Page 24 of Reverie

I want to strangle him.

“She’s not a ‘plant,’ she’s a human. My sister. Yours too, if all this is to be believed,” I say.

Misha’s eyebrow goes up. “And why is our being related unbelievable?”

My face hardens and my…Amelia shifts in her seat, clearly uncomfortable.

“Besides the fact that they want and need her alive and whole, we can make sure that we have fail safes in place to extract her as soon as possible. We need her to draw them out. Winthrope is desperate to get her, and if he could do so without contacting you, he would have already done it, Brigham,” Misha says.

“Mishko, I’ve just got your sister and brother back. There’s no way I’m letting them go again.”

I turn away from her defense of Ella and me, focusing all my energy on the man at the head of the table. Because the fact that my mother has a nickname—a term of endearment forthisman, her eldest son—makes me want to hurl.

While Misha’s statements make my blood boil, I don’t attack him. I don’t jump across the table.

I hold his gaze in silence for several uncomfortable seconds. Max fidgets in his chair, popping his knee up and down for the first half of our stare-off before resorting to a full 360-degree spin.

When I decide to speak, I command my body to remain casual and keep my words slow and low.

Friendly.

“If you think,” I say to the room, plucking lint off my pant leg, “that I’m going to allow you to use my sister for anything, you have lost your goddamn mind.”

“Hunter, as you can see—” Luna begins.

“There’s no fucking way you’re taking Ella,” Leo grinds out.

Luna’s eyes swing to Leo. “We’ll make sure she stays safe.”

Her eyes get a little glittery as she makes her case. “This is the closest we’ve gotten to them—to The Architect. If we can figure out where The Architect is, we’ll be able to end this once and for all. Taking out The Architect takes out The Legion. Morris Winthrope included.”

Silence descends in the room again. After a few seconds, Luna runs her fingers through her hair and Amelia stands, her back straight.

“No,” Amelia commands, and all of us look at my mother in the wake of her statement.

A vice clenches my heart, and it’s from a blend of confusion and anger toward this whole fucked situation.

Toward her.

“The only way you will do anything to or with Ella is if I’m lying dead in a pool of blood,” I say in a measured cadence.

And with that, I rise from the expensive office chair and exit the room.

In that moment, I am everything Benjamin Brigham taught me to be.

And I’ll be a bastard from the pits of Hell if it means that no one will take another fucking thing from me.

FOUR

WINTER

“Winter, can you wake up for me?”

I groan as the voice pops me into consciousness. One moment, I’m in blackness; the next, someone yells in my ear a split second before my shoulder starts throbbing.

Which is terrifying because Ijustwalked in here and sat on the table for an examination.

The rest is blank. When did I fall asleep?