Chapter 2
Istepped into the hallway before anyone could stop me, the air outside the room cooler, thinner somehow.
But in truth, my skin still carried that lingering warmth where healing oil had been pressed into my broken skin.
It was a pity it couldn’t heal the broken pieces within me, too.
The ones that lay beyond being just skin deep.
The ones named betrayal.
Behind me, I heard voices rise, muffled at first, then clearer as the door opened again.
“I’ll handle this,” Uncle Rick said, his tone low and firm, the kind of voice that did not invite argument. After that, his footsteps followed mine, steady and determined. As if he had already decided he would rather face my anger than let me do this alone.
But I kept walking regardless.
“If you think you’re going to change my mind in this,” I called back, not slowing, not turning, my hand already braced against the wall when the tug in my back threatened to steal my breath. “Don’t bother. Now, if you want to help me, you will tell me where they’re holding him.”
“Alexandra,” he said, my name shaped like a reprimand, sharp with warning and love and fear all at once.
I ignored it, swallowing down the ache, refusing to let pain negotiate on anyone’s behalf. So, I kept going, forcing my legs to cooperate as I added, quieter but colder, “Or I guess I could just check where they held him the first time. I could go straight to the Prison and start there.”
Yet despite the bite of my words, I knew that the bitterness in my voice wasn’t meant for my uncle.
No, it was meant for the one who had let me down the most.
Riley.
My mind was split in two, just as my heart had been. Half of me was trying to convince the other that it wasn’t him who attacked me. That he had been under the influence of whatever darkness had taken him. That he was merely a puppet in a malevolent show we were all being forced to watch play out.
But then there was the other half. The one that screamed, why didn’t he try to fight harder against it? The realization that love wasn’t strong enough to battle back the darkness. That it didn’t conquer all as the storybooks had us believe.
A truth that was hidden under the shadow of fairytale lies.
My uncle’s jaw tightened.
“You can’t go near Riley. He’s dangerous, Alex,” he said, as if he himself had just experienced that danger first-hand.
But then again, I knew my uncle. I had no doubt that seeing the state I was in when Aster must have carried me back here was more than enough to warrant his fears. Fears I knew I would have to ease for my uncle’s sake.
“Yes, and right now, so am I,” I bit out, letting my anger coat every word. Then I felt my arm in his gentle grasp and my name whispered like a plea.
“Alex.”
Both of which were finally enough to get me to stop and take a breath.
“Have you ever felt as if you were born for something?” The question came out before I could hold it back. One that startled me as well as my uncle. I knew that when I turned to look at him, and the confusion in his eyes morphed to understanding in seconds.
“You feel as if you need to do this?”
I shook my head at his question and rephrased what it should have been.
“I know that I need to do this.” I released a sigh and continued on, “I was the cause. The key to opening that damn Rift, and I don’t know why, but what if the cause can also be the solution? What if I started something I was always meant to finish?”
My uncle swallowed hard before nodding, telling me without words that he understood.
“You know the Minotaur won’t like it.”
“Yeah, well, he doesn’t have to like it… he just has to accept it,” I replied, prompting him to nod his head again just before I felt my hand being taken in his.
Feeling metal and plastic pressed into my palm, I looked down and saw a pair of car keys.
“It’s the black SUV parked outside. Riley is in Prison and in the same cell you broke him out of before. Go now and let me deal with Aster.”
I swallowed down the lump of emotion I felt rising before throwing my arms around him, ignoring the pain in my back and instead holding on tight.
“Thank you.”
His arms tensed around me, before they relaxed as the last of the fight left him, acceptance taking its place. After that, I walked away knowing what I had to do.
I made my way down to the ground floor of the Capitol building, where light illuminated the circular hall and the compass rose it featured.
It did nothing to lighten my mood. The tension in me was fueled by everything that had happened since leaving Atlas at the Rift.
But the uncertainty inside me was the worst. The things I didn’t know.
Like if Atlas was okay and if he had made it through without trouble meeting him on the other side.
I didn’t care what Aster had said about Atlas being more than capable of dealing with whatever threat found him; I still worried about what would happen.
