Chapter 23 · The Price of Betrayal

"Give me the drive, Tessa." Rowan's hand locked around her wrist before she could snatch the black memory shard from the floor.

"Get off me."

"Not until you stop trying to steal evidence from a collapsing mind-space."

The silver collar around his throat flashed red. His grip tightened. Pain cut across his face so fast she almost missed it, but she felt the tremor in his fingers.

Tessa jerked against him. "You were just recalled."

"I know."

"The Council recalled you, and you didn't tell me?"

"I was busy being strangled by their favorite interrogation toy."

Behind them, the broken memory chamber shook. Pieces of Elia's constructed world slid through the air like glass caught in a current. One shard showed Rowan in a black warden coat, younger and clean-faced, standing beside Tessa's mother at the mouth of a sealed gate.

Another showed the same gate burning.

Then both images snapped apart.

Tessa looked at the drive in Rowan's other hand. It was no bigger than her thumb. A thin blue line pulsed through its center.

"That has my mother's record on it," she said. "The real one. Not the edited garbage Elia fed us."

"It has part of it."