Broken Bonds

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death, bullying, emotional abuse, and antigay bias.

Oli wakes up in an infirmary. North enters and criticizes her for using her injury for attention; he believes that she got hurt on purpose. Oli retorts that, had this been her plan, she would have enacted it before undergoing the challenging course, not near the end. He contends that she is “desperate for attention” (63). She storms away, but he follows her, though he seems anxious about making a scene in front of other students. She ignores him when he berates her but refuses to let him speak poorly about her parents.

Oli’s Gift seeks to break free, but she represses it with the help of a jokey text from Atlas. She ignores North and flirts with Atlas, until North reveals that he has tapped her phone and can read all her messages. She feels embarrassed and defeated that everyone considers her a thoughtless, selfish villain.

Over dinner, Gabe unhappily reports on Oli’s movements to North; he implies that he also hates Giovanna, the other member of Sage’s Bond. North informs her that these dinners will occur weekly. Nox arrives with a date, which upsets Oli’s “idiot, traitorous bond” (71).