Page 43 of Even Angels fall
What is he doing there, anyway? There are only my room and Elhyor’s that are in use there.
“Not so fast.” Elhyor stops me in my tracks, grabbing my arm just above the elbow. “Where do you think you’re going? This conversation is not over.”
By the way he’s holding me so tight, I feel like he doesn’t want me to run away.
Right.
That’s why Brice is up there. I might not have been a prisoner until now, but this changes everything.
25
Elhyor
Angélique looks at me with defiance in her eyes, and part of me thinks she should, and the other regrets it.
What am I turning into? It feels like there are two beings inside of me who can’t stop being at war with each other about this girl.
“What do you want?” she asks, and as fierce as she looks, her tone is depleted and she sounds exhausted.
I’m not surprised. She lost a lot of blood. Anyone in her case would be the same, or even worse.
With my hand still wrapped around her arm, I force her to turn so I can look at her back again.
“I’m not going to repeat myself a third time. Who did this to you?” I ask, and unsurprisingly, I’m growling again.
“Why do you care? You’ve done worse today. Why should it matter?” She pauses and then seems to find her snark again. “First, you didn’t want to look at me or even be in the same roomas me, but you don’t want anyone else looking at me, either. Now, you think you can bully me into telling me who marked my back, when I’m not yet healed from what you did to my hand? You’ve got to be kidding me.”
She’s not wrong about her current wound.
Except I didn’t know she couldn’t shift. I didn’t know she would have trouble healing.
I know it’s not a good excuse, because I still did that knowing that she would be in pain.
But do I really have to apologize when she tried to kill me less than an hour ago?
I think I’m losing my mind. Or maybe we jumped into a parallel universe or something, because my life doesn’t make much sense right now.
“You tried to kill me. How did you expect me to react?” I ask her with a pointed look.
“I thought I’d be dead,” she answers me without an ounce of emotion.
Wait.
She knew there would be a high chance she wouldn’t manage to kill me. She thought I’d either kill her for the attack or maybe that, if I died, some of my men would kill her in retaliation, and yet she jumped, anyway?
She expected it, and yet she did it, anyway.
What kind of desperation is this?
“And yet, you’re still here,” I answer.
“And yet, I’m still here,” she repeats before adding, “wondering why my back matters when you just added to my collection of scars.”
There’s more than the back?
“Who. Did. This. To. You?” I ask again.
“I thought you said you wouldn’t repeat yourself,” she says with a devious smile, still not answering my question. “I’m tired.May I go to bed? You can lock me in if you want. I don’t care anymore.”
