Page 117 of Outcast’s Return

“I’m sorry, Sylvie. I’m so sorry.”

48

FABIEN

“There’s something I need to tell you,” Baptiste hisses to me in the darkness by the wall of the Castaways meeting room. He has seized me by the arm, his grip firm.

“I need to get to Jolie outside,” I hiss back. “I don’t have time. She’s waiting for me.”

“I need to talk to you now,” Baptiste says.

But I am shaking my head at him.

“It’s not safe here. Clement has found out about us. Leopold told him everything, and now Clement wants to kill me. I can’t risk encountering him again...”

Baptiste squeezes harder, agitated.

“There is no time for any of that,” he murmurs, eyes darting around the room as if everyone around us is suspect in a crime he’s not telling me. “You need to hear this, Fabien.”

The Supreme Elder coronation ritual is over. The Elders and members all mingle, talking about the future. Talking about what the hell just happened.

And Cromwell is in the middle of the room, basking in his new role already. There’s a new deference to him from everyone in here, and the theater of it all makes me sick.

The Castaways being the Castaways.

“I need to make sure Jolie is okay, Baptiste.”

“No. We need to talk. Now.”

With each word, there’s a growing, scary urgency in his tone. Baptiste looks ghostly pale, even more so than earlier when he burst into my art gallery.

Something is very, very wrong.

“Okay,” I whisper, finally catching on. “Let’s talk.”

“We need to get out of this room. We need privacy.”

I nod at my friend and gesture out into the hallway. We make our way through the crowd and into a quiet part of the mansion. It’s dark down here. We end up in a small, windowless side room. It’s only a little bigger than a wardrobe, bare apart from a tiny desk and some stacked chairs.

“What is it, Baptiste?” I ask him as we step inside.

He’s biting his lip and fidgeting with his fingers. He paces around the tiny room, double-checking the door is shut before he even dares open his mouth.

“It’s the ring I just saw,” he says blankly as if recounting a shopping list. “And the watch on his wrist that he had to remove for the robe. And the tattoo. One would not have been enough, but all three?”

His forest green eyes glimmer in deep thought.

“What? What the hell are you talking about, Baptiste?”

He turns to me.

And then, shakily...

“Cromwell.”

“What?”

“Our new Supreme Elder,” he stutters. “Just then...”