“Okay,” I said. “Good. I was thinking you should leave, anyway, after that false alarm today. If anything happened to you while you were helping me . . .”
“I agree.” Elodie smoothed her hair behind her ears with both hands, then let it fall forward again. I wouldn’t have thought someone like Elodie would have a nervous tic, but her hair was definitely it. “But the problem is that this clue mentions the union. ‘Only through the union will my twin and I reveal the dark secret we keep in our hearts.’ Luc’s the only one here capable of fulfilling the union with Avery if it comes to that. And this seems to imply that somebody’s going to have to get married after all. Or just skip ahead to the baby making?” Elodie elbowed Luc.
I watched Stellan’s fingers tap out a suddenly quicker rhythm on the tabletop. Jack’s mouth was set in a straight line.
“What?” Elodie said. Of course she’d caught that little look. Now she stood up, so abruptly the table shook and rattled the untouched tray of pastries Colette had set out. “I knew it. I knew you weren’t telling us everything. If there’s more, we deserve to know.”
Beside me, Jack shifted in his seat. I put a silencing hand on his knee. It wasn’t his secret to tell, or mine.
Stellan dragged a hand through his hair, pulling it back from his face. “All right,” he said. “Yes, we know more than we’ve told you about the identity of the One.”
Elodie huffed out a frustrated breath. “Well? What? Is it not just whichever Circle boy Avery marries?”
Stellan shook his head and touched the scars on the back of his neck. “It’s someone specific. It’s not Luc. It’s not any of the others, either.”
Elodie, Luc, and Colette all frowned in unison. “What does that mean?” Elodie demanded.
“It’s not a member of the twelve families at all,” Stellan continued. His eyes met mine before he continued, “It’s me.”
CHAPTER 14
Elodie was the most skeptical at first, but now she grinned, then fixed me, Jack, and Stellan with pointed looks. “So you two,” she said, looking from me to Jack, “are . . . whatever you are. And you two”—her gaze flicked back to me and to Stellan—“are supposed to be getting married?”
“Yes,” I said shortly.
“Ooh, and that’s why you acted so strange when I mentioned a baby,” Elodie went on. “Now this is fun.”
“Don’t be mean, El,” Luc said distractedly. He scrubbed a hand through his already-wild brown hair. “So there’s no way I’m . . .”
“Assuming we’re right,” Jack answered, “no.”
Luc paced the galley kitchen and flicked the bamboo blinds over the sink. “That’s a relief,” he said. “Thank God. What a relief, right?”
I realized for the first time that the idea of the power appealed to Luc as much as it did to everyone else.
“At least you know you won’t have to marry me,” I said, trying to lighten the mood.
“That would have been terrible,” Luc quipped. He ran a distracted hand over my hair, and I squeezed his fingers.
“Well then. There’s no reason for Luc to stay here.” Elodie stood up, already pulling out her phone. Luc tried to protest, but she cut him off.
“You can get back to Paris and contact the museum. It makes the most sense. You’re on a plane back to France as soon as they can send one.”
• • •
Later, I stood on the upper deck watching the sun go down in spectacular fashion, all oranges and cotton candy pinks over the water. The sea breeze was fresh and cool and smelled like salt, and the hot tub behind me bubbled happily. Stellan had taken Luc to a plane, and the rest of us had been looking over the clue again. I’d had to take a breather after we got another text from the Order. Six days. But that hardly mattered since, according to the Saxons, I didn’t even have that much time. My sister had texted earlier that they were in Beijing. Apparently she and Cole had accompanied my father to try to smooth over how rude I was being by not showing up myself. But even without me there, the visits were progressing as planned, with my fate growing closer by the hour.
The doors behind me slid open, and Jack came out. “Doing okay?”
I nodded.
He shifted, staring out at the water. “That person you thought you saw earlier . . . I know it turned out to be nothing, but if it had been, and you’d gone after them . . .”
I frowned at the sunset.
“I know you don’t think the Order will disrupt your search,” he went on, “but what if they’ve heard the union is happening sooner than they thought, and they want to stop it?”
I hadn’t thought of that.
Jack rubbed at the compass tattoo on his forearm. “Maybe we should reconsider letting the Saxons’ people go out in the field instead of you.”
I huffed out a frustrated breath. “We’re not doing that.”
“There might come a point where I don’t think it should be entirely your choice,” he said.
I stared at him. “Excuse me?”
“I don’t mean—I only mean to say your judgment is clouded. For good reason. But—”
“Don’t.”
“Avery—”
“No. I have been very clear about how I feel, and if you can’t respect that, we’re just not going to talk about it anymore.” I turned away from him and hugged my arms around my chest. The last couple times he’d said things like this, I’d tried to make excuses. He was worried. He didn’t really mean it. But it was getting harder to deny that he did mean what he was saying.
I felt him watching me for a second, and he finally said, “I’m going for a walk.”