Selene didn't say anything until the fire had swallowed the final cry.
They were back in his car, which was running but not moving. The rain was tapping on the windscreen like anxious fingers. Neither of them looked at the other person. Not yet.
There were too many ghosts in her throat, and he sat in the driver's seat as still as a man who had thought things would go exactly this wrong. At last, she looked at him.
She had a raspy voice.
"What was that?" Dorian didn't say anything. He just leaned across the desk, grasped her wrist gently, and put a wet cloth in her hand.
She didn't know she was bleeding until she looked down and saw tiny scrapes on her skin that appeared like glass dust. The kind of agony that doesn't bother you until the adrenaline wears off.
"He was right there," she said in a whisper. "In that chair."
"Or maybe you think he was." Selene's head turned quickly towards him.
"You think I made that up?" Dorian's voice was faint, low enough to be mean without getting louder.
"I think it's dangerous to let your mind wander when there's a smell involved.
" You know it better than anyone else. She wanted to yell at him, hit him, crawl out of her own skin.
But what terrified her more than what he said was this: He could be right.
With the smoke, the phantom notes still stuck in her lungs, the hallucinations from earlier that night, and the smell of treachery that was twisting and rotting in her chest, she didn't know what was true anymore.
She put her head down on the seat and shut her eyes. She replied softly, "I hate you." Dorian didn't move.
"You're allowed." "Then go," But he didn't do it.
He just sat there, and she could feel him staring at her even though it was dark.
After a long pause, he replied, "Say it again if you need to." "I won't stop you." That made her eyes pop open.
"Don't talk down to me."
"I'm not." He looked at her, cutting his glance, "but I know hate," and it wasn't all.
She looked at him...the man who had stolen her formulas, broken into her lab, and lured her into mental warfare with a perfume that made her feel sad.
Nevertheless, he still managed to gaze at her like she was the only riddle in the world that needed to be solved.
"You think you know what's going on?" She said, her voice shaking. "You think you know me?"
"I think I've been obsessed with you since the first time you touched your neck before answering a question."
She stopped moving, and he stated it like he was confessing. There was no seduction in his voice just the reality, like a piece of glass falling on a cold marble floor.
She remembered that moment, a meeting at her studio. He wanted to see if her scents could change how people felt.
She laughed and caressed her neck without even realizing it.
A sign, Weakness, he had seen it. He had remembered.
"Being obsessed isn't the same as trusting," she muttered. Dorian moved closer and spoke more softly, like the ghost of a kiss.
"No." But it's a good start, Selene looked at him. Her whole body was tense and throbbing with something she couldn't name, not hatred, not desire.
Something more gloomy, more truthful. She remembered the first time he came to her studio. How he got too close.
How he didn't smell like power; he was power, boiled down to skin.
His look had taken away her power, not her clothes. And she let him, she had taken advantage of him. For the maths, for the notion of love, for the dream of being undone by someone who could never really know her.
Nevertheless, they were undone, set on fire, cut open, still reaching.
"I didn't mean to fall into it," she continued, her voice barely audible. He turned his head.
"Fall into what?" Her mouth was dry, she made herself glance at him when she spoke.
"You." The air inside the automobile changed; it got thicker, sharper.
He didn't smile, he didn't blink. Instead.
Dorian took her hand and pushed it gently towards him, putting her palm against the middle of his chest. His heart was going fast.
"You thought you were the only one who lost it?" he whispered.
Selene looked at him, she despised this. Did not like the truth in his voice. She hated the part of her that believed it. She should leave, she should yell, she should say she will burn everything down again.
But instead... She bent over and kissed him.
It wasn't soft, it wasn't sweet, it was the kind of kiss that tasted like ruin and yearning, like an apology with no words.
She ran her hands through his hair. He squeezed her mouth like he had no right to but every reason to.
They kissed as if it were the final time, because it may be.
Finally, when they broke apart, out of breath and shaking, she mumbled against his lips: "Be honest with me." Dorian shut his eyes. "I don't know if Lucien is still alive." She pulled away.
"What?" He blinked his eyes. "I got the same picture you did." The same thing, hours before you. Someone is messing with both of us. Selene's chest caved in.
"Why didn't you say anything?" He turned his head away.
"Because if Lucien is still alive, this isn't just about being obsessed anymore." "It's about fairness." She sat back and tried to catch her breath.
Lucien...Still alive. It made everything different and it made her ask a question she had been putting off for too long: What truly transpired that night? The drug overdose, the controversy.
Her lack of sound, she shut her eyes. "I made a deal with someone after Lucien died," she stated in a low voice. Dorian looked to her, tense.
"What kind of deal?" She thought about it, "The kind that is quiet." Dorian's jaw tightened. "Selene...."I didn't murder him, but I didn't stop what transpired. Someone paid me to remain quiet after that.
"Who?" She glanced at him, and this time she didn't move. "His mum. "It was so quiet in the automobile that it was deafening.
She believed the media couldn't handle another Vale crisis, that Lucien's addictions would ruin the legacy. It would be cleaner if it appeared like he died alone. Dorian sat back in shock. "She gave you money."
"She gave me money to go away." He ran his fingers through his hair. "And you took it?" Selene looked him in the eye. "I had no choice."
"You always have a choice." "No," she responded, her voice breaking.
"Not when you've been the bad guy in someone else's story for so long that you forget you were human in your own."
That made him stop talking, she turned her head towards the window and tried to catch her breath.
The rain had ceased outside something had broken inside. And when he finally spoke again, his voice sounded different, not chilly, not mad.
I'm just exhausted. "If Lucien is still alive, your silence didn't keep him safe." Selene nodded.
"I know." They stayed in that quiet, rough spot for a long time. And just as the tension started to fade into something weak and real.
Selene's phone rang again, one picture, no message. A fresh picture.
Eliora....was tied up, and hurt.
In a frigid white room that smells like iron beds and hospital tiles. Her eyes were wide with fear.
And in red letters scratched onto the wall behind her:
STOP LOOKING OR SHE WILL DIE.
Selene stared at it, and her hands went numb.
Dorian read it over her shoulder, and for the first time, his voice broke. "She's theirs."
Eliora is gone, the threat made and the stakes go up.