Scarlet (The Lunar Chronicles #2) - Marissa Meyer Page 0,63
now you tell me that you left them around the same time my grandmother was kidnapped.”
He rubbed absently at the tattoo, still saying nothing. Scarlet waited, blood beginning to simmer, until he dared to look at her. The portscreen cast a wash of bluish white light at their feet, but it did little to illuminate him. In the dark, she could see only the vaguest outline of his cheekbones and jaw, his hair like a clump of pine needles sticking out from his scalp.
“You told me that you had no idea why they would take my grandmother. But that was a lie, wasn’t it?”
“Scarlet—”
“So what was true? Did you really leave them or is this all some story to get me to—” Gasping, she stumbled back. Her thoughts turned, a cascade of doubts and questions rushing through them. “Am I the mission that Ran was talking about? The one that was supposedly canceled?”
“No—”
“And after my dad warned me about this! He said one of you would come for me and there you were, and I even knew you were one of them. I knew I couldn’t trust you and still I let myself believe—”
“Scarlet, stop.”
She wrapped her fist around her hood’s cords, tightening them against her throat. Her heart was pulsating now, blood running hot beneath her skin.
She heard Wolf inhale, saw his hands spread out in the beam of the portscreen. “You’re right, I lied to you about not knowing why they took your grandmother. But you aren’t the mission that Ran was talking about.”
She tilted the port upward, shining it into his face. Wolf flinched, but didn’t look away.
“But it has something to do with my grandmother.”
“It has everything to do with your grandmother.”
She bit down hard on her lower lip, trying to still the tide of rage rising inside her.
“I’m sorry. I knew that if I told you, you wouldn’t trust me. I know I should have anyway, but … I couldn’t.”
The hand holding her port began to shake. “Tell me everything.”
There was a long pause.
A sickeningly long pause.
“You’re going to despise me,” he murmured. His chest sank in, trying to make himself small again, like he had in the alleyway, in the headlights of her ship.
Scarlet pressed her hands so hard onto her hips, her bones began to ache.
“Ran and I were both in the pack sent to retrieve your grandmother.”
Scarlet’s stomach curdled. The pack sent to retrieve her.
“I wasn’t with them when she was taken,” he added quickly. “As soon as we arrived in Rieux, I saw my chance to escape. I knew I could disappear there without the grid of the city to find me. So I took it. That was the morning she was taken.” He crossed his arms, like he was protecting himself from her hatred. “I could have stopped them. I was stronger than all of them—I could have kept it from happening. I could have warned her, or you. But I didn’t. I just ran.”
Scarlet’s eyes started to burn. Inhaling sharply, she turned her back on him, tilting her head up toward the black sky to keep the sudden tears in without having to swipe at them. She waited until she was sure she could speak before pivoting back toward him. “That’s when you started going to the fights?”
“And the tavern,” he said with a nod.
“And then what? You felt guilty, so you thought you’d follow me around for a while, maybe help out on the farm, like that would make up for it?”
He winced. “Of course not. I knew that getting mixed up with you would be suicide, that eventually they would find me if I didn’t leave Rieux, but I … but you…” He seemed frustrated with the words that wouldn’t come. “I couldn’t just leave.”
Scarlet heard the crunch of plastic and forced her grip to loosen on the portscreen. “Why did they take her? What do they want with her?”
He opened his mouth, but was silent.
Scarlet raised both eyebrows. Her pulse was thundering. “Well?”
“They’re trying to find Princess Selene.”
The ringing in her ears made her think for a moment she hadn’t heard him correctly. “They’re trying to find who?”
“The Lunar Princess Selene.”
She drew back. It occurred to her that maybe Wolf was playing some kind of cruel joke, but his expression was too serious, too horrified. “What?”
He started to sway uncomfortably from foot to foot. “They’ve been searching for the princess for years, and they believe your grandmother has information on her whereabouts.”