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I froze where I stood.
“There is a very thin line between light and dark, Lyra. Between evil and good. Somewhere in the middle, there’s a gray area.” He stepped toward me, coming dangerously close with the bloody knife still in his hand. “Do you understand me now, Lyra?” he taunted.
“Yes,” I replied sharply. “I understand.”
“Good,” he said. “Do these men deserve to die? Maybe. Maybe not. I might have a different answer than you. My father might have a different answer than me. These men crossed my father. They invaded our territory. That means they die. But I’m not the one who makes the rules, Lyra. None of us do. None of us get to decide who lives and who dies.”
I stared at him, unblinking.
“We are only the servants to a higher power. Each one of us. I hope you understand that.”
“I understand that more than anybody,” I replied. I knew I should have shut my mouth. Just stand there and cower like he wanted me to do. But I couldn’t resist. He thought this would scare me? He thought showing me his dark side would have me running away like a scared little girl?
He thought wrong.
“Kill them both,” he ordered the Night Ravens without breaking our stare. I didn’t look away, either. Not as the sound of metal slicing flesh cut through the air, and not as both of their bodies were dropped from the chains.
“She’s really a Night Raven now,” one of the boys joked.
“No,” Alek responded, grinding his teeth as he spoke. “She’s not. She’ll never be.”
I turned on my heel and stormed outside.
How dare he talk to me that way? How dare he bring me all the way out here to humiliate me?
No. I wasn’t going to let that happen. Not again. I had been through enough humiliation in my life.
My feet carried me out of the cabin and back into the woods—back in the direction of the road. Although I had absolutely no idea what direction I was heading towards, I just needed to get away.
Anger pulsed through my veins. I hardly even heard him following after me until he yelled, “Lyra, stop! You’ll get yourself lost out here!”
“I don’t care!” I yelled back. “Leave me alone!”
He ran to catch up with me before grabbing my arm and forcing me to face him. “I told you to stop.” He wasn’t yelling, yet somehow his words rattled my bones.
I ripped my arm out of his grasp. “And I told you I don’t care.”
His nostrils flared. “You needed to see this.”
I continued stomping into the woods. “You really thought this would mortify me? You really thought this would scare me off so I would run and hide and never come back?”
“That’s not—dammit, Lyra! Can you slow down?”
His grip clamped down on my arm again, harder this time. “You humiliated me.”
“I want you to know the truth.”
“What truth?!”
“That I am bad, Lyra. I am not good for you! You might think this is all thrilling, you might think we have fun and get to live on the edge, but this is the reality of it!” He used his free hand to point back to the cabin. “We kill people, Lyra! People die every day because of us.”
“People die every day without you, too.”
“You don’t get it.”
My eyes were daggers, begging him to hear me as I said, “Don’t get it? I see you, Alek. I see what you do. I may have been surprised to meet a demon in that bar, but I’m not surprised anymore. I know what bad people look like, trust me.” I couldn’t stop my voice from shaking. “You might think that you’re bad. You might think that there is nobody worse in this entire world than you. Well, I hate to break it to you, Alek. But you’re wrong. You don’t scare me.”
“No?” he taunted, gripping my arm even tighter and hauling me to his chest. “I kill people, Lyra. I’m a killer. I’m a demon, a monster.”
