Page 59 of Alien God

Her hate I could withstand. Easily.

Her hurt, it turned out, was something else entirely.

I’d never felt less myself than I did in that moment, in the entrance hall of my childhood home with Torrance, her eyes so warm yet so wounded. Never felt less sure. Less strong.

Am I the weak one? I queried myself silently again.

I found that I could not confront the question.

And perhaps, in that, I had my answer.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Torrance

“So, is it interrogation time now?”

My question seemed to surprise Wylfrael, as if he’d forgotten all about that.

“No. Tomorrow,” he said. He dragged his hand down his face in a bizarrely human gesture of agitated weariness. “I will take you back to your room to rest now.”

“Rest,” I said sarcastically. “Ah, yes. It’s so easy to rest while I’m being held prisoner by the one who killed my friends.”

His wings pulsed.

“Your friends started firing on me the moment I appeared. They wanted to kill me on my own land. Should I have let them do it?”

“I don’t mean the soldiers!” I cried. “I mean the other civilian women! The ones without weapons! The ones like me.”

He stared at me for a long moment before saying, “I didn’t kill any of the weaponless ones.”

I swallowed hard, my heart slamming. Could that be true? Could I have been wrong about what he’d done? Could my friends still be out there somewhere after escaping on the ship?

“Are you lying?” I asked, squinting at him as if I’d somehow be able to see the truth on him, in him, if only I looked hard enough.

“What reason do I have to lie?”

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