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I nodded numbly.
Finally, his hand dropped from my neck, and he was shoving me back into the room.
Somehow, the cogs in my brain started moving again. The freefall into infinity had halted.
Ebony’s words cycled in my head.
I picked up the little mic I’d dropped, not seeing the interviewer or the room full of watching eyes.
The words were ash on my tongue, coming out mechanically.
There might have been a shocked silence after I spoke. There might have been an uproar that followed.
I might have stepped away, or Ebony might have grabbed me and hauled me from the room. At some point, open air hit my lungs and then a car door slammed, making me jump.
The world crashed back in, and I realised my hands were trembling.
“What if it doesn’t work?”
“It will.”
“Do you think… do you think that’s what’s happening to her?” Again, nausea roiled in my stomach, but it was long empty by now. The things he’d said about what might be happening to Vex… I couldn’t shake it from my mind.
“If it is, I’ll make sure they regret it a thousand times more than she ever could.”
There was a long silence that followed that.
“Thank…” I swallowed. “Thank you. For… for that.”
Ebony’s expression became twisted. “You don’t deserve her, Rook. You're a speck of dirt stuck to a diamond.”
“And… you… you think you deserve her?” I asked, a shaky laugh in my voice.
For a second, I didn’t think Ebony even knew his answer. He spoke after a long pause. “At least I’ll protect her.”
When we got home, an agonising hour passed before another video came in.
It was simple and short, but brutal. With a fist in her hair, Vex was dragged to the door of a limo and shoved out onto tarmac. The video shifted briefly to its surroundings, and I saw a parking lot and shops, ones I recognised—
“It’s… it’s the strip mall down the road,” I said, heart in my throat. “She’s… she’s just—”
I cut off, spinning as I felt an aura flare.
Drake was already out the door.
DRAKE
I ran faster than I ever had in my life.
My feet slammed against the pavement, not a care that my aura was out on this quiet, residential street. The world was a blur, the sun too bright.
I turned the corner, the street ahead a straight line to the shops.
Never, in my life, had I felt fear like this.
I’d be too late.
It was a trick.
