It was clear from his tone that he didn’t believe therewasa choice. He thought he had me cornered, that I would simply cower and let him have his way.
“GUARDS!” The word tore like a sob from my throat, and the pounding of boots echoed through the hallway an instant later.
Lorien shook his head. “Your stubbornness is tiresome.”
He struck with no more warning than this, grabbing for my throat.
Hemissed.
I barely moved, yet his hand struck the wall just to my left. A strangled sound, something between a hiss of pain and a cry of confusion, ripped through the air as he jerked his hand away, flexing his fingers.
I looked up and saw that his eyes had changed again—back to a bright, burning gold. The color stayed longer this time. Not a flash of battered daylight, but a rising sun, determined to chase away the dark.
“…Aleks?”
His gaze took mine.
Time seemed to collapse into nothing.
Later, perhaps I would realize that only seconds had actually passed, but in that moment, we felt infinite as I stared at him, as I stumbled forward, reaching over and over until my swiping, desperate fingers finally managed to close around his wrist.
He pulled away.
I heard my voice as if I was far in the distance, only able to hear an echo of myself crying out— “No! WAIT!”
Light bled from Aleksander’s body, cocooning him. Fiery, hellish light. The floor trembled. The walls rattled. A painting fell, its gilded frame and glass face shattering as it landed.
The creature before me lifted his head, glaring at me. There was no trace of Aleks in his eyes any longer.
“I’llbe waiting,” he said. “You know where.”
Then he was gone, the broken painting the only evidence he’d been there at all.
Everything was blurry. My vision. My thoughts. Nothing felt real. I dropped to my knees and felt my way through the pieces of shattered glass, picking one of them up, trying to convince myself of its solidness. I clenched it tightly in one hand. With the other, I traced the scars that ran along the right side of my throat, following the branches of raised skin with unsteady fingers—another grounding exercise.
A memory flashed in my mind, brutally clear: The moment I’d gotten these scars, when I’d first realized the truth about Lorien and confronted him. He’d stolen so much from me that day. I’d felt so empty. So lost. So…broken.
But it was nothing compared to how I felt in this moment.
I had a strange desire to rip the scars open. To feel warm blood running over my skin, to see bright, puddling proof thatIwas alive among the wreckage, if nothing else.
And this was how my guards—followed swiftly by Thalia and Phantom—found me: With a blade of broken glass pressed to my neck.
Gasping, Thalia raced forward and knocked the sharpness away from my pounding pulse. “What the hell are you doing?”
I still clenched the shard in my fist; feeling it bite into the skin of my palm woke me up enough that I managed to flick my eyes toward hers.
I’m fine, I tried to tell her.
The lie wouldn’t leave my lips.
“Nova?”
I rose to my feet, and my voice was surprisingly steady, even though it felt like every other part of me was crumbling, as I said, “He was here.”
SEVEN
Nova