I pushed the solid wooden doors open, doing so slowly, thanks to my injury, and made my way down the granite steps. In fact, I made it all the way to the front of the building and into the car without incident.
Although I knew I had counted my chickens before they hatched by thinking I was in the clear. Something proven after I had just slid behind the driver’s seat, before jumping a mile in fright, thanks to the passenger door that was wrenched open before I could even put it into drive.
“Jesus fucking Christ!” I cursed, something Aster responded to in a dry tone.
“Can’t fucking help you if this goes south.”
I rolled my eyes and started to say,
“If you’re here to try and talk me out of this, then you are wasting your—”
“That darkness that’s inside him, it took hold of him as easily as a touch, Alex… because that’s all it takes, just a single touch of pure evil to corrupt your soul. There is no saving him,” Aster stated sternly, making me close my eyes and clench my fists around the steering wheel.
“You don’t know that,” I gritted out, opening my eyes to shift them to his tender ones when I felt his hand land on my shoulder in quiet comfort.
“I do, which is why I don’t want the same thing to happen to anyone else I care about,” he replied, wincing when he caught himself obviously saying too much. His hand slipped from my shoulder and fell with the weight of his pain.
“Anyone else?” I asked, instantly picking up on it.
“Let it go, Alex,” he said sadly, and despite letting it go being the last thing I wanted to do, the pain in his eyes told me it was the right thing to do.
“So that’s why you don’t want me to see him, you’re afraid it might take hold of me too?” I asked instead, getting to the root of his fears. He didn’t answer me, but his silence spoke volumes.
“Do you believe in fate?”
At this, his head snapped up as if my question had been tethered to an invisible cord.
“I want to,” he replied honestly.
“That’s not what I asked,” I reminded him, and he sighed.
“It’s hard to believe that the people you lose are just another marker left behind in Fate’s path. Seems a little unfair to those who aren’t ready to continue walking along it, knowing you are forced to leave them behind.”
I nodded, feeling his words burrow deep and stay there in a way there would be no digging them out again. Because he was right, it was unfair.
“When I thought I had lost my uncle, it was the day the Rift opened. I had never been so terrified in all my life. But without him to guide me, I was convinced I wouldn’t survive a single day, let alone the years that followed.”
“I know you can take care of yourself, Alex,” he stated as if this was what I was trying to get at, but he was mistaken.
I shook my head and told him, “Yeah, I can, but that was only because I learned how to survive. Because I refused to give up and let my uncle’s sacrifice be in vain.”
“What’s your point?”
“My point is that even though there is pain in loss, there can also be great strength. The strength it takes to want to survive, something most of us believe would crush us with the weight of it long before we saw the light guiding us back to the living,” I told him, making him shake his head.
I grabbed his large hand in mine before adding, “Being forced to walk that road is still a choice we make, and it takes courage to carry on, despite the fear, the sadness, the overwhelming heartbreak. There is meaning to this life, Aster, and right now, I know my destiny. Because this, right here, this is my crossroads, and I don’t want to take the safe passage, not when it only leads me further away from Atlas. ”
His eyes widened slightly before he then pointed out what, at this point, was the obvious.
“You love him, don’t you?” I didn’t try to deny it. I didn’t want to.
So, without wasting a single second, I told him, “Yes. I love him. So, ask yourself, Aster, what wouldn’t you do for the person you loved, but more than anything, do you really think anything in your world, or mine, could stop you?”
In the end, my saying this was what really did it. What convinced him enough that he finally stopped fighting me on it. I knew that when he released one of his big, heavy sighs that expanded his chest out before his large shoulders dropped in defeat.
“Then I suggest we get going. You have an ex-boyfriend to interrogate, and I have a King to disobey.”
I couldn’t help but wink at him as I put the car into drive and said, “Attaboy!” Then I put my foot to the gas and turned the wheel.
We were making our way down the main street before I thought to add, “Oh, and by the way, just so you know… Riley and I, well, we never actually got to the dating stage.”
“Good job too.”
I raised a brow in question and asked, “Yeah, why’s that?”
“Because when Atlas finds out what he did to you…”
“Your new boyfriend is going to kill him.”