I open the car door for him. “Is there anyone you can call? Someone to be with you?”
His eyes meet mine, and I know before he has to say anything. I think I knew the moment the energy changed back in the lab.
“Get in.” I hold the door wider.
He folds himself into the car.
I nudge his calf with my foot. “Scoot.”
He obeys on autopilot and it isn’t until I’m plopping into the seat that he spins on me.
“What are you doing?”
“Going with you.” I shut the door and pat the seatback in front of me. “We’re good.”
The driver maneuvers out of the parking lot, jostling over blacktop rubble.
Elethior’s gaping at me. “Wha—why?”
I sit back with an air of nonchalance I sure as hell don’t feel. My palms are sweating and tension wraps in a thick band across my chest, squeezing slowly.
But hey, this car’s nice. Like,reallynice. Plush seats, leather, probably.
“Who would you call to be with you?” I ask. The black upholstery on the roof of the car is fascinating.
Elethior’s quiet. For too long.
He saysnothing. Not one single name.
He has friends, right? I’ve seen him at parties with people. And yeah, Arasne was an asshole, but the Tourael family is huge—surely there’s someone in his lineage who isn’t a prick?
I swallow the implied answers he gives me to those questions. If I let them linger, they’ll choke me.
“You’re not going alone,” I tell him. And I do look at him now, through a forced, overly confident smile. “Okay? This isn’t a thing you do on your own.”
He gasps like he hasn’t breathed since he answered his phone, and when he exhales, it’s in a self-deprecating huff.
“Fantastic,” he mutters. “This is how you want to be spending your day.”
“Well, this sure as hell isn’t how you want to be spendingyourday.”
His eyes are still glassy, and that worsens until his feeble attempt at a shield disintegrates.
“She’s been having seizures on and off the past few months,” he whispers. He taps his palm on the seat as his jaw works. “They’re trying to work out a new medicine for her. But they haven’t figured it out yet. And each seizure she has—”
He stops talking.
Leans back against the seat and pinches the skin between his eyes.
That band of tension around my chest clamps painfully, leaves me winded.
He inhales another gasping, anxious breath before he lowers hishand from his eyes and works his tongue against the inside of his cheek.
“Thank you,” he says to the back of the driver’s seat.
I plant my elbow on the door, curling up as far from him as I can get in this admittedly spacious luxury town car.
So. This is happening.
