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“Holy shit,” I mumbled, dropping the gun to my lap as if it would blow up at any second.
“I’ll kill every single one of them.” Alek’s hands on the steering wheel tightened. “Not a single one of them will get away with this. Not for touching you!”
“I’m fine, Alek,” I tried to assure him.
He glanced over at me in the darkness without slowing down. It was only for a second, but it was enough to see his expression soften. “They hurt you.”
I placed my shaking hand on his shoulder. “I’m okay. They only did this to get to you.”
He froze. “They said that?”
“Well, before Theia showed up, anyway. It was all a trap. They knew you would come for me.”
“Theia was here?” He laughed at himself, but it was not a laugh of humor. It was a laugh that would replay in my mind for the next week, reminding me of this exact moment, of the goosebumps erupting down my arms.
I shook my head. I didn’t trust myself to explain any more without bursting into tears.
I knew it was only a matter of time before Theia showed up again. Hell, I half-expected her to walk straight into Alek’s house every single day for the last few weeks.
But to… to threaten me? To give up? To warn me of what I had done to the veil and then to just leave?
It wasn’t right. It wasn’t her. Theia would never give up on the veil. She knew how to close it and she wanted to watch me suffer.
This was all a game to her. This was my sick, twisted form of punishment for ever being born.
“What did she want?” Alek asked, brows furrowing. “Did she mention the veil? Did she hurt you?”
“She told me it was up to me to close the veil now.”
“How? She has to know how, right?”
I pressed my head back against the headrest of Alek’s car. He pulled out of the long dirt road and onto the main highway, giving me at least a little peace that we were now not isolated in the middle of nowhere.
“She might know, but she isn’t going to help me. She blames me for all of this. Not to mention the fact that she thinks I’ll end up dead when all of this is ov—”
“That’s not happening,” he cut me off. “Nobody’s going to hurt you, Lyra.”
I laughed, unable to stop myself. How many times had I heard that? How many times had I believed that?
“Where were you?” I said after a moment of silence.
Alek’s jaw tightened.
“I was waiting for you, you know. I was up all night expecting to see you again, to talk to you. After what happened in the ballroom earlier, I didn’t think you would run away like—”
“I didn’t want to run away, Lyra. I swear to you, I wanted nothing more than to come back home to you.”
“Then why didn’t you?” I pressed. “If it was Night Raven business, you can tell me. It would make me a lot less worried than thinking you disappeared somewhere in the middle of the night.”
Again, his hands tightened, gripping the steering wheel like it was his last hope, like if he squeezed hard enough, he might actually disappear.
Maybe that was what he wanted.
Maybe I had been a fool about this entire thing.
“It’s complicated,” he started hesitantly.
“More complicated than drinking my blood and leaving me alone at your brother’s ball? Surrounded by demons, no less.”
