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has changed?” I was too agitated to sit, so I paced.
    “Raine confiscates property or arrests those he considers suspicious on trumped-up charges,” she explained. “The soldiers are everywhere. Food is scarce. Everyone is angry and restless. If we strike now—”
    “We?”
    She was silent.
    I couldn’t speak. Had she rejoined the Blackcoats in addition to her insanity with the Watchers? I wanted to shake her. But I only curled my fingers into fists and turned to the others. When I spoke, my voice was sharp as a knife’s blade.
    “How exactly did you come by this message?” I shot a look at Jullia, who withered beneath it.
    “It appeared in my bag,” she whispered. “No one spoke to me. They do not know where you are, or even that you are alive, Lia. The whole village thinks that you and your brother have either fled or perished. Ivy has been reassigned a home. She is in essence an orphan now. And no one questions that, although I think there are some who suspect Everiss still lives in hiding and has joined the Thorns, hence their using me as a contact.”
    “Do they think we’ll trust them?” Anger threatened to choke me. The Blackcoats had put my sister in danger. They’d tried to steal the PLD for their own purposes. They’d behaved foolishly and recklessly. Everiss had almost died because of their mishandling of things. And now they wanted to join with us and muck up our plans? “What could they possibly want from us?”
    “The Blackcoats think that we could expel the Farthers for good if we joined forces,” Jonn said. He rubbed a finger against his chin. “And they might be right.”
    My blood turned to steam.
    “This,” I said, “is one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard you say, Jonn Weaver.”
    He turned his head to looked at me. “Oh?”
    “Yes!” I threw up my hands. “I can’t believe...are you truly going to make me formulate a protest against this insanity?”
    “You’re not even listening,” Ivy protested. “You’re saying no without thinking this through.”
    “Ivy makes a good point,” Jonn said.
    “Ivy has been making lots of bad decisions lately,” I snapped. “Right now her judgment is seriously in question. And I don’t have to ‘think this through.’ The Blackcoats are foolish and incompetent, as they’ve demonstrated previously by getting their own leader shot and many of their members injured or arrested. Collaboration with them will most likely reveal our identities and get us killed. Right now we need to lie low, marshal our resources, contact the Trio, and find our friends.”
    Everiss sat beside Jonn, her lips pressed in a straight line and her arms crossed. I couldn’t tell what she thought about this. She claimed she had no ties to them any longer, but I wasn’t so sure of her loyalties. Jonn reach out and touch her elbow lightly, and she shot him a glance. The wordless exchange contained a library of information, but I didn’t have time to ponder it now.
    “We’re not doing this,” I said. “I refuse.”
    Jonn opened his mouth to reply, but another voice beat him to it.
    “Well, you aren’t the only one who makes the decisions around here.”
    I swung around in surprise to see Gabe standing behind us. His cheeks were flushed with anger, and his body was stiff.
    “Gabe,” I said, taking note of his posture, his expression. He was angry.
    “How long were you planning on discussing this before you told me what was going on?”
    “You’re not...” I began to say, and stopped. Something inside me turned brittle, and it felt like regret. I shouldn’t have gone down that path, not here. Not now.
    “Not a member of the village? Not a true inhabitant of the Frost?” Gabe asked, speaking solely to me. “You think I don’t have a stake in what happens here? Is it because I’m a Farther, too?”
    Words rose in my throat and stuck there.
    “I just don’t trust them,” I said finally.
    “They have a new leader now.” Jonn spoke as if