Awakened Read Free

in
     order to keep her from being drawn into the questioning, and at first I thought that
     it would be easy, but now I needed someone to talk to, badly. My mom wouldn’t let
     Leah out of her sight, so I didn’t have a chance to talk to her, and I didn’t know
     what Leah had been told, but I was sure she wondered where Ella was. I wondered where Ella was.
    I held to the agreement not to call Mia and threw my phone on Leah’s bright yellow
     dresser. Before the conversation with my dad, when he explained his disapproval of
     my decision to leave New York, the choice to come home was simple. Things weren’t
     as complicated, and Ella needed me so I wanted to come home. Though the choice to
     come back had been spurred by my need to be with Ella and to protect her, it had also
     partly been because I missed my home. Not that I didn’t fit in at NYU—New York just
     didn’t feel like home. The city that never slept had lost its appeal after the first
     semester, and though I hadn’t been ready to come home at that point, I started to
     wonder what made me decide that NYU was the school that I just had to attend. Ella
     and I had planned to go to college together, but when I got the acceptance letter
     from NYU, she completely understood. It was hard to get accepted into the Poole and
     Schuler photography program, and that I had done it was the only thing that kept my
     father off my back when I told him that I was going to be a photographer in New York , not an engineer like he’d hoped. That was also the first night that Ella and I seriously
     discussed what we planned to do with the rest of our lives. I was more than happy
     when she decided to go to ODU, in Virginia and visit me in New York during that summer,
     but when classes piled up and I had to spend summer semester taking an extra class,
     we just pushed back our vacation plans. Then there was the accident and then the breakdown
     and after that, everything just fell apart. I wondered plenty of times what I could
     do to help Ella, but there was nothing, and all I ended up doing was holding her at
     the funeral.
    I had saved her then, and now it was time to do it again. I just had to figure out
     how. Against my better judgment, I picked up my phone and dialed Kale. I didn’t give
     a damn if he wasn’t happy to hear from me; I wanted Ella back and in my arms smelling
     like the sun and roses, just like she had before all hell broke loose.

Chapter 2
    Jace
    Saying that the shit had hit the fan was the understatement of the century. Kale had
     returned me to the place where he had left Ella, a cold place in the middle of the
     woods, and all that was left were two Chorý, which he and I quickly disposed of. Ella
     was gone, all because those Chorý had been decoys, while Laurent himself had actually
     gone for Ella. That meant Laurent likely knew her powers had grown beyond the other
     Arcs.
    Ella would soon be able to control her powers and even use them against Laurent himself,
     but he could be very persuasive. Laurent could also teach her to stop the memories
     unless they were called upon, so he could gain her trust that way.
    The Council would have my head for letting Ella linger in Cedar so long after she
     was found. I wondered if Aleixandre, leader of the Council and one of the first Eternals,
     would allow me to stay on the case or replace me with Tamsin and Servitto. As my surrogate
     father, Aleixandre had a soft spot for me, but I had taken his favoritism too far.
     I hadn’t followed any of the guidelines set forth long ago, nor had I requested help
     from the Council when I realized that Kale had found the Arc.
    Kale yammered on the phone, and I sped toward the airfield to the jet that carried
     Tamsin and Servitto. They would be shocked to see me, of all people, walking side
     by side with a Chorý, and it would take all that I could do to stop them from killing
     him. Killing Kale would lose us Ella permanently, a disaster that wouldn’t