Adne’s room was a riot of color: violet, black, and crimson on the walls, a crushed velvet throw spilling over the side of her bed. She trotted over to a radio, adding a blast of sound that made the bright walls swim before my eyes.

“Do you like the Raveonettes?” She turned up the volume.

I nodded, pulse pounding in rhythm with the ethereal voices that floated around me.

“Sorry.” She flopped onto the bed. “I can’t afford for anyone to hear us. Not that I don’t usually play music this loud anyway.”

“It’s fine.”

“Have a seat,” she said, gesturing to the bed.

I was too edgy to sit, but I hovered at the edge of the bed, playing with the fringes of the throw. “So Connor told you.”

She shook her head, leaning over to reach beneath the mound of pillows at the top of the bed. “My father told me.”

She pulled out an envelope, drawing a letter from inside it. “Connor just delivered the news.”

“Monroe wrote you a letter?” I stared at the folded pages in her hands. There were several. How much had he told her? What secrets of the past had he spilled onto those pages?

She laughed, blinking away tears. “Connor said my father knew I’d never let him corner me for a touchy-feely talk. I made a habit of avoiding those ever since Mom . . .”

Her eyes wandered to the bed stand. Following her gaze, I saw a framed picture of a woman. She had copper blond hair and bright amber eyes. Her arms were around a beanpole of a girl wearing a foolish grin: a much younger Adne.

Adne thumbed the edge of the pages. “Apparently she brought them together. Ren’s mom, I mean. Corrine. After she died, my dad hit rock bottom. My mom was the one who got him through it. Then I came along.”

I watched her, not knowing what to say. She rolled onto her back, pressing the letter against her chest.

“I’m the reason he didn’t go after Ren,” she said, staring at the ceiling. “He didn’t want to risk leaving me and Mom. He thought he’d done enough damage to Corrine, but he never got over it. He wanted to get Ren back so much. It’s all in here.”

She rustled the pages.

“I’m sure he did,” I said. “But I don’t blame him for wanting to protect you. Ren didn’t know anything about this. He still doesn’t know the truth. He thinks Emile is his father.”

“I know,” she said. “That’s why we have to go back.”

“I don’t know if he’ll even want us to come for him,” I said, remembering the way he’d thrown me across the room. “He might want to stay. Like the others.”

“Do you really believe that?” she asked.

I didn’t answer; I couldn’t. The truth was I didn’t know. I wanted tobelieve that Ren could be saved, but I’d seen how the Keepers could break Guardians. My own brother had almost killed us because he’d been manipulated by our old masters. Could Ren believe anything other than what they’d told him about his past?

My gut kept twisting and untwisting.

Adne’s gaze pierced me. “We have to try.”

I sucked in a quick breath. “Adne, how can we? We barely made it out.”

She flipped over, sitting up and swinging her legs over the edge of the bed. “That’s why it will work now. There’s no way they’ll expect us—and we’re only trying to find Ren.”

“But how—”

“We’ll locate him. I’ll open an inside door like last time. We’ll grab him, come back. It will be over.” The words tumbled out of her mouth. Her eyes were shining.

“Locate him . . . how?”

She cleared her throat, casting her eyes down. “Um. I noticed. Well. That ring you’re wearing.”

“My ring?” My hands went to my chest, the fingers of my unadorned hand covering the others.

“You were promised to him, right?” She didn’t look up. “Did he give that to you?”

“Yes, but . . .” I was about to explain that rings weren’t part of a Guardian union. That Ren had given it to me on his own because he was . . . because he was what? Trying to tell me he loved me? Showing me he wanted our union to mean something more than following orders? It was as if my own thoughts threw me against a brick wall, leaving me breathless. I couldn’t finish.

Adne didn’t notice. “Then we can use it to find him.”

I ignored the pounding of my own heart, trying to focus on what she was saying. “The ring can find him?”

“If he gave it to you, it will have a connection to him. I can use that to pinpoint his location.”

“How is that possible?”

“The ring will hold a thread,” she said, looking up at me with a thin smile. “We follow the thread through Vail until it reaches him. That’s when I’ll open the door.”

“Does that really work?”

“It’s how we found Shay.”

“Oh.” My palms had begun to sweat.

“I know it’s a big risk, Calla,” she said. “But from what I’ve seen—and to be honest, from how freaked out Shay gets about him—I know you care about Ren. You can’t want to leave him there.”

I managed to get out a cracking whisper. “I don’t.”

She stood up, twisting her fingers through her long mahogany tresses. “He’s my brother, but I don’t know him. This isn’t about me. It’s about my dad.”