Page 171

I clenched my jaw. “She should’ve warned people. It’s not that hard.”

“Like I said, she cared about Raymond. She couldn’t expose him.”

“But now you’ve exposed him. Nothing has changed, only more people have died!”

I couldn’t stand with her word any longer. I wanted to get away from here, but when I tried to switch my damn flashlight back on, nothing happened. My wristband… broke? Out of nowhere?

“Even if I hadn’t done a thing, Krivan and the others have had their eyes on Raymond since the day he was born. The boy doesn’t have many days left.”

I stopped fiddling with my wristband, goosebumps rising all over my skin as my head snapped up.

“Since he was born?” Ignoring the last sentence, I stared at her in full suspicion. “You…”

Something on my face must have shifted, because her gaze darkened as well. “I’ll be honest with you, Mina. I don’t trust the police. I don’t trust politicians, detectives, public… I don’t trust anyone. Except you.”

She had closed the distance too much. There were only inches between us now. Before I could raise my guard, she pushed me by the shoulder. I stumbled, as if standing on the edge of a cliff, one of my feet slipped downward.

The manhole cover was open now. And I was right on the brink.

“You’ll find your butterfly down below, my dear child. This is the only thing I can do for you.”

Everything happened so fast that I couldn’t even react. When her hand struck my shoulder a second time, my feet gave way, and I surrendered to the fall.

Contrary to what I expected, warm air wrapped around my entire body, yet still, it gave me chills. As if I were falling into nothingness, like clicking on a file whose data had been forgotten, disappearing into air.

As I fell further away from the woman, my wristband began receiving a signal again. A message chime sounded, and right after, a notification from Prisne illuminated the dark pit:

Eleanor never had an assistant.

The message hovered in the air, and I finally realized what the pair of blue eyes watching me from above reminded me of.

Labradorite stone.

Eleanor Kern was alive.

CHAPTER 9

Raymond

In the pitch-black room, the most high-ranking person on Mars was pleading with me. But no matter how much he knelt, he couldn’t elicit a single reaction from me.

“If I didn’t need your consent, I would have kidnapped you a long time ago. You immortal shit.”

He grunted a few more words, but this time I didn’t even bother to respond. A moment later, Arga escorted the man out.

I sighed. “You should head back home now, too. Leave me be.”

Since the Kern family scandal broke, the Loxton estate had descended into chaos. Watching me fail to hold myself together with my usual composure, the staff had resigned one by one. All except Arga. Either he was deeply royal to Sebastian and viewed me as a sacred charge, or I had unwittingly done something to win his heart. There was no other explanation.

We were at Tempest now: a secret subterranean city housing the true disciples of Yunna. It was impossible for the police or reporters to find me here, let alone the general public.

“There is no need. You require a bodyguard—”

“Your family does, too,” I cut off. “We can’t tell what this Krivan scum might do. He has already set off the acid rains. You must go to your family and protect them before he commits another act of madness.”

“Sir…”

“I insist.”