Page 139 of Sky Song
His eyes might have been trained on the projection, but once he sensed her, they drew her in their orbit, and she could feel the pull. He split from the group and started toward her, prowling like a predator he was. Cricket’s breath caught - because it was Lyle, and because in the week she hadn’t laid eyes on him, he turned into something completely foreign.
“Cricket?” Paloma’s voice. At once, she became the focus of numerous sets of eyes.
“Hello, everyone.” She would be damned if she apologized for crashing this party. “Just a few words with Lyle, if you please.”
By now, he had reached her and stopped deliberately close, crowding her. He stole her breath, and not in a good sense.
My love, what is happening to you?
“We’ll go upstairs. Then I’m taking you home,” he announced and motioned for her to follow. The rest of them followed their progress with their eyes but made no attempt to move.
Once Cricket and Lyle were back onto the hollowed-out main floor restaurant, they stopped, and she scrutinized him under the dimmed lights. The bottles lining the shelves at the bar gleamed mysteriously and malevolently with reflected light.
“Lyle.” Her voice cracked and she couldn’t go on.
“What, my hearts?”
When he said it like that, in the same voice and inflection, she was transported back to the symposium and their carefree banter with that immediate soul-mate connection. “I came to ask about Hipper.”
Lyle, this stranger, huffed a half-formed laugh. “What?”
“And why you shut me out.”
His brows furrowed over his large dead eyes. She hated the new way he pulled his hair back into a simple knot. It emphasized everything that was predatory in him, from the slashes of the cheekbones he used to not have to the aquiline nose with gill-nostrils to the cruel set of his luscious scarred mouth. Still beautiful like an otherworldly angel, but now an angel of death.
“I can’t afford to be distracted.”
Like that was all the explanation she needed. “I am a distraction now, huh.”
“Cricket…”
A slow burn of resentment lit up her chest. “You don’t trust me, do you? Because I am a subject.”
“Cricket…”
“Tell me, what are you waiting for?”
“We’re getting ready to leave. Soon.”
“Why soon? Why not now? You know how to fly anything, don’t you? The big scary pirate.” He widened his stance and crossed his arms, bullyish. Fine, let him, whatever. “You know what? It doesn’t matter. I’m not going.”
“Oh yes, you are.”
“You can’t force me.”
“I can.”
“I will run away!”
His eyebrows rose. “Where to?”
“To… To Rectar! I’ll work in the mines there, under a fake name.”
“I’d rather you go with me,” he said quietly.
And Cricket wilted. “But you won’t stay.”
“Whether I stay or not, I’m yours. Our fate is written in the stars. What you are and where you work has never meant a thing.”
