.

“Right…” She drawled it out, frowning to herself.

I took a deep breath and kept my eyes focused on the back of the seat. I needed to keep her calm until we landed.

“I was so worried about you and Alexandra making it back in time— Where is she?” she asked, so innocently…except that there was nothing innocent about her. Not anymore. If she knew what they’d done, and that I’d gone along with it, she would tear this plane apart. She wasn’t stable anymore, now that the killing gene was active, and only time would tell if she harbored my particular brand of damning urges and destructive tendencies. Better not to find out here, though.

“She’s in the bathroom,” I said carefully, considering my words.

She nodded and turned to look out the window. Daizlei rose up to greet us as the plane descended well within the school’s walls.

“She’s been in there a long time. Maybe I should go check on her.” She picked at the broken stubs that passed for her nails, glancing back at the bathroom anxiously.

“She’s fine, Lily. Just grab your stuff, and we can meet her at dinner tonight.” I tried hard to keep my voice nonchalant as I stood and swung my bag over my shoulder then held out a hand to help her. Blair stood next to me, collected as ever. My silent shadow.

“I really think I should check. Even for her, this is a little abnormal—” She tried to step around me.

“Come on, Lily.” I grabbed her hand and pulled her before she could process what was happening. Blair followed along with her bag and came up on her other side.

“What— Selena, stop. What are you doing?” she stammered, panic rising.

I had to get her out of here. Move, I thought, and the crowd parted. I walked quickly, leaving before people could realize their feet hadn’t moved of their own accord.

“Oh my god,” she whispered, head flipping back and forth between Blair and me. Ten feet. That was all we had to clear, and then we would be outside.

“She’s not here, is she?” Her voice was rising. I knew the shift was coming before I saw it.

“Blair, let go of her,” I murmured, descending the stairs. The crowd only thickened, but Blair stayed a few steps behind us to keep people back.

“Where is she?” she yelled.

“Selena?” Lucas probed, but I didn’t have time for him.

“She’s coming, but I need you to take a deep breath and try to think about this rationally.”

Her feet slammed into the ground, unmovable. “You told me she was here. I saw her get on the plane. Where is she?” she screamed, consumed by emotions to strong for her to temper.

I stood facing her with one hand curled around her arm as I contemplated throwing Alec under the bus. “She’s not here, Lily. She’s in Italy, where she’s been the entire summer. She’s coming back, though, as soon as it’s safe for her to leave,” I said calmly, not looking away from her frightened brown eyes. It killed me to see the madness there, both the killing gene and the other. She thought she’d been hallucinating.

“I-I saw her though. I saw her, Selena. She walked right up to me…” Her voice trailed off as the hurt turned inward.

I grabbed her other arm and shook it.

“You weren’t going to leave, and we needed to get out of there. I didn’t want to lie to you, but I didn’t have another choice.” I spoke slowly, watching her eyes change as she realized what had actually happened.

“You always have a choice, and you chose to lie to me. There was no discussion. You just played me.” The anger was rising again, building to crescendo so strong she wouldn’t be able to control it. Her eyes turned black, and the ink crept through her veins. The darkness was coming.

“She didn’t play you, I did.”

I whipped around to see Alec standing on the edge of the circle that separated us from them—the normals, the Supernaturals who didn’t have the gene or great power. “What the hell are you doing?”

“My sister was attacked by a Vampire yesterday, and your sister,” he pointed to me, “saved her.” Lily watched him with a strange fascination. “She’s going through the transition, which is why I was carrying her in the airport. Do you remember that, Lily?” He waited, we both did, to see what she would do.

“I saw my sister there. She hugged me and walked with me onto the airplane,” she said, unable to separate real from imagined.

“You saw her because I wanted you to see her.” His golden eyes were fixed on her.

“Why? Why would you show me my sister if she wasn’t there?” Her voice sounded small, childlike. It killed me to see her this way, so broken, the damage more than I was sure she could bear.

“My sister was hurting, and I needed to get her back here. So she was safe. Do you understand that, Lily? That she was hurt and needed help?” He was telling her the truth in the most basic and manipulative way. He was the Fortescues’ servant, though, and I suppose that was the entirety of his job on a good day.

“But you lied to me. You made me see someone who wasn’t there. Someone who may never make it back here, or be safe again.” Her eyes hardened. I felt the power rise up within her as she glared at him. “I don’t care who was hurt, you had no right to do what you did. You had no right!”

I gripped her arms in an iron hold as she tried to take a step forward. Her dark eyes swiveled from him to me, and the black tendrils of her power reached out. I threw a wall up around us to keep anyone from intervening.

