Lux (The Nocte Trilogy 3)

But I do. I worry about it. I can’t stop worrying about it, about him. I’m so tired of things being kept from me, tired of being treated like a little girl.

“Who screams at night?” I ask tentatively, and Dare turns his head and I know that he knows. But he shakes his head.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“It’s ok,” I whisper, because I know he’s lying. “You can tell me. I won’t tell anyone.”

For a second, for one second, I think he’s going to. He looks at me like he’s speculating, like he’s pondering and I think he’s going to confide in me, but then…he doesn’t. He just takes a bite of ice cream and moves further away from me, edging down the pavement.

“There’s nothing to tell,” he says blankly, and I know the matter is closed. He doesn’t trust me. Not yet.

“Fine.”

I eat my ice cream until it’s gone and when it is, I turn to him.

“I don’t want to go back,” I say.

“We have to,” he replies, taking my cup and throwing them both in the trash.

“Because we’re both prisoners?” I ask, remembering his words from long ago.

He stares at me for a long time, his dark eyes hardening, hiding his pain.

“Yes.”

“You could leave, you know,” I suggest hesitantly. “You could run away. If you hate it so much here, I mean.”

Dare stares into the distance, his eyes so very dark. “And where would I go? There’s nowhere I could go that the Savages wouldn’t find me.”

He’s so bleak as he climbs to his feet and reaches down to help me up. Our ride back to Whitley is silent.

When we roll back through the gates, Richard is waiting.

His car is parked halfway down the driveway, and he’s leaning against it, waiting for us like a tall, coiled snake….a snake poised to strike. My heart pounds and leaps into my throat and I’m frozen.

“Go to the house, Calla,” my uncle tells me, his eyes hard and focused on Dare, and they contain a strange gleam, something that turns my stomach to ice.

“But…it was my idea!” I tell him quickly. “Dare didn’t want me to go alone.”

Richard turns to me, his face oh-so-cold, and Dare nudges me.

“Just go, Calla,” he says quietly.

Richard is satisfied by that, because Dare is being submissive and my uncle shoves him into the car. “You know you’re not to leave the house, boy,” he snaps, a vein pulsing beside his eye. He slams the car door far harder than necessary.

I watch them drive up the driveway, I watch Richard yanking Dare into the house, and I can’t stand to follow them and hear what I know I’ll hear. I dash into the back doors, into the kitchen, and I throw myself in Sabine’s arms.

She listens to me cry and when I’m done, she calmly looks at me.

“We’d better go get those scooters, child.”

She walks up the drive with me, and we push them back, and I ask her a million questions.

“Why does Richard hate Dare? Why is he so mean? Why isn’t Dare supposed to leave Whitley?”

Sabine listens but she doesn’t answer until long after we’ve put the scooters away and returned to the kitchen.

“Things aren’t what they seem, little Calla Lily,” she tells me. “It’s time that you wrap your young mind around that.”