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He exhaled. “Seni çok seviyorum, Nerida. You mean everything to me.”
My heart hiccupped as I cut down the corridor. “I love you too, Aslan. More than life itself. I’m so, so sorry.”
“Neri...” His tone turned harsh and almost violent. “I need you to know how grateful I am to you. For everything. I-I was born for you, and the past eight years of loving you have been the best eight years of my life.”
Fear tiptoed through my chest. “Tell me in person. Tell me when we’re together again.”
“I love you, Nerida Avci. In this life and the next. In every life hereafter. If anything happens—”
“Nothing is going to happen.” I paused outside my parents’ bedroom, dressed in night shorts and a silver cami, my knuckles white as I clung to my phone. “You’ll see. Everything will work out—”
“I’m yours, canim. I was yours before you even found me. I’ll be yours long after I lose you. I need you to know that. I need you to know how much I adore you. How much you mean to me. How much you’ve always meant to me.”
Tears pooled hotly down my cheeks. “Seni çok seviyorum, Aslan. For always. Forever. Now, stay where you are and—”
“Ah, fuck.” His voice was just a puff of frigid air in my ear.
I went rigid, wishing I could see through the phone line. Wishing he’d called me on FaceTime. Wishing he was here and not thousands of kilometres away.
My instincts prickled.
That knowing little nudge turned into the sharpest blade, stabbing at my heart.
“Aslan...what is it? What happened?”
The whooshing of air and the snatches of people enjoying life faded in and out as if he cut through crowds in a rush. “Aslan?”
“I think...I think he’s here.”
I clung to my parents’ doorknob. My pulse turned wild. “Can you see him?”
“No, but two men in black suits are following me.”
I was sick.
Weak-kneed.
Deathly afraid.
“Can you get into a hotel? Go find the agent who dropped you off.”
“I’d have to cut across the square,” he growled. “It’s too far.”
“Then go into a restaurant, a store...something!”
His breathing picked up as he jogged. “Neri...remember your promise? Your promise that you’d never come here? Cem knows you exist, but as long as you stay in Australia, he hopefully won’t come after you. He has no reason to. It’s me he wants. If he gets me, then...just promise me you’ll stay away. That you won’t come looking for me. Promise me.”
I shivered.
I trembled.
I could barely hold my phone. “Why are you saying this now? What’s happening?”
I need to know.
Need to see!
“Nerida...I need to hear you vow you won’t come looking for me if something happens.”
“Nothing is going to happen because you’re going to be fine—”
“Promise me, Nerida,” he snapped.
Tears fell faster as I quaked outside my parents’ door. I wished I could teleport to wherever he was. I wished I was magic and could appear at his side and see whatever nightmare he saw.
To fight beside him.
Live beside him.
Die beside him.
My insides didn’t just prickle, they howled.
Messages and energies, knowings and terrors.
I tasted it. Felt it. Breathed it.
Danger.
Peril.
Death.
“Aslan...run. Run as fast as you can.”
“Neri—”
“Run and hide. I’m flying to England tonight, today, right fucking now. I’m flying there, and then I’m coming to get you on the sea. You only have to hide for a little while, Aslan. Just a little while and—”
“It’s too late.” The phone line went quiet as if he’d stopped running, his breathing echoing with tatters. “Fuck, Neri. Fuck!”
“Aslan. Speak to me. What’s happening?” My knees bounced. My bones broke. “Tell me!”
An awful noise.
A cold laugh that wasn’t his.
“I love you, Nerida. I’ll always—”
A soft pop like a champagne cork.
A clatter of noise as if he’d dropped his phone.
My heart roared in my ears as I tumbled against the corridor wall. I pressed my phone excruciatingly hard against my ear. “Aslan? ASLAN?”
The scraping of fingers. The rustle of someone picking up what was dropped. My heart begged for hope. It sat up with false belief that Aslan had just bumped into someone and dropped his phone.
But in some deep, dark horrible place inside me, I knew.
I knew before he said anything.
I knew before I spoke to his father for the very first time.
“Is that Nerida Taylor? The third-year marine bio student who dwells at number eleven Helmet Street, Port Douglas?”
Everything shut down.
My heartbeat.
My fears.
My life.
“W-Who’s this?”
A soft chuckle. A voice that sounded eerily like Aslan’s. “If I’m to believe the reports on what my missing son has been up to, I suppose...I’m technically your father-in-law.”
I backed up.
I crashed against the opposite wall. “W-Where’s Aslan?”
“Oh, don’t worry. He’s home now. Back where he belongs.”
A gusting in my chest.
A tearing in my soul.
“L-Let me talk to him.”
“Oh, I’m very sorry,” he purred. “But that won’t be possible.”
Tears nettled.
Horror settled.
“What did you do?”
Don’t tell me.
Don’t say it.
