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“We’re coming to get you, O. Please be ok. Help is on the way. I know you probably will never hear this, but I just needed to say it on the off chance. You’re not alone. You never will be. I swear it, O. Just be alive. I’ll be there in under half an hour, but the others are almost there. Just hold on until then, ok? Just… Hold on with everything you’ve got.”
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twelve
Hector bundles me inside a car, and it immediately takes off, before he’s closed the door. I’m still in his arms, he hasn’t let go for a second. Hector sits at the back seat, with me on his lap, and through the haze, my brain registers that there’s someone already there.
I blink, try to clear my vision.
A figure that looks like a matchstick, tall, thin and black, blurs to my left. I blink some more, and suddenly the figure clears. I see the leather seats of the car, the specks of blood on my sleeve, the dark blue of Hector’s sleeve as he holds me. I look up and yeah, it’s Hector. I’d know his voice anywhere. His grip.
And the figure seated next to us?
The figure is Angel. The freaking Greek prince of darkness himself.
And right now, His Highness the Greek Prince of Darkness is crying, full-on crying, with snot and sobs and big gulps of air, as if he’s four years old.
He looks up, and his eyes are redder than my bloody clothes. He opens his arms in a hurried, kind of impulsive way, and grabs me off of Hector’s lap. Hector lets him. Angel pulls me into his chest so hard I can feel his bones poking into my skin. He grasps me around the waist, his fingers digging into my flesh and he sobs and sobs.
He doesn’t say a word as the driver speeds past red lights and takes us to the hospital in less than twenty minutes. Hector doesn’t say anything either, apart from talking to his intercom a few times. His voice is so low, I can’t make out what he’s saying. I let Angel’s sobs and the car’s movement lull me into numbness.
I wasn’t supposed to be alive, I think.
I don’t know how to be alive.
Hector barely moves, but his eyes are on me the whole time. Angel keeps himself wrapped around me all the way to the hospital. And then all the way to the airport where a private jet picks Angel and me up. Hector stays behind, handing me over to a different guard.
But Angel stays.
He doesn’t let me go until we reach Asteria and home.
…
It’s three days later that I realize I have Marco’s phone.
They took my clothes and everything I had on me when we reached Asteria, but after processing them and cleaning them, they gave everything back. And that’s when I see it. I don’t want to touch it or charge it or even think about it.
I haven’t started to grieve him; I have barely had time to miss him, what with being prodded by doctors and meeting my dad and sleeping off the exhaustion. But it hits me like a freight train as soon as I see his phone that he’s gone.
I’ll never see him again.
I’ll never hear him call me ‘queen’.
I’ll never feel his arms on my…
No. Stop.
“You ok, baby?” Dad has cancelled everything. He’s not leaving my side, not even at night. We sleep together in his huge bed, like we used to do when I was a kid. “What’s wrong?”
He’s sitting next to me in my room, reading a book. I was dozing, but now I’m fully awake, staring at the pile of cleaned clothes with the phone on top. Marco’s phone, next to my new one.One of these things belongs to a person who is no longer alive, I think.
“Nothing,” I murmur.
Dad hasn’t been to his office in days. He gave a short official statement, written, not spoken, and refuses to talk to any reporters or to appear on TV. It’s too soon, he says. He needs to take care of the situation, but he doesn’t want to leave me alone for even a second.
Dad stands and comes near me. He wraps his arm around my shoulders and leans down to press his lips to my forehead.
“I’m sorry,” he says quietly.
