Page 58 of Legacy of Chaos

I can do this.

Calmly—at least on the outside—she sat in a very uncomfortable jump seat and strapped herself in. Then she threw her head back and summoned a song. Well, she tried to summon a song.Shivers, an Ed Sheeran classic. She’d just seen a video of him in concert. He was in his sixties now, but man, he could still sing.

But for some reason, her mind kept taking her back to a song she’d heard playing at Runa’s party. A dark, moody piece from a recent movie’s soundtrack, had rolled through the room like a riptide.

She’s a beautiful heathen, a righteous bitch, and she’ll take your soul into the darkness…

A clank startled her, then a jolt, and Oskar glanced over at her with a reassuring smile.

“All normal. We’re starting our descent now.”

“How are you two doing?” Stryke’s deep voice came over the speaker, and something fluttered in her stomach. He’d asked her that during sex, and now her mind wanted to play that scene over and over.

“How are you doing?” he rasped. “You okay?”

“Yes,” she breathed. “Hurry.”

She couldn’t stand the guy, but her hormones sure hadn’t gotten the message.

“All’s good,” the pilot said. “I’ll shift the camera so you can see us both.”

She nearly groaned. It was bad enough that Stryke was watching any of it. He didn’t need to see her struggling to prevent a panic attack. He didn’t need to see how she’d just nearly jumped out of her skin when the submarine creaked.

“Hey, Cyan. See this?” Oskar pointed to a number readout on the dashboard of gadgets. “That’s our depth. Focus on that.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she whispered as fresh stirrings of anxiety gripped her by the throat. “I don’t like this. I don’t like this at all—”

“Cyan?” Stryke’s voice, a calm, resonant purr, instantly captured her focus. “Listen to me. Concentrate on my voice. Tell me something about yourself. Something I don’t know.”

She knew this trick. She’d seen her psychologist mother use it all the time. “How about you tellmesomething? Make me more interested in you than I am in how small this damned thing is.”

“What do you want to know?”

I want to know why you freaked out during sex and ran away.Also, why is your voice so deep and sexy? “I think you can guess.”

“Come up with something else.”

Yeah, probably not cool to make him discuss something so intimate in front of however many people were listening. Closing her eyes, she did her best to ignore the fact that they were plummeting deep into the sea, and if this thing sprung a leak…

“What’s between you and Blade?” she asked.

“Next question.”

“Why are you such an asshole?”

Oskar nearly choked on his own saliva.

“Ah, an oldie but a goodie,” Stryke mused. “There are many theories. None of which I care to share right now.”

“Well, we have a problem then because there’s nothing else about you I want to know.”

“I see.” She thought she heard a note of amusement in his voice. Great. She hoped he was enjoying this because she’d rather be fighting her way through Sheoul’s Horun region with nothing but a pair of nail clippers than be sealed inside this metal coffin. “Why don’t you tell me about your childhood then?”

Her childhood? Why did he care? Then she realized hedidn’tgive a crap. He was just trying to keep her from trying to claw her way out of the sub.

What the hell? She inhaled deeply, closed her eyes, and thought about growing up in the Los Angeles suburbs.

“My dad worked for a tech company based in LA, and my mom was a psychologist. I went to school at Hellmouth Academy because my parents didn’t want me to have to wear contact lenses or a glamour to fit in with human kids.”

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