Page 92 of Crush

I whirl to Jaxon. “Where’s Thorne?”

“He’s—fine.” But Jaxon has to bite out the words, and he doesn’t look at me when he says them until he turns and grips me by the shoulders. “He’d want you to get through this challenge unscathed. Stop antagonizing the king.”

“If you support what he does,” I whisper, “then you’re nothing but an accomplice to murder.”

I expect Jaxon to try to shut me up, but instead, he sighs deeply, shaking his head as if he doesn’t know what to do with me anymore. He turns to Damion as if to say, She’s all yours. I’ve done what I could to warn her.

Crap. My bag thumps to my feet.

With my lips in a thin line, I swivel back to Damion. “What’s the challenge tonight?”

Damion laughs coolly. “Are you sure you even want to stay with us? Let me give you a choice then. You may leave, right now, no questions asked, and go back the way you came. So long as you stay away from my son. Indeed, I’ll even allow you a trip back home to Boston. To your parents. Wouldn’t you like that?”

It takes every ounce of control I have to keep my breathing even. I stare at him.

“A lovely proposition, isn’t it?” Damion taps a finger to his chin as if contemplating the option. “Or you could continue as a Virtue and set out to complete the challenges with utter loyalty at your core. No more snooping. Halt your accusations. Become a valued member within the Society, and you’ll enjoy privileges your provincial mind isn’t even capable of thinking up. Have your future secured.”

I swallow. Ball my hands into fists at my side. Glance between Jaxon and Damion.

Jaxon’s blanked his features. He offers me nothing—no assurance, no message from Thorne in his expression. Nothing.

This is entirely on me.

“You don’t have to stay in the Societies for me to keep gathering evidence. I will gladly sacrifice crucial information to give to the FBI rather than lose you.”

Malcolm’s plea is too loud in my head. I scrunch my eyes shut, holding him in rather than revealing his conflict to Damion.

What Malcolm refuses to say is, the case could be closed a lot faster if the FBI had access to Damion’s inner circle, a membership Malcolm has long been excluded from.

Until me.

I could be the missing key to the collapse of Damion’s kingdom.

Damion assumes by ingratiating me into the lifetime membership of the Societies, he’ll maintain his hold over the Weatherbys. That we won’t fight back if we’re both constantly under threat.

But I’ve already had my life thrown upside down. Everything I thought I knew is gone, deleted with the rest of my faked history.

The answer comes to me in a wave. If I’m serious about showing Aiko, my only friend at Winthorpe, how much I care about her, I must keep my search for Savannah alive. Taking the easy way out is all too tempting. My heart lurches for my mom and dad. I’m desperate to see them again and forget all of this in the security of their arms.

But after the hugging and crying are over … what then? Damion will get away with murder. Raven’s Bluff will stay the center of a drug trafficking trade. And the Societies will continue to get their way and hurt kids to do it. The dangerous challenges won’t end. And all the while, I’ll finish my senior year at my old high school, go to a college my parents and I can afford, and live the rest of my life wrapped in guilt because I didn’t help when I could.

“No.” I raise my gaze from the sand and say, firmer, “No. I’m staying a Virtue.”

Damion’s lips purse briefly as though he didn’t expect that answer. “I see. You would be valuable to the Virtues, indeed, with a different mindset. Perhaps we can change it for you tonight.” Damion spins until he faces the ocean. “Let your challenge begin, Ember Weatherby, one that has only been completed by a single Noble before you.”

“Thorne,” Jaxon breathes out next to me in answer.

“You are to swim around the western cliff, right over there,” Damion continues. “Follow its curve. I warn you: there are plenty of sharp, underwater rocks to get in your way. I suggest you swim farther out to avoid them.”

Where the riptides are, I think dully as I follow the arc of his finger. The only reason I didn’t drown before was because Thorne saved me. But I’m smarter now. I have to be.

“Once finished, you are to search for an adequate exit point and crawl out, then climb to the top of that same cliff. Light the torch waiting for you—if you make it. That is how Jaxon and I will know you’ve completed the challenge.”

I blow out a breath, staring off into the black, starlit ocean. “Okay.”

“Okay?” Jaxon whisper-squawks beside me. “Say no, Ember. For God’s sake, one of you has to say no at some point.”

I angle my profile at Jaxon to acknowledge I heard him, but not enough to arouse Damion’s suspicions. Jaxon’s referring to Thorne. Something occurred tonight where he didn’t refuse either. A challenge, perhaps, or an ultimatum. Either way, I am as strong as Thorne Briar. I won’t just do what he does. I’ll do better than that bastard.