Flashback ( PDFDrive )

“The Neverseen don’t get to control who I care about,” she told
Keefe. “And neither do you. Even when you make mistakes, that
doesn’t change how I feel about you—and you’re an Empath. You
know I’m not just saying that.”
Keefe’s laugh sounded more like a sigh. “Trust me, Foster, if I could
understand your feelings, life would be way easier.”
“Okay, then remember this: Your mom’s trying to get in your head.
She wants you to feel like nothing you do will ever be good enough so
you’ll finally give up and decide to cooperate.”
“Psh—she doesn’t need me to cooperate. I fall for her tricks every
time.”
“We all fall for her tricks,” she argued, the words blurred by a yawn.
Elwin’s medicine must’ve been starting to kick in, but she shook
her head to clear it.
“The Neverseen are good at what they do,” she told him. “They’re
going to beat us sometimes. But that’s when we have to rally.”
Keefe fidgeted with a fraying thread on the sleeve of his tunic. “You
know what scares me? I . . . can’t picture us winning anymore. I used
to be able to. I used to imagine the moment where we’d finally take
them out. But now . . .”
He sank back onto the cot and rested his head against the wall—
right beneath the framed pictures of him and her in their
embarrassing Opening Ceremonies costumes. Elwin had hung them
as a joke, to commemorate their record-breaking number of
emergency Healing Center visits.
Some days it didn’t feel so funny.
“You almost died,” Keefe whispered. “So did Fitz—and I mean
really almost died. I’ve never seen it that close. Bullhorn was watching