Page 45 of Ensnared
But I can’t, not with Skye working for the clan. Not with the knowledge that she still can’t live without those awful bracelets because her powers are so unpredictable.
“I’m sorry,” I say for the second time. “About everything.”
She cocks her head to the side. “Do you regret inviting me here in the first place?”
I hesitate. Do I regret bringing this vibrant, interesting woman into our clan? She’s turned my life upside down, and I can’t say yet whether that’s a good thing. Change is terrifying, especially since there is so much on the line here: the clan, the entire dragonkind. My sanity.
Again, I remain silent a moment too long.
“Wow,” Skye says under her breath. “I guess that answers my question.”
She gets up from the couch, her movements stiff and uncomfortable. I hate that I made her feel that way.
“I don’t regret it,” I say. “It might have been a mistake, a decision with bad reasoning behind it, but I don’t—won’t regret it.”
Skye turns back to me, her brown eyes like twin pools of darkness. She blinks rapidly, then sniffs, just once. “I don’t know what to believe anymore,” she mutters, her voice small. “I’m kind of sick of not being wanted, first by my family, then you.”
At her words, shame stabs through me. Jack asked me to be nicer to her—and I need to try. If I can help her figure out her magic, and why she burst into flame that one time, maybe she’ll see I’m not the bastard she thinks I am.
I stand, a new idea propelling me to my feet.
“Get dressed,” I order. “I want us to try something.”
She looks at me like I’m mad. “It’s nearly dark. And it’ll be freezing soon.”
Not quite, though she’s not entirely wrong. The first frost is just around the corner, but this evening will be mild.
“Come on,” I encourage her. “We won’t be long.”
She seems to debate this with herself, then gives one tiny nod. “Fine. But—I need to do something first. I want to call my sister.”
My first impulse is to deny her, because I can’t have her blurting out anything about sea dragons to her witchy relatives. But she’s challenging me with her stare: this is a test. If I want her to learn to trust me, I need to trust her first.
“You put the call on speaker, and we have a deal.”
She scowls at me, but it’s the best I can do. I hand her my phone, and she punches in the number from memory. Not a lot of people do that anymore, but I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that Skye is good with numbers.
“Hello?” A female voice answers after a couple of rings.
Skye puts her finger to her lips to indicate that I should remain silent. “Hey, Allie,” she says. “It’s me.”
“Skye, oh gods, you’re alive!” her sister exclaims. “I thought something happened to you. Why the hell aren’t you answering your phone? And whose number is this?”
Skye smiles fondly at the phone she’s got cradled in her hand. “I’m fine, I swear. I dropped the phone in the sea.”
“The sea?”
“Yeah,” Skye says, her eyes wide. “We, uh, went whale watching. I was trying to take a good photo and dropped it in.”
I frown at her. Why is she lying to her sister? She could easily have told her that she’d accidentally fried her phone while practicing magic.
“You and technology. I swear, this must have been your twentieth phone.”
There’s a combination of exasperation and fondness in Alice’s voice that I’ve only ever heard among siblings.
“By the way, I sent the first of your boxes last week,” she continues. “I couldn’t fit them in my car all at once.”
“That’s fine,” Skye says. “I was actually hoping you haven’t sent everything yet.”
