It wasn’t what Aslas had done to her — it was what I had done.
I had been the one to keep the truth from her, who had laid with her and made her believe I was the Prince and not a lowly Decoy.
For all my grousing about Aslas’s temperament and behavior, I had been the one to harm her.
And finally, the most painful word of them all:
Goodbye.
There was a dead finality to it, a sense that this truly was the end as far as she was concerned.
She hadn’t merely turned us down…
She never intended on coming back.
I dropped the pad and ran back into the bathroom.
I knew my senses had picked up on something, some subtext underneath Beth’s words and emotions.
Something was wrong, some thought process that did not make sense.
I yelled at Aslas, who was still in the process of rinsing off his soapsuds, gibbering nonsense to himself.
I yanked the door open and Aslas, taken by surprise, screamed in a high-pitched female-like bellow and spun around, pressing himself to the tiles.
“Hurry up!” I yelled. “We have to leave. Now!”
“Haven’t you been listening to a word I said?” Aslas snapped in response. “I don’t want you looking at me naked! Or touching me!”
“We don’t have time for this!” I growled, reaching into the shower stall and yanking him out.
I grabbed a towel and threw it at him. “Get dried!”
“All right! All right!” the Prince hissed. “I know it’s Steyatt but there is such a thing as patience, you know.”
“It’s Beth, you dolt! She’s gone!”
“What do you mean, she’s gone?”
“What do you think it means? It means she’s not here! Hurry up!”
I didn’t tell him about the note as he would only want to keep on talking.
Without waiting for him, I grabbed my clothes from the drying rack, turned on my heel and marched back out into the room where I immediately pulled them on.
Something was going on here, something I did not have the full information of.
Something Beth had told me, something she had said.
Something—
There was a loud bang as Aslas hurried to get dressed.
When he came out, his scales were still slick with water, no doubt from the fear it would waste too much time.
He finished pulling on his shirt.
“We have to find her,” I said. “Beth. We have to talk to her.”