EMBER’S POV
I don’t trust the tea.
That is the first thing I want on record. A woman who shoots fragile things out of the air for sport, who looks at a dying animal and feels absolutely nothing, is not someone I am ever going to trust.
Hale presses a warm cup into my hands and steers me to a chair by the fire, clucking over the blood on my face like a woman who actually cares. I sit, and I hold the cup, and I watch her over the rim of it the way you watch a snake.
“You don’t have to drink it,” she says. “I can see you looking at it like it’ll bite you. It’s only chamomile and a few things my grandmother swore by. Smell it, if you don’t believe me.” She settles into the chair across from me, unbothered, tucking her feet up. “I’m not offended. People have always been suspicious of me. I’
