Page 175 of The Scandal You Started
He will never know you loved him.
A bite of agony clamped around her throat, and her chest deflated on a choked noise.
I don’t…I don’t want this. I don’t want him to leave. He’s not supposed to leave!
Rayna whirled around to go back to the POTeM room, but Declan Griffin blocked her path.
“Rayna,” her uncle murmured with the faintest shake of his head. “It’s too late.”
“It’s not, it’s not,” she said, swiftly eating up the distance between them.
But the older man caught her around her upper arms when she reached his side. “Rayna, my child.” He ducked his face,giving her the full force of his sympathetic expression. “The doors are sealed. There’s nothing you can do anymore.”
“That’s not true!” A frustrated sob escaped her as she tried to drag herself free. “Let go. Uncle Declan, let go. Please let go. I need to stop him. He can’t leave.”
“I’m sorry.”
A mechanical voice rang from the speakers. “Returning to six-three-five PR, day one-seven, month five in…ten—”
Rayna cried out. “No! No.” Tears pooled in her eyes and slipped straight down her cheeks. “I need to stop him. I don’t want him to leave.”
“Eight…seven…”
She managed to wrench one arm out of Declan’s grasp and staggered forward, but he held her firm with the other.
“Five…four…”
“Uncle Declan, please.”
But his face only crumpled in apology.
“Two…one.”
Declan hurled her into him just as the mechanical voice announced the successful departure. Right as an anguished sob ripped from her. Along with her heart.
Rayna’s knees buckled, but the older man cinched his burly arm around her, holding her up. He covered the back of her head, hugging her to his shoulder.
And she bawled. Loudly.
“I love him,” she wept. “I love him. And I didn’t tell him.”
Now she would never be able to.
Chapter 50
Dominic
24 May 635 PR
Dominic’s body weighed ten tonnes as he stood on the grey pavement of the curved street before the short, black, iron gate that barred him from reaching his family’s townhouse.
Behind him, the hackney he’d hired when he realised he was standing on a side road in the centre of the Royal City of Tanbridge with no recollection of how he got there sped away.
Dominic stared up at the tall, yellow brick building amongst the street that housed some of the richest and oldest noble families in all of Khaas. It was four stories high with white-panelled windows and potted shrubs and summer flowers decorating either side of the brown door.
It felt like he was seeing it for the first time, which made no sense. His family always stayed there during the Season when the government was in session. But his mind was hazy, making him slow to recognise the thoughts and images that formed behind his eyes.
Moving feebly like he were underwater, Dominic unhooked the gate and stepped through it. He trudged the two-metre distance to the front door, but just as he went to knock, it flew open.
