“The white raven,” Aiden muttered to himself, gawking at the statue.
“His name is Val,” Sara said from next to him, a hint of longing in her voice.
He glanced at her. “The raven’s name?”
Her twinkling eyes met his, and she smiled. “Yep. But father didn’t let me play with him much and now I can’t anymore.”
“Why not?” Aiden asked, realizing he was actually curious. Not just about the raven and this AI girl who could make the VR world look any way she wanted, but about all of this, what it meant and how it tied into Claudia’s murder.
Sara put her hands in the pockets of her dress and looked at the statue, shrugging her shoulders as if the answer should have been obvious. “Because I am no longer the heir.”
Chapter 25
Darren stared at theprotein-rich gooey substance in his bowl. It smelled like chicken soup, even had the flavor of it, but he knew it wasn’t. Like most of the prison ‘food’, it was yet another iteration of the multipurpose nutrient-rich paste pharmaceutical corporations supplied to mining outposts due to its long shelf-life and various applications. The slice of bread on Darren’s tray was made from the same stuff and so was the glue used for patching up engines leaking altenergy.
“Shit, Darren! Ya heard that? E-Unit or soccer?”
Only the apple on his tray wasn’t made from goo, so, unsurprisingly, it was the one thing he was looking forward to eating. Then again, his lack of appetite probably had more to do with the confrontation from last night than the actual ingredients used in prison food.
Aiden should be arriving at the hideout just about now. The thought turned Darren’s stomach upside-down.His hands felt clammy. Hot and cold shivers passed through him, heightening the sting from being restrained in his sore shoulders. He bit into the sour-sweet fruit, the crunch too loud in his ears. Last night, Aiden Kesley had intended to kill him. Almost had. And now he was about to walk into the biggest secret in Darren’s life.
Darren shuddered, finding it difficult to swallow the apple. Had he made the right choice sending Aiden there to discover more than he’d bargained for? He had no idea. It was a ludicrous gamble, but he’d seen no other way. He wanted to live, now more so than before, to stop pretending he was okay with giving up.
The man who’d come here to kill him… Aiden Kesley’s obsession with the truth was the only chance Darren had. This man was the only person who could change the course of his future or cement it, depending on who he was when he returned from the hideout.
“Oi, Darren! Get ya head out the clouds, man.” Matt snatched Darren’s untouched bread. “They lettin’ us on the field later!”
Darren sank his teeth into the fruit again. “Terrific.”
The lack of enthusiasm that must’ve shown through his tone had Matt scowling at him. “Ya feelin’ ok?”
He wasn’t. He was… scared. Terrified, in fact. Had he really made the right choice? Trusting Aiden with the hideout just because… his gut told him to? “Peachy.”
Matt smacked him across the back. “Pfft. Smartass. Seriously, ya sick or something?”
“Bad sleep.”
“Bad sleep or ya too busy fucking the warden in yer dreams to actually sleep?” Matt snorted, shaking his head.
What he’d done last night changed everything. It set into motion things he wasn’t sure he was ready to face,yet he didn’t have a choice anymore. He’d known the day would come sooner or later, he’d been planning for it, but he couldn’t have foreseen this turn of events after two years of rotting in prison.
Darren pulled on his lip piercing.To think that trying to get in the pants of a man would force his hand like this. He should’ve seen through Aiden, he should’ve ignored that urge to get to know the stuck-up warden and kept his distance so he wouldn’t make it so easy for Aiden to corner him. But he hadn’t. He’d lost the moment he’d seen the darkness in those soul-stealing eyes.
So familiar, so soothing. So enthralling. So irresistible, like the light of a single star in a cloudy sky.
Mustering up a fake grin, Darren said, “You got me.”
“On that note, he ain’t in today, it seems. Nigel’s in charge,” Matt pointed out, tilting his chin toward the two guards at the gate.
“I guess he needed a day off.” Darren eyed the bin where he’d dumped the useless maintenance access card after breaking it up into pieces. It had worked to get him in his cell, but not out, telling him Aiden had deactivated it shortly after.
Smiling at the thought of what an easy escape it would’ve been if Aiden hadn’t done that, Darren let Matt claim the rest of the goo-based food, then watched his friend join the poker game on the neighboring table. He immediately caused a round of grunts and swearing, and Darren almost felt sorry for the evidently unsuspecting victims as he headed for the library. Before he’d taken even a step though, someone pushed him back down on the bench and grabbed his shoulders, massaging the aching muscles in deliberate circles of numbing pleasure.
Fuuck, that felt amazing.
“Shit, Darren… no wonder you are in a bad mood,” Nyle said, hitting a particularly bad spot above Darren’s shoulder blades. “Just let me do my magic. You need to relax.”
Not only was Darren’s mind stressed out, but after the hour he’d spent tied to that fucking chair, his whole upper body was killing him. “Fuck!” he grumbled when Nyle pressed on the same spot.
