Chapter 101: DANGEROUS FEELINGS
ARIANA
Sebastian takes forty minutes to produce an explanation.
I know this because I spend all forty of them in the kitchen of Eleanor's estate, sitting at the table with a cup of tea I don't drink, listening to the low controlled sound of Liam's voice from behind the closed door of the underground room, the particular cadence of someone asking questions with the specific patience that is somehow more dangerous than anger. Marcus is in there too. I can hear the occasional flat interjection of his voice, shorter and less patient than Liam's, filling the silences Sebastian leaves between his answers.
Aria sits across from me. She is not pretending to do anything else. She is simply watching me with the particular twin attention that has been a fixed point of my existence since before I could name it, reading the thing I am not saying with the fluency of someone who learned the language the same night I did.
"Say it," I tell her.
