Page 55 of Prince of Storms
I stomped over to the door and flung it open wide. The door whipped backward, clanged off the wall, then began to swing shut.
“Do you find this funny?” I snarled in his face, slamming a shoulder into the heavy steel, trying to stop it.
I failed, and the door kept closing, my feet skidding across the floor until I bounced off his chest with a very unladylike grunt of inconvenience and irritation.
“Um, maybe a little?” he chuckled.
“Really?” I said, gathering myself and pulling strands of hair from my face. “You find it funny that I’m in jail, and you’re all contemplating whether or not to kill me? You find it funny to come to Earth to take it over? You find it funny that you let me fool around with you when you aren’t even human?!”
My voice reached a crescendo, and the smile slowly faded from Tor’s face.
“By the God-King,” he said, eyes widening until I could see all the swirly gray circles. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about the fact that you’re aliens here to take over the planet. I watched it happen, Tor. I saw them come through that portal thing.”
Tor sighed. “I … all right. Listen. In the most technical of senses, perhaps, yes, we’re aliens. But,” he continued swiftly, raising a hand to cut me off, “but we’re not here to take over. Nor are we really aliens. This is me, this body. It might not be my true form, but it’sme.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked, confused.
“Come with me,” he said. “It’s easier just to show you.”
“I don’t want to go to your spaceship,” I said. “I’ve seen basically nothing. Right now, you can send me home, and people will just call me crazy if I start blabbing on. But the more you show me, the more detail I have. I don’t want that. I just want to live, Tor, if that’s your real name.”
“It’s short for Torrent,” he said. “That’s my real name.”
I studied him.
“Mia,” he said with another sigh. “This … What a mess.”
“You’re telling me.”
“Yes, I am,” he said dryly. “I never thought, in a million years, that you would be … Anyway, come with me. I’ll show you everything, the truth. You can make your own opinion, decide what you want to decide, but at least that way, you’ll have all your answers.”
I eyed him skeptically. “That definitely sounds like it’s a lead-in to killing me.”
Tor whirled and slammed a fist into the wall. The thick steel plate dented heavily under the blow as the metal shrieked in protest. I eyed the fist-deep impact crater.
“If I wanted you dead,” he said quietly, “I would snap your neck here and now and be done with it.”
“Unless you prefer your humans raw and wiggling,” I countered, trying not to fathom just how strong someone would have to be to leave that dent.
I’d hit the wall in frustration during my short imprisonment. My knuckles ached still, and I hadn’t even so much as scratched it. Tor didn’t appear to be the least bit fazed by the strength of his blow.
“You think we want to eat you?” he asked, eyebrows rising.
“It’s not out of the realm of what aliens would do,” I replied.
“Mia. I’m not an alien, not in that sense, at least. And trust me, the only ‘eating’ I want to do is what I did to you the other night.”
My jaw dropped open while my cheeks burned. To my utter shock, my hand came up and slapped him. “Don’t talk to me like that! You don’t have that right anymore.”
Tor, instead of getting angry or hitting me back, killing me, or a dozen other things he could have done, did the one thing I didn’t expect. He threw back his head and roared with laughter.
“Good,” he said through the chuckles. “Good! I like your attitude. Now, come with me, and I will show you the truth, and you can stop your little hissy fit, okay?”
“I—”
He grabbed my hand, his fingers wrapping around mine, and started pulling me behind him. I stumbled. The sheer jolt of excited energy that rushed through me at his touch fried the connection from my brain to my legs.