“Get out of my way!” she snarled.

“Not happening. You’re two seconds from killing someone. You need to rein it in, Lily. Control the darkness.” I ground my teeth as the tendrils wrapped around me.

“It’s so heavy. The pain just weighs on me, Selena. It’s a suffering I can’t see past, no matter what I do. I need someone to understand. To hurt like I hurt,” she whispered, continuing to take from me, but I wouldn’t falter. I wouldn’t fail. I’d already failed once, when the demons took her. I wouldn’t let their ghosts take her again.

“I know you do, Lily, better than anyone. You have to control it, though. Control the monster. I can teach you to give and take pain in moderation, to never sink this low again. You have to control it, though, otherwise someone’s going to die.”

She sighed in almost contentment, and then…I felt her shift. Something went wrong, and the black energy that had been reaching toward me was suddenly writhing to return to her, but she didn’t seem to know how to stop as she screamed. “Oh my god, it hurts! Take it back! Please. Please! I’ll do anything, just make it end.”

I tried to pull away, to cut off her feeding, but I couldn’t break the link. She sobbed, hot tears rolling down her face.

“I can’t break it, Lily. You need to control it. Control the pain. Let it go.”

She paused, her unseeing eyes staring into nothing as she gripped my wrists.

“Let it go,” I whispered.

She took a step back and dropped her hands. Releasing the hold.

Black tendrils swarmed her. Crawling up her arms and back under her skin, they dissipated until no trace remained but her coal-colored eyes.

“I thought I knew darkness,” she murmured. Her knees shook so badly she fell to the ground, kneeling before me.

I crouched down in front of her, but kept my hands to myself. She was calming the storm. She was putting her own fire out. She was learning she could do it.

“I thought I knew terror. Thought my pain was too great.” Her eyes focused on mine, and I didn’t back down. She needed to know that I was here, that I wasn’t afraid. “I know nothing.” Her eyes cleared, back to the dark, unwavering brown they were supposed to be. “How do you keep it at bay?” she asked earnestly, looking at me like I was the very god she’d been waiting for, the one with the answers, the one who could free her. “How can you laugh with such dark thoughts? How can you smile?”

“I’ll teach you.” I held out my hand, giving her the opportunity to decide, to weigh her options.

“You can teach me to do that? You can free me?” Her fear of being disappointed was almost tangible, but for the first time in months, she had hope. If I could stop myself from killing people because of guilt, she could save herself with hope.

“No. I can only show you how.” I paused, tilting her chin up to make her look at me when her eyes fell. “Because you can free yourself.”

She wrapped her arms around my neck as I dropped the wall separating us from the rest of the world. Cold eyes stared at me over Lily’s shoulder. Professor Vonlowsky stood proud and arrogant next to Alec Hunter, clearly waiting for me.

“What do you want?”

“Pleasant as always, Foster. Headmaster Daizlei and his guests would like to have a word with you. Privately.” He motioned to the mess of a girl in my arms. I turned to where Blair had been moments before I’d cut off the world. Lucas stood next to her, his hard gaze unflinching as he stared down the messenger, even with his sister curled up in his arms. Blair was wearing her bored, prep-school expression, but she cocked her eyebrow at me, a silent question.

“Take her back to her room and sit with her until I’m done, please. I’d rather she not be left alone.” I stood, pulling Lily up with me.

Both she and Blair glared at Alec as my cousin led her back to Building Two. Professor Vonlowsky tapped his watch impatiently.

“Lucas, please just take Tori back to my room, and I’ll come find you when this is over.” I wanted to push him. To tell him to go, because I didn’t even know why he was here in the first place. His sister was going through the transition. She was his priority. I could take care of me and mine.

His eyes flashed, and I remembered his little discovery about reading my mind.

“That’s what you get for listening uninvited. Not always so pleasant, is it?”

He turned and walked away before I could continue mentally berating him.

“What are you waiting for? We both know that this is a summons and not a request. May as well get it over with.” I motioned for Vonlowsky and Alec to lead the way.

“You may want to drop the attitude, Foster. Council Member Fortescue is even less forgiving than I.” He smirked, holding open the door to the clock tower where Headmaster Daizlei’s office was.

“Fortescue?” I asked, turning to Alec. “Your mistress is here, and you neglected to mention this because…?”

“Because what she chooses to do or where she goes is none of your business.” The harshness in his features returned. With the way he held himself, the tightness in his jaw, I couldn’t help but wonder how fond he really was of her. Maybe a little too fond.

Vonlowsky gave the giant oak three sharp knocks, and the doors swung open. Someone was expecting us.

“Selena, darling, it’s been far too long.”