Page 112 of Silk and Sirens

“I had something I needed to check,” I said calmly, my heels clicking against the floor as I closed our distance.

His eyes widened a fraction, Adam’s apple bobbing with a swallow.

I can’t believe I hadn’t seen it before.

“You want to tell me why?” I asked.

His breathing picked up, his hand shaking as he pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. And his words, when he said them, were barely a whisper. “I didn’t have a choice.”

My chest tightened, anger and hurt tangling so violently I could barely separate them.

“How long?” I asked.

“Aeris …”

“How long?” I repeated, only for him to look away. “A week? A month?”

Still no response, his eyes closing as he tried to keep himself together.

“The entire time?” My voice sounded like a whip against his silence. “I’m such a fucking idiot.”

I had trusted him. The quiet, careful man who looked like he didn’t belong anywhere near a place like Atlantis. The one who never raised his voice. Never spoke badly of anyone. Never made himself feel like a threat.

“You told Selene about the detective.”

“Aeris—”

“You gave her secrets that protected me.”

“Aeris, please.”

“She killed Olivia,” I snapped, the words ripping out of me. “Had her raped then discarded like she wasn’t even human, Albus.”

He flinched, but he didn’t deny it. “I know.”

I laughed, the sound manic. “You know?”

“I didn’t have a choice,” he rushed out. “I didn’t know she’d do that.”

My blood ran hot.

I didn’t have a choice.

A phrase I was starting to hate more than anything else in the world.

“I’d never have …” He seemed to choke on the words. “Please, I never wanted anyone to be hurt. I didn’t know what happened until the detective, I swear.”

“Albus …”

“Please,” he gasped, panic cracking his composure completely. “If she suspects anything, she said she’d cut out my tongue and sell my sister at the auctions.”

I stared at him for a long moment, searching for something in his face that might help this make sense. To recognise some fragment of the man I thought I knew. But there was nothing left to find there except fear.

Fear of Selene.

Fear of me.

And fear of what he’d already done.